Talking to Newsarama, Marvel senior vice president of publishing Tom Brevoort has addressed the controversial introduction of "Nick Fury Jr." into the Marvel Universe. In Battle Scars, Marcus Johnson was revealed to be the son of Nick Fury, and by the end of issue #6 he had not only discovered that his name was really Nick Fury Jr., but also gained an eye patch, goatee and striking resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson. While the Fury who appears in Marvel's The Avengers was based on the one in The Ultimates created by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch, Brevoort explains here why they decided to create a 616 version of the character. To read the interview in full, in which he discusses where Nick Fury Jr. will next appear as well as the decision to introduce Agent Coulson and much more, be sure to click on the link below to head on over to the site.
"I don't think, necessarily, the advent of Marcus-Nick Fury means, inevitably, that you're looking at the demise of classic Nick Fury. You'll no doubt tend to see more of new Nick than older Nick in the days ahead. But honestly, even the roles that I see them playing are a little bit different from one another. For whatever reason, and it probably had a lot to do with the fact that he stopped being the star of his own series, when he was initially conceived, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was a guy who strapped on some Steranko gear and went out and mixed it up with Hydra agents and A.I.M. guys. By the inevitably of not having a book of his own, over the last 10 or 20 years, Nick's role has generally been to knock on a superhero's door, and say, "Hey, superhero, I have a mission for you," and be a very easy way to get a character into a story that they otherwise wouldn't be connected to. Much more of a supporting player role."
"In terms of where "Marcus" Fury is set up at the end of Battle Scars, he's not the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., he is an agent. In my perfect world, he'll go out there and do all the kinds of stuff that Nick used to do back in the day. He won't be a guy that'll show up with a mission for a superhero, he'll be on a mission and team up with a superhero. That means you can still have old Nick in that role that he's been playing. It is kind of a way to eat our cake and have it too."
"Ultimately, new Nick comes from the publishing world to begin with, he just comes by a circuitous route, starting in the Ultimate Universe, and then winding through the films and animation, to come back to Marvel publishing. But any time it seems like what we're doing is following the lead of other divisions, our fans just have a hard time accepting it. They don't like it. It's always kind of a dicey thing when you're shifting things up this way, but to me the challenge is, "Make new Nick an interesting, viable character. Don't just make him a clone of old Nick in blackface and a goatee, make him a character unto himself." The good thing about new Nick is, at least at this point, he's had very little interaction with any of the characters in the Marvel Universe, so you've got the opportunity to introduce him to Spider-Man, and to Daredevil, and to Iron Man, to Thor, and the Hulk and everybody — and get a different perspective, and let him have a different set of experiences than the ones that older Nick had, and hopefully create some interesting story possibilities and directions for things moving ahead."
"We're definitely going to do more with the character; we're definitely going to do more with Coulson in the months and weeks ahead."
While the reasoning is sound, this still feels like an extremely forced and unnecessary addition to the Marvel Universe. The fact that the already established version of Nick Fury will seemingly be made even less of a prominent part of goings on than he is already, will surely upset long time fans. How do you feel about all of this? Sound off with your thoughts in the usual place.