If you’ve been following Marvel’s Battle Scars miniseries that launched from the still-twitching carcass of the Fear Itself event, you know that the prevailing mystery of the story is: who is protagonist Marcus Johnson, and who is his father? Now, a story about a young African-American man who doesn’t know who his father is might sound like one of those “conservative comics” that blew up the comics Internet a couple weeks ago (At least he’s not looking for food stamps, amirite, Newt?), but it’s actually been an intersting little tale.
Like I said in my review last week, the evidence presented is that Johnson comes from a family history of American heroes, that dad has a mortal enemy looking to get at him through Marcus, and his father reportedly might not be able to die. And the smart money has been on Nick Fury being being Johnson’s father. The prevailing theory is that Marvel, what with at the Avengers movie coming out in just a few months with Samuel L. Jackson in the Fury role, was looking to put a more familiar on the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics. I, however, I predicted Bucky Barnes… mostly because I drink and I am a contrary dick. One more beer before I wrote my review and I might have gone for Dick Clark.
Well, things are starting to look like I’m on the losing side of the argument, because Bleeding Cool recently got their hands on the full-sized cover to the issue 6 of Battle Scars…
…and based on that gaping hole in his eye, it looks like there’s a good chance that Marcus Johnson will, in fact, become the new Nick Fury.
Unless in issue 4, Taskmaster sticks Johnson’s tongue to a frozen pole. In which case he will obviously become the new Ralphie from The Christmas Story.