Wah-Hoo!!
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos
examined by and © Mark Alexander
From Jack Kirby Collector #24
Enter The Howling Commandos
"There was reality in the stories because of my own war experiences. Sgt. Fury had the essence of military life in it."—Jack Kirby
The story goes like this: One day in late 1962 Stan Lee was trying to convince his skeptical uncle (publisher Martin Goodman) that Marvel's new-found success was due to the fact that he and Jack Kirby had developed a new comic-style which Lee claimed would work in any genre. To prove his point, Stan bet that they could make a hit even with an outdated war-theme and a "horrible title." The result was Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, a Kirbyesque trek through the battlefields of World War II that was dubbed "The War Mag for People Who Hate War Mags."
Jack Kirby was the obvious choice to illustrate the series. Having tackled combat themes before (see Boy Commandos, Foxhole, Warfront, and Battle), he was able to handle the job with ease and enthusiasm. The commandos that Jack created for Sgt. Fury were colorful characters, startling for their brazen acknowledgement of ethnicity, whose diverse backgrounds formed a microcosm of America itself.
Among their ranks were: Timothy "Dum-Dum" Dugan, a huge, derby-domed Irish-American; Isadore "Izzy" Cohen, a master-mechanic from Brooklyn and the first-ever Jewish comics hero; Dino Manelli, a handsome Italian-American who was also a Hollywood star back in the states (clearly based on Dean Martin); "Rebel" Ralston, an ex-jockey from Kentucky with a pronounced southern accent; "Junior" Juniper, the Ivy Leaguer and eager beaver of the group; and Gabriel Jones, a trumpet-playing jazzman who was Jack and Stan's first (pre-Panther) Black hero. At a time when civil rights was a hotly-contested issue, Kirby and Lee (without concern for sales in the South) showed exactly where they stood on segregation by including a Black soldier in Fury's squad. They were, of course, taking artistic license with this concept; having both served during World War II they knew that the US Army had been segregated at the time. (Fury's anachronistically-integrated squad was not an entirely unique concept; DC's Sgt. Rock, which originated in 1959, featured a Black soldier named Jackie Johnson.) In any event, Gabe's inclusion in the Howlers was a bold move, and when Jones appeared colored pink in the first issue, Lee was obliged to send the color separation company a detailed memo to make it clear that Gabe Jones was a Black man.
This motley melange of misfits whose ferocious battle cry of "WAH-HOO!!" earned them the title "Howling Commandos" was led by Nicholas Joseph Fury, a cigar-chomping, tough-talking Sergeant whose trademarks were a five-o'clock shadow and a perpetually-ripped shirt. A product of the Great Depression, Fury was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen by his widowed mother, his father (World War I pilot Jack Fury) having died in combat. Fury was a classic Dead-End Kid. He frequented pool halls, got into scrapes, and worked as infrequently as possible. His life turned around when he joined the parish of Chaplain Lewis Hargrove. Fury became best friends with Hargrove's younger brother who was subsequently killed at Pearl Harbor. To avenge his friend's death at the hands of the Axis powers, Fury enlisted in 1941, endured basic training at Fort Dix, and served as a Sergeant in the European Theater of Operations leading the Howlers.
