Issue(s): Fury #1
Cover Date: May 94
Title: N/A
Credits:
Barry Dutter - Writer
M.C. Wyman - Penciler
Christopher Ivy & Greg Adams - Inker
Pat Garrahy - Assistant Editor
Ralph Macchio - Editor

Review/plot:
It's interesting to me that Ralph Macchio saw, as part of his editorial duties, a sort of custodial interest in shaping - or fixing to his liking - Marvel universe continuity. To be clear, i don't think that's wrong. But it surprises me that Macchio seemed to have quite a few axes to grind, and seemed to commission stories specifically to address prior stories that he didn't like. He had Steve Englehart eradicate the Beyonder, and he retconned the Korvac Saga. And this one shot was specifically commissioned to undo the changes that Bob Harras revealed in his SHIELD run(s). From the intro to this issue:

I remember a few years back reading the Nick Fury Versus SHIELD limited series. It was very well done, but I couldn't quite accept the fact that an LMD had been controlling not only SHIELD, but Hydra, as well, for decades. So, a bee in my bonnet, I spoke to up-and-coming scribe Barry "the Dut" Dutter... to conceive and craft the honest-to-Bond real origin of the world's greatest espionage agency.

It's not just the mini-series. Harras' story about the Gnobian aliens that were used by Baron von Strucker to develop LMD tech also gets retconned here.

One thing worth noting is that Nick Fury's ongoing was cancelled in May 93 (cover date) at a time when Marvel was still flooding the market with a glut of books. I suspect that sales must have been really low in order for that book to get canceled. And yet one year later Macchio pushes out this oneshot. It wasn't because the market was demanding more Nick Fury. It's because Macchio had a bee in his bonnet. I actually agree with Macchio regarding both the Deltites and the Gnobians. I just think it's interesting that he was able to push out this oneshot specifically to address a continuity concern of his. I also wonder if he tried to push for these changes to be made earlier, in the Nick Fury series, or if he waited until he had an opportunity because of the cancellation of that book. I also wonder what Bob Harras thought of this. Harras also had partisan (so to speak) views regarding various continuity developments (e.g. the treatment of Quicksilver and Crystal), so i wonder what he thought of another editor pushing out a story that was designed to contradict something he wrote, especially since Harras would become Editor in Chief not long after this story was published.

This issue is basically a retrospective of SHIELD history, almost a Saga style book, except that there are a number of retcons and continuity inserts along the way.

We start with Nick Fury's final World War II era battle with Baron Strucker, from Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #29. In that story, Strucker disobeyed Hitler's orders so that he could fight Fury, and it resulted in him getting kicked out of the Nazis. But it turns out that the battle didn't win Fury any accolades either. When he gets back to base, he's chewed out by a Colonel Rick Stoner, a character not as mellow as his name implies.

And with that, our first continuity flub of the issue. While Ralph Macchio obviously had an interest in fixing continuity, he wasn't all that careful with it. You'll notice that Fury is imprisoned after punching Stoner, which immediately followed the events of Sgt. Fury #29. The following page shows a newspaper article saying that Fury was released from prison, and it's being read by Fury's younger brother Jake, who is already enlisted.

The problem with that is that Jake doesn't enlist until some time after Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #68-69, which obviously comes after issue #29. I suppose we'll have to say that Fury was imprisoned again after punching a different officer (or maybe the same officer again; Stoner could definitely use some additional punches). Anyway, the importance that we are to gleam from this scene is that Jake bristles under the shadow of his older brother.

We next go to Hitler, who is inspecting the work of Arnim Zola.

Note Zola telling the Red Skull that he's devised a suspended animation potion for him, the idea being that it was the potion that kept Red Skull alive until Tales of Suspense #78-79, as opposed to just being an experimental gas that was released during the Skull's final battle with Cap during World War II.

I think it's interesting that everyone here, even Hitler, talks about the fact that the War is going badly for the Nazis and that they probably won't win.

Baron Strucker resurfaces after Hitler leaves, and the Red Skull and Arnim Zola agree to work with him in organizing Hydra, which is said to really be the Red Skull's organization.

