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S.H.I.E.L.D.
Nick Fury, Agent of Shield: Empyre
Tough, no-nonsense World War II veteran Colonel Nick Fury, is the head of SHIELD -- the UN's crack anti-terrorist organization. When a series of planes mysteriously crash -- culminating in the disappearance of an Empyre Airlines jumbo jet -- suspicion initially points to the involvement of terrorists in Hydra. But Fury soon learns that the true villain is the insane leader of the nation Quorak -- who wants nothing less than world destruction.Now Fury must learn to work with his greatest enemies in order to halt the deadly threat...
- GenresComics
296 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 2000
2 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Will Murray
687 books75 followersWill Murray is an American novelist, journalist, and short-story and comic-book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. Will is the author of over 50 novels in popular series ranging from “The Destroyer” to “Mars Attacks”. Collaborating posthumously with the legendary Lester Dent, he has written to date nine Doc Savage novels, with “Desert Demons” and “Horror in Gold” now available. For National Public Radio, Murray adapted “The Thousand-Headed Man” for “The Adventures of Doc Savage” in 1985, and recently edited “Doc Savage: The Lost Radio Scripts of Lester Dent” for Moonstone Books. He is versed in all things pulp.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 29, 2020
This is fun S.H.I.E.L.D. adventure featuring the cigar-chomping Fury who rampaged through World War II with his Howling Commandos, not the M.C.U. version. It has a bit too much of a psi-powered element and not enough of the super-spy tech element for my taste, but it's a fine old story nonetheless. The use of airplanes as weapons seemed a little out there at the time it appeared... The book is very nicely illustrated by Steranko (who else?!), and has an appendix that lists all of the Byron Preiss Marvel prose books that appeared from 1994-2000 chronologically. Make Mine Marvel.
October 10, 2022
Set in the Marvel Comics Universe, the plot focues on Nick Fury as he races to stop a plot to destroy entire cities.
Another character, Starla Spacek, was (I'm pretty sure) created for this novel and who becomes a co-protagonist along with Nick. Starla is a psychic and is the newly-appointed director of SHIELD's psychic division.
What I like about the use of psychic powers in the story is that Murray very clearly explains how those powers work, making them a useful tool of the good guys without making them a deus ex machina. Psychic abilities are a major part of the story in a way that makes their use interesting and believable within the context of the Marvel Universe.
The novel has plenty of action, with my favorite action set-piece probably being a dogfight between a jet fighter and a flying car. It also has a strong plot, with Fury and his SHIELD operatives uncertain for most of the novel what the bad guys are up to or even who the bad guys might be. There are indications Hydra is behind it all, but the leader of a country that is a fictional stand-in for Saddam Hussain's Iraq might also be involved. Which one is the main villain? It's a question that adds to the tension of the story as much as does the great action scenes.
By the way, the Wikipedia page for this novel has a mistake, listing this as the first time Nick Fury appears in novel form. He actually appeared as a supporting character in two previous novels: Holocaust for Hire (a Captain America novel) and Call My Killer... Modok (an Iron Man novel). Both were published a decade or so before Empyre.
But I include that tidbit simply to brag about my knowledge of obscure pop culture and Empyre is Nick's first appearance as the main protagonist. Empyre is a fun, exciting novel that is well worth reading.
Another character, Starla Spacek, was (I'm pretty sure) created for this novel and who becomes a co-protagonist along with Nick. Starla is a psychic and is the newly-appointed director of SHIELD's psychic division.
What I like about the use of psychic powers in the story is that Murray very clearly explains how those powers work, making them a useful tool of the good guys without making them a deus ex machina. Psychic abilities are a major part of the story in a way that makes their use interesting and believable within the context of the Marvel Universe.
The novel has plenty of action, with my favorite action set-piece probably being a dogfight between a jet fighter and a flying car. It also has a strong plot, with Fury and his SHIELD operatives uncertain for most of the novel what the bad guys are up to or even who the bad guys might be. There are indications Hydra is behind it all, but the leader of a country that is a fictional stand-in for Saddam Hussain's Iraq might also be involved. Which one is the main villain? It's a question that adds to the tension of the story as much as does the great action scenes.
By the way, the Wikipedia page for this novel has a mistake, listing this as the first time Nick Fury appears in novel form. He actually appeared as a supporting character in two previous novels: Holocaust for Hire (a Captain America novel) and Call My Killer... Modok (an Iron Man novel). Both were published a decade or so before Empyre.
