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: 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 (racial integration was unusual for the then-segregated U.S. military, though possible in elite special forces units). 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. Following seven issues by creators Lee and Kirby (who returned to collaborate on #13 and on the opening and closing pages of #18),
John Severin later joined as inker, forming a long-running, award-winning team; he would, additionally, both pencil and ink issues #44-46. The series' only other pencilers came on one issue each by
Tom Sutton (which Ayers said was "done that time I asked for a furlough and reassignment") and
Herb Trimpe ("They shuffled Trimpe and me around, [him] to
Fury and [me] and Severin to
Hulk|[The Incredible] Hulk" Ayers recalled.) Ayers said in 1977, "Stan Lee left
Fury first to Roy Thomas because the
superheroes were gaining in popularity at that time it was best he concentrate on them", referring to the young Marvel's then growing line of superhero comics, such as
Fantastic Four and
The Amazing Spider-Man. "I must admit I resented somewhat those superheroes taking Stan away from
Fury!" Friedrich began as a co-scripter of issues #42-44 (May–July 1967). The Friedrich-Ayers-Severin team began in earnest, however, with #45 (Aug. 1967), the first of what would be several of the series' "The" stories: "The War Lover", a shaded exploration of a trigger-happy soldier and the line drawn, even in war, between killing and murder. Daring for the time, when majority public sentiment still supported the undeclared
Vietnam War, the story balanced present-day issues while demonstrating that even in what is referred to as "a
just war", a larger
morality prevails. As one writer in the 1970s observed, &
John Severin. At his best, Ayers' art in
Sgt. Fury showed "a clear, forthright storyteller, excellent in medium close shots with a subtly out-of-focus background. He blended large panels with thin or small ones for movement, and often provided vast,
cinemascopic panoramas for his writers to work with.... [E]ven in a scene that would ordinarily be static you could feel his characters breathing." Inker Severin "took the art even further, laying dark, scratchy inks" that gave grit to Ayers' pencils. The final issue, #167 (Dec. 1981) reprinted the first issue. One latter-day story was published in
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (July 2009), as the cover logo read; its copyright indicia read
Sgt. Fury & His Howling Commandos One-Shot #1. The 32-page story, "
Shotgun Opera", was by writer
Jesse Alexander and artist
John Paul Leon. ==Characters==