Fury/Agent 13 (Ltd. 1998) [COMICS]

In the slightly awkwardly titled Fury/Agent 13 two-issue limited series, Sharon Carter believes that Nick Fury's death at the hands of the Punisher must have been staged.  Duh!  Hasn't she ever read Marvel comic books before?

Anyway, Sharon Carter knows a thing or two about being mistakenly believed dead (and is torqued at Fury for not extracting her from it in the past), so in Issue # 1 she breaks into a top-secret SHIELD facility looking for proof and finds that Fury's bullet-ridden "body" is actually an LMD.  I imagine that about 25% of corpses in Arlington and other military cemeteries in the Marvel Universe are actually LMDs, but I digress.  After a brief interruption of flashbacks to Fury leading the Howling Commandos in WWII, Carter takes the head of the LMD to Tony Stark.  Our favorite goateed-Avenger admits to having helped build it for Nick, and uses the circuitry within to gather a clue: "Fallen Angel."  In a cool set-piece action sequence, the clue leads Carter to explore Fury's private office in a sunken SHIELD Helicarrier.  [Why does SHIELD buy these Helicarriers anyway?  How many have been destroyed over the years in the Marvel Universe?  The Secretary of Defense must have a Gold-Platinum-Black Mastercard.]  However, SHIELD's arranged for security to protect the tech in the sunken Helicarrier, and they comes after Carter.  In a well-done and exciting battle, she escapes and uses the data gained to find an energy portal hidden under the site of the original SHIELD building (long-since razed).  She jumps through the portal . . . and into time!

In Issue # 2, Carter runs into Fury in the middle of WWII, and after holding him at gunpoint, reluctantly helps him fight off Nazis and link up with the other Howling Commandos.  Fury, who is the real one, explains that they're not actually in the past, but in a pocket-dimension shaped by the willpower of those within it.  He says he had received coded messages from Fallen Angel, the supposedly-dead original director of SHIELD.  When he reached the location, Fallen Angel pushed him through the portal and then (I think?) committed suicide.  Anyway, Fury tells Carter that they have to find another portal in this pocket-dimension in order to get back to reality.  As the two work together to make it home, Fury explains in spy-lingo to the still-angry Carter that the reason he left her out in the cold was that he assumed she really was dead.  This seems to mollify her, and they reach a portal back to reality.

Overall, not bad.  The first half was better than the second, but it achieved what every one-shot or mini-series should do: position characters for the future by resolving something from their past or pointing them in a new direction.  Here, we see Sharon Carter's long-standing grudge with Nick Fury put to rest, which is good progress for the character.  I'm a bit fuzzy on the whole Fallen Angel aspect, but perhaps that's resolved elsewhere.