But I include that tidbit simply to brag about my knowledge of obscure pop culture and Empyre is Nick's first appearance as the main protagonist. Empyre is a fun, exciting novel that is well worth reading.
June 22, 2011
I suppose that I might have enjoyed this a bit more if I had followed Nick Fury in comics. I didn't, but the author did a decent job of filling me in on details of aspects of the comic that I was unaware of. All in all, this novel is mostly standard pulp fiction with a couple added ingredients. The author tossed in a great deal of psychic espionage activities, which were utilized or attempted by a number of governments in reality and that I have read about here and there.
Another item that removed this from typical books of this style was the lack of sex. There. I said it. In general, action novels include a lead character that cannot only beat every person on the planet to a pulp but is also a stag. Come on now. Anyone who has ever read an action novel knows exactly what I am talking about. Anyway, we'll just blame the lack of sex on Marvel and shelve this as a conservative pulp fiction novel. Nuff said.
Another item that removed this from typical books of this style was the lack of sex. There. I said it. In general, action novels include a lead character that cannot only beat every person on the planet to a pulp but is also a stag. Come on now. Anyone who has ever read an action novel knows exactly what I am talking about. Anyway, we'll just blame the lack of sex on Marvel and shelve this as a conservative pulp fiction novel. Nuff said.
August 16, 2012
A fun fast read. It's the old school Nick Fury as envisioned by Steranko, not the Ultimates version -- gruff, tough, and smoking cigars. My only complaint was there was too much emphasis and reliance upon extra-sensory powers. I'd have much preferred a post-Cold War spy novel. What we get is Hydra and stereotyped Arabs using airplanes as missiles (written before such real life events shocked the world) and only SHIELD and Nick Fury can stop them.
books-abandoned
May 13, 2012Most of the first 70 pages involves two plane crashes. I assume both are part of the same plan, but that is a lot of sameness, or if you prefer, not enough narrative variety. What isn’t about the crashes is mostly about a psychic, which figures since, I understand, the author claims to be psychic. I have no interest in his propaganda and no interest in reading about a psychic since that story thread is obviously ridiculous.
What to do with both narrative problems? Stop reading the book.
What to do with both narrative problems? Stop reading the book.
July 10, 2020
Forget about the Marvel Ultimates universe and Samuel Jackson and all the ensuing movie stuff. I love the Kirby/Steranko era of Nick Fury the best. And, thankfully, that's what we get here. Long live The Infinity Formula! One complaint, however. Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine is only a minor character in this book. That's too bad. I always liked her.
May 20, 2015
Fun read.
Read
November 12, 2018I've mentioned before that I happen to be a superhero prose novel aficionado. At the moment, I'm reading a Daredevil novel called The Cutting Edge by Madeline E. Robins and I'm enjoying it right from the get. I'm only 24 pages in but I have a feeling about this one.
This is not the same feeling I got when I started Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre. When I had bought the book, I was excited because I’m a fan of Nick Fury. In my research (or more aptly, quest) to add superhero novels to my collection, I was surprised to find there was a Nick Fury novel out there. Of course, I snatched it up.
The cover is awesome and what would you expect from comic artist great Joe Jusko who has done such things as Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Conan the Barbarian. It was a great look to the book so I was excited to dig in.
When I started the book, I got the feeling that Will Murray really didn't know too much about the character. There was a hokey kind of Golden Age writing of the character. That would have been fine back in the 1930s. But the book was written in 1999 (the copyright is 2000). So that kind of disconnect from the character was disappointing. It felt too comicy (me and my made up words). Don't get me wrong. I love my comicy comics. But this is a prose novel. This is a different monster. There should have been some more in terms of character development and it appears as if Mr. Murray just does a cut and paste on the character approach.
Add to this the inordinate amount of time spent on a secondary character who had nothing to do with the mainstay cast of S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, and you begin to wonder what this novel was really about.
Don’t let the title fool you. Nick Fury doesn’t show up as a major player in the book until over halfway through it. The majority of that time is spent on Starla Spacek of Psy-Ops. Dum Dum Dugan shows up a bit but others like Gabriel Jones who gets an honorable mention at best. Jasper Sitwell, Clay Quartermain, and Sharon Carter are nowhere to be found, and Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine gets a passing mention. Then, when you look at the back of the book and find out a little about the author, it all makes sense. Mr. Murray is a self-proclaimed psychic. That information makes it seem rather clear that Spacek was a character that he lived through vicariously to promote his worldview agenda on psychics, not to tell a story about Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., at least for the first 50%+ of the book. After that, it seems like he remembered why the novel should have been written.
