Sgt. Fury

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (May 1963). Cover art by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Format	Ongoing
Publication date	May 1963 – Dec. 1981
No. of issues	167
Main character(s)	Sgt. Fury Izzy Cohen Dum Dum Dugan Gabe Jones Junior Juniper Eric Koenig Dino Manelli Pinky Pinkerton Rebel Ralston
Creative team
Created by	Stan Lee Jack Kirby
Written by	Stan Lee Roy Thomas Gary Friedrich
Penciller(s)	Jack Kirby Dick Ayers
Inker(s)	Dick Ayers George Roussos John Severin

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos is a comic book series created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and published by Marvel Comics from 1963 to 1981. The main character, Sgt. Nick Fury, later became the leader of Marvel's super-spy agency, S.H.I.E.L.D.. The title also featured the Howling Commandos, a fictional World War II unit that first appeared in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (cover dated May 1963).

Stan Lee has described the series Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos as having come about due to a bet with his publisher, Martin Goodman that the Lee-Kirby style could make a book sell even with the worst title Lee could devise. Lee elaborated on that claim in a 2007 interview, responding to the suggestion that the series title did not necessarily seem bad:

It did at the time. First of all, it was too long for a title — we didn't have any that were six words. And "Howling" was a long word, and "Commandos" was a long word. I got the name "Howling Commandos" because in the Army there was a group called the Screaming Eagles. And I loved the sound of that. So I figured we'd have the Howling Commandos.

Comics-artist contemporary John Severin recalled in an interview conducted in the early 2000s that in the late 1950s, Kirby had approached him to be partners on a syndicated, newspaper comic strip "set in Europe during World War Two; the hero would be a tough, cigar-chomping sergeant with a squad of oddball GIs — sort of an adult Boy Commandos", referring to a 1940s wartime "kid gang" comics series Kirby had co-created for DC Comics.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos followed an elite special unit, the First Attack Squad, nicknamed the "Howling Commandos", which was stationed in a military base in England to fight missions primarily, but not exclusively, in the European theatre of World War II. Under Captain "Happy Sam" Sawyer, Fury was the cigar-chomping noncom who led the racially and ethnically integrated unit, unusual for the time. Even in the early 1960s, Lee was obliged to send a memo to the color separator at the printing plant to confirm that the character Gabe Jones was African American, after the character had appeared with Caucasian coloring in the first issue.