A "couple decades later", Iron Man, wearing the original bulky, but gold, version of his armor, stops two thugs from stealing the blueprints to one of his inventions. On his way back into the Stark factory, Tony passes Jake Fury, who is an employee there and working on tapping into a source of energy that will eventually lead him to the Scorpio Key.

Because of the increased number of acts of industrial espionage and the related worry about rumors of the organization called Hydra, Tony Stark goes to the White House and proposes creating the organization SHIELD. The president doesn't believe that Hydra really exists, so he rejects Stark's proposal. But then Hydra raid a research facility in Canada and steal what's left of the original Guardian armor.

Wolverine and Col. Stoner manage to get the armor back (of course we couldn't have a comic in the 90s that didn't have Wolvie in it)...

...but the incident convinces the US president that Hydra is real, and Stark's SHIELD proposal is approved. Stoner is chosen as the director.

One thing that surprised me is that some of the former Howling Commandos applied to SHIELD while this Stoner guy was in charge. I always assumed that Fury recruited them.

The Helicarrier is being constructed; it's said that Mr. Fantastic and Forge participate. Meanwhile, Stoner starts investigating Hydra and finds clues that they are connected to Roxxon. I think it's a mistake to connect Hydra to Roxxon, especially this early. Roxxon should always retain a veneer of legitimacy even though we readers know that they're corrupt. By contrast, at this point AIM was thought to be a legitimate organization even though it was secretly a part of the same umbrella organization (Them) that Hydra belonged to. So i don't know why Macchio & Dutter didn't use AIM for this story. But in any event, Stoner investigates Roxxon and finds a boat with an illegal weapons shipment, and he also learns that Jake Fury, still a Stark employee, is a mole working for Hydra.

"I heard that?" Obviously Stoner was not super-spy material. He's critically wounded. He escapes, and manages to make it to Tony Stark (who it seems like is being pumped for information by what feels like an obvious spy named Cassandra, although nothing comes of that).

Stoner dies immediately after the above panel, so his heroic effort in getting back to Stark before dying seems to have been for nothing.

Baron Struck and Arnim Zola get word that Stoner is dead.

Note that Zola has two things cooking. The first is the Deltite LMD. The idea is that everything we learned about it in the Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD miniseries was fake, and it was really something planted by Strucker. And ditto for the Gnobian aliens. They weren't really aliens; just creations of Arnim Zola.

Zola also offers to create a cloned body for Strucker like he did for Hitler and the Red Skull (and Baron Zemo).

I guess this is a revision, too. Strucker does "die" during Steranko's SHIELD run, but when he comes back it's not said to be the work of Zola. In fact, when the Red Skull mentions Zola to Strucker in Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #25-26, Strucker talks like he hasn't seen Zola since he was a geneticist during World War II.

Since Stoner is dead, the government calls in Nick Fury, currently a CIA agent, to find the mole in Tony Stark's organization.

The investigation starts and ends with Jake, who starts acting suspicious the minute Nick drops by to say hello to him. It ends with Nick confronting Jake in front of a bunch of Hydra goons. What's weird is that even while the story acknowledges the Sgt. Fury story where Nick's eye was originally injured (it was said that he wouldn't go blind right away, but would eventually), it provides us an alternate explanation for Fury's need for an eyepatch.

Despite the eye injury, Fury manages to fight off the Hydra goons. But Jake manages to get away.

It's said that Jake's hate was the missing ingredient in the Zodiac Key that he had been "close to discovering" while he was working for Stark, and now that he hated Nick so much, he was able to become Scorpio.

Nick returns to Stark and shows proof that the traitor was Jake. Stark tells him that he did good work and that he should expect a job offer in the near future. I guess your brother being a Hydra agent isn't considered a security risk as long as you show that you're willing to turn him in.

Another weird flub. Prior to getting called in to be the new head of SHIELD, Fury is shown relaxing with his girlfriend, Laura Brown.

Maybe the miscolored hair is actually a clue. Laura Brown was the daughter of the acting head of Hydra (not Strucker) at the time of Nick Fury's original Strange Tales run. When she met Nick (seemingly for the first time), she helped him escape Hydra captivity, and he later returned the favor, and she became a romantic interest. But that was all after Nick was the head of SHIELD. Maybe the idea is that at this point she was in a fake identity trying to pump him for information ("What's an LMD?"). But i don't really think that was intended.

From there we get into an almost straight retelling of Strange Tales #135. What's weird is that it's another case where it seems like it's almost daring us to point out the contradiction. By doing a word for word retelling, we're reminded that when Fury first saw Tony Stark while he was being recruited, he talked about him like he hadn't just been talking with him 3 pages ago.

After recounting Fury's initiation, we jump ahead quite a bit to where Tony Stark started taking a less active role in SHIELD and he was replaced by the "inner council". Note that this issue doubles down on the idea that the Nick Fury from Nick Fury vs. SHIELD was really an LMD controlled by the council in Iron Man #117-Iron Man #129 and/or Iron Man #174-175. But for what it's worth, all of this narration is coming from Fury to Stark, so maybe he's still lying.

In fact, all of this story is actually a conversation between Nick and Tony, while Tony is looking over the remains of the Deltite. Stark finds a microchip in the Deltite that contains a holographic message from Baron Strucker.

And that's what you have to love about this whole issue. Macchio wanted to get rid of the Deltite and Gnobian revelations, so he had Barry Dutter write up this history of SHIELD that ends with Strucker showing up in hologram form to say "Ha ha, just kidding." There's no story behind it. And the idea that it was all part of some large scheme is a joke. Strucker just straight up tells him yeah, i just did all that to confuse you. So why tell him now? Why not let him stay confused. Makes no sense. I'd rather the hologram produced the giant floating head of Ralph Macchio to say, "Guys, we're not going to acknowledge those stories any more, ok?".

The issue ends with Tony Stark agreeing to get more involved with SHIELD, like he used to in the old days.

That would be a pretty important development, but i don't think it lead to any status quo changes in 1994. Certainly it didn't during the time period when this was seemingly meant to take place (see the Considerations regarding that).

I'm not against retcons or continuity inserts, and like i said at the beginning, i agree with Macchio that the Deltite and Gnobian revelations were bad ideas. But in practice this issue barely counts as a story. It really is a Saga style issue, except that the info here is as much about telling us that the events that we thought happened are wrong. And in addition to not having a narrative, there are a number of points where the continuity just seems wrong or at least questionable. So it's kind of the worst of both worlds. It's a continuity fixer that can't get the continuity right, and it can't stand on its own as an interesting story.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: As always, with retrospective format books, i place this based on the final scene, which has Nick Fury and Tony Stark looking over the Deltite from the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD mini-series. That doesn't begin directly after that mini-series, though, since there's a reference to the Gnobian "aliens" that appear in the Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD ongoing series that follows the mini, up until issue #6. The MCP place this at the earliest possible opportunity, directly after Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #6. That made me wonder: were there no references to the Gnobians as being actual aliens after Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #3-6? And that does seem to be the case; i have no Inbound References on Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #3-6, and i don't see any mention of the aliens in Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #7-8 (i checked those specifically because i don't create References for the arcs immediately following the story being referenced). So, interestingly, it seems that the Gnobian story was ignored in realtime right after it was published, and that does mean that this story can fit directly after it. In any event, based on the way the Strucker hologram talks, it sounds like the real Strucker isn't back from the dead yet, so this should take place before Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD #20-23 (unless you want to make the argument that the hologram doesn't know that the real Strucker is back, which makes sense, but you'd wonder why Stark or Fury didn't mention it). I'm following the MCP on this, but i reserve the right to change my mind if Tony Stark suddenly starts working much more closely with SHIELD circa the 1994 publication date of this issue (which i don't think is the case).

References:

• This issue begins with the battle between Fury and Strucker from Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #29.
  
• After agreeing to work with the Red Skull on organizing Hydra, Strucker is shown overthrowing the current leader, as seen in Capt. Savage and his Leatherneck Raiders #4.
  
• Before he's called in to find the mole in Stark's organization, Fury was with the Fantastic Four fighting the Hate-Monger, from Fantastic Four #21.
  
• Nick's eye was injured in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #27 but it was said that it wouldn't fail right away.
  
• A lot of Strange Tales #135, showing Nick getting recruited into SHIELD is replayed.
  
• The Deltite affair was in Nick Fury vs. SHIELD #1-6.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? Y

My Reprint: N/A

Tony Stark's involvement with SHIELD has started getting a bit problematic as of Marvel Now! In which Nick Fury is being constantly shown to be part of SHIELD in the 1960's or so. The only real fix I can think of for this at the moment is that Fury and his Commandos got mind wiped when their SHIELD got stepped out of line only for SHIELD to eventually be reinstated by Tony Stark and such later on. Jeez.

An easy continuity fix for Tony Stark being involved with SHIELD in the 60s is to replace him with his father or grandfather in the history, kind of like how he now became Iron Man thanks to modern day Middle Eastern based wars rather than the south-east Asian conflicts of the Cold War era.

And while I regard Macchio as not especially talented as either a writer or editor, I do agree with his stance against stuff like LMDs. I never liked LMDs or skrulls or clones or other such plot devices as they too easily allow bad writers to ruin 20 years of continuity with sucky "everything you know is wrong" type storylines. They're also a really cheap way to bring a dead character back to life.

"The whole Deltite affair was nothing more than a ruse... something to keep you distracted from my inevitable resurrection."

So basically, the purpose of this story is to have Strucker pop up and say that the Deltite ruse was a distaction.

Personally, I long ago decided to disregard many of the revelations/retcons made in this one-shot. Instead, I have chosen to regard this story (which is entirely narrated by Nick) as nothing more than disinformation that Fury had been spreading around to confuse things. After all, when all is said and done, Nick Fury is a spy, not a super hero, and keeping sensitive information secret is what spies do.

While I agree that some elements from the Nick Fury Vs. SHIELD miniseries were implausible enough that they should have been retconned, this one-shot went overboard in "correcting" those flaws, to the extent of introducing new problems.

First, the idea that the Deltite and its schemes were all set up by Baron Strucker as a failsafe had already been introduced years before. In Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #26, while talking with the Red Skull, the just-revived Strucker revealed that the “renegade” LMD with its megalomaniacal talk of control over corporations and governments was never meant to succeed. Instead, it and all its Deltites were created solely to bring SHIELD crashing down from within, thus weakening its structure and influence so as to create an opening in which HYDRA would rebuild. So, since that idea was already canon, why bother repeating it?

Second, the idea that that the Gnobians were created by Arnim Zola as part of this whole Deltite scheme doesn't work for me. Aside from the fact that I actually liked the whole Gnobian storyline, there's also the matter of how it ended: with the Gnobian Mother, having realized that she and all her children on Earth had been irrevocably corrupted by Strucker, ordering the Sentry (which they bought from the Kree) to detonate a bomb to destroy them all. So, how would Zola get his hands on a Kree Sentry? And why would anyone waste such a powerful weapon on a deception?

Third, this one-shot continues to describe the Deltites as LMDs -- SOMETHING WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!! Life Model Decoys are (with some exceptions) ROBOTS which have been designed to be able to pass as real human beings but whose insides are mechanical. In contrast, the Deltites were BIOLOGICAL in nature. They were beings of flesh and blood who could (and did) age and die because of their unstable genetic structures. So, while I have no problem with the idea that the Deltites were all part of Strucker's scheme, them being mere LMDs is completely unacceptable because it is inconsistent with how they were presented. Now, if one were to reveal that Arnim Zola was the actual creator of the Deltite parasites, then that is a concept which I could totally support.

Fourth, in a scene set in 1944, Arnim Zola gives the Red Skull a potion that could keep him in a state of suspended animation for decades. This is apparently meant to replace the "experimental gas" (from Tales of Suspense #79) that had kept the Skull alive and young for decades after his final WW2 battle with Captain America. Unfortunately, there are two problems with this idea. First, Arnim Zola is shown as being in his artificial body in 1944 but Super-Villain Team-Up #17 (June, 1980) had previously established that he was still "the ordinary human Arnim Zola” when he approached Adolf Hitler with his mind transference ideas in 1945. Second, the Zola's potion retcon was itself later retconned by Mark Waid in Marvel Universe #1. In a scene set late in the war, Strucker was in Berlin visiting one of several secret installations he had had built when he was confronted by the Red Skull. The Skull is impressed that Strucker has constructed “an entire installation devoted to the preservation and suspended animation of life” and he requests some samples of Strucker’s gases and elixirs for his own study. This scene ties in with the suspended animation chambers from Namor the Sub-Mariner #9-12 and acts to stetcon the original idea that is was gases that preserved the Skull and his two henchmen for those long decades.

Fifth, the major element of this one-shot is the fact that Jake Fury is a HYDRA spy. However, Jonathan Hickman's Secret Warriors series later revealed that Nick and Jake had actually been working together for decades to stop Leviathan, and that the "Jake Fury" who hated Nick and became Scorpio out of that hate was (always) just a malfunctioning LMD.

Sixth, the idea that the Nick Fury who tried to buy Tony Stark's company out from under him and/or "acquire" some of Iron Man's armor was an LMD came from the Nick Fur Vs. SHIELD miniseries but I never bought it. For one thing, the Nick Fury who appears in those issues has thought balloons meaning that he has thoughts and therefore is not an LMD. Also, in Captain America #248, Fury admits to Cap that he did try to take control of Stark's company because he was following orders to do so.

Seventh, identifying Colonel Rick Stoner as Fury's predecessor as Director of SHIELD is interesting but four years later the Fury/Agent 13 miniseries seemingly contradicted this by claiming that the first Director of SHIELD, someone whose identity wasn't known by Fury, had actually not died but had been kidnapped.

Finally, there's the whole idea that Strucker had a microchip boasting of his plan placed within the Deltite LMD for Nick to find. To begin with, as you pointed out, setting up such a large deception so that you can rebuild your terrorist organization in secret only to leave a "Ha ha, just kidding" message for your arch-enemy which exposes what you've been doing makes no sense whatsoever. Sure, Strucker is an arrogant bastard but this is downright stupid. Plus, there are more problems with the whole concept.

1. As mentioned above, all of the Deltites were actually organic beings and not androids or LMDs. So, having Stark examine the Deltite's remains would be a bit pointless.

2. It seems highly unlikely that any part of the Deltite could have survived the last issue of the NFVS miniseries. I mean, first he was impaled by Fury but he wasn't killed until the dozens of followers whom he had betrayed excommunicated him by firing energy weapons at him. And then, just before the SHIELD satellite exploded, Fury ran through the chamber where the Deltites were gathered together to await their end just the energy field from the Power Core was about to reach that room and burn through it, vaporizing everything it touched. So, the Deltite's body should have been reduced to dust by the Power Core's energy field.

3. Various issues of the second NFAOS series reveal what Fury knows.
Issue #26 - After the massacre at SHIELD Central (issue #26), Strucker sends a message to the people of New York through a HYDRA hologram at the ruins but he uses a sampling mechanism to distort his voice.
Issue #42- Fury doesn't know who is running the new HYDRA but he later finds Lump and Red living in the sub-levels beneath SHIELD Central.
Issue #43 - In the depths of SHIELD Central, Fury finds all of the SHIELD agents who were "replaced by the LMDs during the Delta Affair" were actually placed in storage in stasis tubes and brainwashed instead of being killed. Fury also now knows that HYDRA was involved in the Delta Affair from the start.
Issue #44 - By now, Fury no longer believes the LMD that claimed he had taken over SHIELD and thinks HYDRA was behind it the whole time but doesn’t know who pulled it off. Later, as he and Captain America investigate a massacre at an old HYDRA base in Canada, they find evidence that causes Cap to suggest that either Von Strucker wasn’t really dead or he was somehow brought back to life but Fury rejects that idea.
Issue #46 - After having Terror use Werner von Strucker’s ear to reveal that he was killed by his own father, Fury says, “I was right all along.” He’s spent the past months trying to find out for certain something that he’s suspected all along. Later, Fury reveals that he knows Strucker is alive again and Strucker feels that Fury’s discovery is premature.

So, where does Strucker's message fit into this learning curve? As far as I can tell, it doesn't. According to the one-shot, it was the message from Strucker that revealed that he and not the rogue LMD was responsible for the whole Delta Affair. However, this is incompatible with the series of events described above.

The only scene I can think of that alludes to the Gnobians is a scene in issue 42 where Nick is surprised that Red and Lump survived an explosion that Hydra caused and Red replies "We didn't buy it when the place went bang. Probably had something to do with being related to those Life Model Decoys?" That doesn't really seem definitive one way or the other, especially since this story doesn't make clear exactly what Lump is- an LMD, a creature like Primus or some weird mix of the two?
Speaking of Lump, the explanation for the Gnobians didn't explain everything- the Gnobians had a Kree Sentry. If Strucker planted this before he "died" how did he know about the Kree and their Sentries? That was before FF 65.
This story seems to suggest the Zodiac Key was created by Jake, as opposed to every other story where it's a sentient extradimensional power object that finds Jake/is found by him.
I have to wonder what the way to ensure Strucker's survival was supposed to be- it doesn't seem to be cloning. Whatever it was, it's completely unconnected to how Strucker actually came back.
The hologram message made no sense- how could Strucker know Fury was see it when he was dead-but-going to come-back?
I have to wonder if Macchio was aware of Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD 25-26 when he commissioned this- it has the same basic explanation for the Deltite. I also have to wonder when this story was commissioned.
Marvel Universe has a completely different explanation as to how the Skull got the gas that kept him in suspended animation.
Dutter wanted the first head of SHIELD to be Cable but Harras wouldn't allow it.

@Don Campbell: How does "Fury" having a thought balloon keep him from being an LMD? Now, granted, I'm not the biggest expert on them, but other robots in the Marvel Universe have thought balloons all the time.

Daredevil #123 featured LMDs with "thought tapes" that could fool even a telepath, so some LMDs can think. And we've also seen the Zodiac LMDs with thought balloons and event he capacity to dream in West Coast Avengers #26-28.

Jake Fury sure gets retconned a lot, doesn't he?

@Red Comet

I guess that would correspond with Howard Stark being involved in Hickman's SHIELD. I also guess Tony's involvement with early SHIELD wasn't really developed much to my memory (aside from maybe a vague enough mention in Marvels that could be interpreted differently), as was his appearance as CIA liaison to the Fantastic Four (which I guess you could maybe replace with an era appropriate hero?)

However, there wasn't really an actual necessity to making Nick Fury's SHIELD days in the 60's. It wasn't as if they relied on Vietnam or anything from that era. So we have the weird situation of suddenly deciding events taking place in the "present" were then taking place in the 60's, for no actual reason other than perhaps making him seem even older in comparison to Nick Fury Jr.

I think a lot of writers like to have Nick Fury SHIELD stuff set in the 60s because it enables them to do wannabe Steranko stuff in a vintage Cold War/Sean Connery James Bond kind of setting.

The semi-recent Original Sin crossover also had Howard Stark in the role as Nick Fury's collaborator in the past. That's another series full of bad retcons and "everything you know is wrong" reveals involving LMDs.

Thought balloons are used to show what characters are thinking which requires that said characters be sentient and thus capable of thinking. People (both human and alien) are almost always portrayed as sentient while animals are only sometimes sentient (although they are often depicted with only simple thought patterns). Artificial beings, like androids or robots, vary by individual. Ultron, the Vision and those Zodiac LMDs have thought balloons because they are sentient, but HERBIEs, Doombots, Sentinels and most LMDs don't have thought balloons because they are not capable of independent thought. For example, most LMDs are either limited to pre-programmed behaviors or are shown to be directly controlled by a remote operator.

Those "thought tapes" in Daredevil #123 were recordings of thoughts taken from the minds of the people who the LMDs were going to be replacing. SHIELD knew that those agents were being targeted for assassination by a telepath (Mentallo) and so they needed to be able to trick him into believing that those LMDs were his targets when, of course, they were only Decoys. None of those LMDs could actually think for themselves, they were just programmed robots with an extra layer of disguise to make them appear to be human.

Of course, some LMDs have (somehow) become sentient (like "Max Fury") and those LMDS do have thought balloons (I think). Still, most LMDS are non-sentient robots and thus any character shown as having thought balloons is (probably) not an LMD.

Unfortunately, not every writer agrees with you Don. In Fantastic Four 278, Byrne has the Doombots explain that they think fake thoughts in order to confuse telepaths- Byrne has said in interviews that was his way of telling the reader "Don't assume it's the real Doom just because you see thought balloons."

Okay, I concede the point. There are times where non-sentient robots have thought balloons because their creators want to deceive any telepaths who might be spying on them. However, I believe that these cases are the exception and not the rule, and that most ordinary, non-sentient LMDs do not (or should not) have thought balloons. That's all I'm saying.

"of course we couldn't have a comic in the 90s that didn't have Wolvie in it"

Of course. That would be reasonable and suggest artistic integrity sometimes overcoming mindless reflex.

I know that not everybody has taken to the "Dum Dum has been a series of LMD" retcon, and i also know we haven't learned everything about that yet - but it does seem that he not only has thoughts, but that they persist throughout his incarnations.

To clarify, not all Life Model Decoys are the same. The "normal" LMDs are just robots that look like real humans and are programmed to behave like them. These LMDs are non-sentient and do not have thoughts.

However, there are also a variety of specialized LMDs. Some of them are identical to normal LMDs except that they've been equipped with "thought tapes" in order to trick any telepaths into believing that they are real people. There are also special models which are designed to fool people with enhanced senses, and some models have been constructed to pass for human even if they are autopsied. These LMDs are equipped with scents and layers of artificial skin and tissue. Remember the "Nick Fury" who was killed by the Punisher? That was a special LMD that Fury had Tony Stark build for him.

Finally, there are a number of LMDs which are (somehow) sentient, like "Max Fury" and the current Dum Dum Dugan model. As far as I know, the only explanation for how they are capable of independent thought which has yet been provided is that they are "advanced." Presumably this means that their creators added extra technology to enable their sentience.

As for Dum Dum Dugan, the character has appeared in over forty years of Marvel comics and he certainly has had thought balloons at some point. So, if this LMD retcon is sticking, then that means that sentient LMDs must have thought balloons. Oddly enough, in the three Howling Commandos of SHIELD stories published so far, there have been NO thoguht ballooons from ANY of the characters.

"To clarify, not all Life Model Decoys are the same. The 'normal' LMDs are just robots that look like real humans and are programmed to behave like them. "

But this gets us into the "What Measure Is a Man?" debate; what range of behavior crosses the line from "programmed to act like a person" to "displaying the full range of behavior of a person?" The Tony Stark LMD that tried to replace the real Stark was back in Iron Man v.1 #17-19 seems like a case of a sentient LMD, for example.

And SHIELD v.1 #1 has them testing an LMD Fury that's meant to completely replace the real one in the field, which would mean responding to novel behaviors. It fails the test, but it might be the same LMD later stolen by the original Scorpio in issue #5 of that series, the one that eventually becomes "Max Fury."

The other retcon that complicates all of this is the Secret Warriors reveal that LMDs were never Stark's invention, but rather come from some kind of weird alien tech thing connected to the Great Wheel and the ancient version of SHIELD. So maybe sentient LMDs come from that tech -- which would also take care of Scorpio's clearly sentient LMD Zodiac, since the retcon makes Scorpio himself just such a sentient LMD -- and then the "mere decoy" versions are StarkTech efforts to recreate the original, or even some kind of independent creation.

Ancient... version... of SHIELD?

I started Googling that, then decided I don't even want to know.

@Mortificator

Yeah, Marvel has vastly expanded SHIELD's backstory over the past few years in various series written by Jonathan Hickman and the Original Sin crossover written by Jason Aaron.

The conceit is that SHIELD, or at least a version of SHIELD, has existed throughout Marvel history secretly defending Earth from threats. This has allowed perennial nerd favorites like Leonardo Da Vinci and Nicola Tesla to be shoehorned in as Marvel heroes.

It's a decent enough idea for a story, but I imagine continuity hounds that are a lot more invested in SHIELD's backstory than I am tear their hair out as they read these books.

"I heard that!"

Holy God, that's bad.