The writing in many places is disjointed and the villain is one dimensional. Plus, there are devices that are just plain ludicrous which smacks of lazy writing.
For example, there’s one part in the book where Fury and Spacek are incarcerated by the main villain. There’s no way out. Then, Fury takes off his eye-patch, attaches it to the barred window, then spits at it from across the room. And what do you know, the window blows up after a perfect spit job. You see, the explosive eye-patch is activated by moisture.
All I could do when I read that was shake my head and laugh, saying, “You have got to be kidding me?!”
There was no set up earlier in the story for that small but very important detail. No hint that Nick Fury had suddenly become a spitting sharpshooter. Just atrocious, slothful writing.
I suffered through the rest of the story to the end and I’ll keep the book to round out my superhero prose novel collection. But there is no way I would ever recommend reading this book. It shows a woeful disregard of the Marvel Universe. The story is a conflagration of half-baked fragments that have been slapped together to present the author’s bias on psychic phenomena. By all means, use your writing for that because like I've mentioned before, every writer is a preacher. But if you’re going to do it, do it with an actual story and do it with decent writing.
This gets a D on my personal grading scale.
This is not the same feeling I got when I started Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Empyre. When I had bought the book, I was excited because I’m a fan of Nick Fury. In my research (or more aptly, quest) to add superhero novels to my collection, I was surprised to find there was a Nick Fury novel out there. Of course, I snatched it up.
The cover is awesome and what would you expect from comic artist great Joe Jusko who has done such things as Spider-Man, Black Panther, and Conan the Barbarian. It was a great look to the book so I was excited to dig in.
When I started the book, I got the feeling that Will Murray really didn't know too much about the character. There was a hokey kind of Golden Age writing of the character. That would have been fine back in the 1930s. But the book was written in 1999 (the copyright is 2000). So that kind of disconnect from the character was disappointing. It felt too comicy (me and my made up words). Don't get me wrong. I love my comicy comics. But this is a prose novel. This is a different monster. There should have been some more in terms of character development and it appears as if Mr. Murray just does a cut and paste on the character approach.
Add to this the inordinate amount of time spent on a secondary character who had nothing to do with the mainstay cast of S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives, and you begin to wonder what this novel was really about.
Don’t let the title fool you. Nick Fury doesn’t show up as a major player in the book until over halfway through it. The majority of that time is spent on Starla Spacek of Psy-Ops. Dum Dum Dugan shows up a bit but others like Gabriel Jones who gets an honorable mention at best. Jasper Sitwell, Clay Quartermain, and Sharon Carter are nowhere to be found, and Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine gets a passing mention. Then, when you look at the back of the book and find out a little about the author, it all makes sense. Mr. Murray is a self-proclaimed psychic. That information makes it seem rather clear that Spacek was a character that he lived through vicariously to promote his worldview agenda on psychics, not to tell a story about Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D., at least for the first 50%+ of the book. After that, it seems like he remembered why the novel should have been written.
The writing in many places is disjointed and the villain is one dimensional. Plus, there are devices that are just plain ludicrous which smacks of lazy writing.
For example, there’s one part in the book where Fury and Spacek are incarcerated by the main villain. There’s no way out. Then, Fury takes off his eye-patch, attaches it to the barred window, then spits at it from across the room. And what do you know, the window blows up after a perfect spit job. You see, the explosive eye-patch is activated by moisture.
All I could do when I read that was shake my head and laugh, saying, “You have got to be kidding me?!”
There was no set up earlier in the story for that small but very important detail. No hint that Nick Fury had suddenly become a spitting sharpshooter. Just atrocious, slothful writing.
I suffered through the rest of the story to the end and I’ll keep the book to round out my superhero prose novel collection. But there is no way I would ever recommend reading this book. It shows a woeful disregard of the Marvel Universe. The story is a conflagration of half-baked fragments that have been slapped together to present the author’s bias on psychic phenomena. By all means, use your writing for that because like I've mentioned before, every writer is a preacher. But if you’re going to do it, do it with an actual story and do it with decent writing.
This gets a D on my personal grading scale.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews