I always loved this image but never knew this version or its origin. Last night I saw it whilst looking for something else and immediately recognised it from my childhood, albeit in another form. In the UK this appeared on the cover of the first issue of Future Tense, all original context stripped from it and a re-colouring job that left much to be desired.

Future Tense was a UK comic anthology of reprints from old Marvel series’ trying to capitalise on the sci-fi craze started by Star Wars and maintained by 2000ad. Seeing the original colours here gives the image a whole new lease of life but reminded me of all the great strips that were in the comic: Micronauts (with Michael Golden‘s amazing artwork), ROM The Spaceknight, Warlock. Starlord, Paladin and more. There’s a couple of nice pieces about it with a more covers over at Slow Robot‘s blog, which is a great resource for old sci-fi ephemera from the 70’s and 80’s. Now, what Nick Fury was doing on the cover of issue 1 is anyone’s guess, as he wasn’t featured in the comic.