"I have known countless soldiers, enough to man a dozen armies. Yet two I always wander back to – both conundrums, both such sublime expressions of the very soul of war as to stagger God in Heaven...They are Americans who should come as no surpise."
Le Trong Giap
Get Fury is a Marvel Comics MAX imprint mini-series written by Garth Ennis and with art by Jacen Burrows. Set in the same world as Ennis' Punisher Max series and his various Nick Fury Max series.
It's February 1971, there is a war raging in Vietnam, and Nick Fury has been captured by the NVA after his helicopter went down at the Cambodian border. At this moment, they don't quite understand that they have in their possession a man who knows enough secrets to damage the United States beyond comprehension. The C.I.A., however, DOES realize this and they can't risk their enemy getting those secrets, so they dispatch the most deadly man in the U.S. military — Captain Frank Castle.
This series contains examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: One of the North Vietnamese soldiers kills a prisoner with a machete sharp enough to cleave away part of his skull without popping his eyeball.
- Accomplice by Inaction: General Mackie wasn't directly involved in the drug smuggling operation run by the C.I.A. in his sector, but he did look in the other direction and took the money from it in order to bribe Viet Cong units to reduce espionage and saboteur operations. Something the C.I.A. agents are only too happy to point out wouldn't look good if news of the conspiracy were to get out.
- All the Other Reindeer: Averted in the case of Fury's illegitimate daughter, Bian Thuy Tram; in addition to looking sufficiently Vietnamese so that no one suspects she is half-American (or half-French), Bian's mother was able to keep up the ruse for 16 years by claiming that her daughter's father was a Viet Minh captain who was killed fighting the French, in addition to getting protection for herself and her daughter by becoming the mistress of a high-ranking member of the Communist Party.
- Asian Babymama: Castle meets a former girlfriend of Fury's and their teenaged daughter, who decide to cooperate to rescue Fury (in the hopes of getting out of Vietnam and American citizenship).
- Author Tract: The MP sergeant's rant against the Elites Are More Glamorous mindset echoes that made by an old and bitter Fury in Fury: My War Gone By, both representing Ennis' opinions.
- Badass in Distress: The premise of the series. Nick Fury, noted to be the most accomplished soldier in the U.S. military and one of the most dangerous men in the world, is introduced as a captive of the North Vietnamese.
- Buried Alive: When Williams, one of the soldiers taken prisoner alongside Fury, collapses from dehydration, their North Vietnamese captors opt to bury him alive in a shallow ditch rather than risk him slowing them down.
- Call-Back:
- Giap's introduction in the first issue includes scenes taken from the Indochina War segment of Fury: My War Gone By and the final battle from The Punisher: Born.
- Castle's previous mission with Nick from Fury: My War Gone By is referred back to when he's given the debriefing on his current mission, and their history with each other is why he's picked in the first place.
- Another one of Frank's previous missions, which was to assassinate a captured American general before he could be interrogated, was first alluded to at the end of The Tyger. Here, it is given further context and is cited as another reason why Frank was chosen for the mission.
- The Cameo: George Hatherly and Chief Sergeant Steinhoff are briefly seen in a flashback to the battle of Son Chau depicted in Fury: My War Gone By.
- Damned by Faint Praise: When describing his experience fighting the South Vietnamese, Giap states, "They did their best, if that is not too damning."
- "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Nick Fury gives a short and concise one in response to his interrogator threatening to put him through a world of hurt if Fury refuses to co-operate, in the interrogator's own language no less.
Nick Fury: So. Go f*ck yourself.
- Foregone Conclusion: Given Fury's presence in the modern age (he outlives Castle), it's obvious Castle won't kill him.
- Framing Device: The series begins with a narration by Le Trong Giap, a retired Vietnamese general from Fury: My War Gone By, providing an introduction on the history of these versions of Nick Fury and Frank Castle.
- He Knows Too Much: Why the C.I.A. agents who recruit Frank want him to kill Fury rather than rescue him. Fury's knowledge of U.S. intelligence operations and the U.S.'s actions in Southeast Asia would seriously damage/discredit the U.S. should any of them get out (especially since he was once involved in an operation to cover up a drug-smuggling ring run by American government employees). Part of why Frank was chosen for this mission was because he has done this type of operation before; when a USAF general was captured by the NVA a year earlier, Frank was dispatched to silence him before he could be interrogated.
- Historical Domain Character: An unseen yet vocal prisoner of the Hanoi Hilton is named "John."
- Informed Flaw: Giap claims that Frank's Vietnamese was barely serviceable, but in a flashback Frank is shown to be fluent enough to converse with an NVA soldier just fine, with no apparent difficulty or awkwardness in either speaking or understanding Vietnamese.
- Internal Homage: The main cover of the first issue is one to The Amazing Spider-Man #129, Frank's first appearance.
- Jerkass Has a Point: The MP sergeant sent to round up dogs (due to fears of rabies) gets refused point-blank by a soldier, with his captain (Frank) doing nothing. The MP is more than justified in yelling at both, and then starts ranting about Special Forces always needing the regular grunts to rescue them, leading to more deaths. Castle counters with Special Forces being the only reason the US knows anything about the movements of the NVA and VC, the sergeant asks in turn if it isn't Special Forces stirring up the hornets' nest, and the confrontation ends before things get too heated thanks to another soldier arriving to take Castle to Saigon.
- Mercy Kill: While the C.I.A. clearly want Fury killed because he could possibly reveal U.S. classified info, General Mackie (Frank's superior) takes the time to add that Fury also deserves a better death than to be paraded around by the North Vietnamese as a trophy before being submitted to unspeakable torture to get him to reveal everything that he knows. Considering the fate that befalls the two soldiers captured alongside Fury in the same issue, the General has a point.
- Mildly Military: In his third tour of duty, Castle cares far less about discipline and showing the proper respect to other soldiers than back in Punisher: The Platoon, letting a soldier mouth off to an MP and keeping a human skull from a napalm victim on display at his base (he says it's good for morale).
- Oh, Crap!: The CIA has an ulterior motive for wanting Nick dead, namely the fear that he will expose the organization's complicity in the drug trafficking ring that Giap revealed to him during the Vietnam section of Fury: My War Gone By. The two featured agents, Dave and Steve, were operating under the assumption that Nick was the one who killed the three agents who were part of the operation, and have this reaction when they realize that it was actually Frank, the very man who they had just deployed to assassinate Nick.
- The Power of Hate: The NVA officer interrogating Fury at the Hanoi Hilton states this as the reason why he is willing to stoop to levels in his interrogation/torture of Fury that Le Trong Giap was unable to when Fury was Giap's captive in 1970, stating that General Giap is a "cultured" and "sensitive" man, masquerading as a monster when deeming it necessary. But the officer then states that with him, there is no "masquerade."
Fury's interrogator: I have a war's worth of hatred for Americans.
- Refuge in Audacity: Upon arriving in Hanoi, Frank claims to be a Soviet lieutenant, and is immediately believed by a patrolling soldier even as he hands the man what are clearly American cigarettes that Frank lies and says he stole off of dead Americans. The soldier never sees through the ruse, even believing Frank when he says that he "forgot" his papers, and is only killed when he mentions that Frank being out past curfew without his documents will mean that he will have to file a report about Frank.
- Scenery Gorn: The bombed out village at the end of Issue #2. Everything is scorched to Hell and horribly mangled dead and dying people are everywhere, with the scene being so horrific that the commander of the group that is bringing Nick to Hanoi snaps, grabs Nick, and begins slamming his face into a half-dead man's guts while screaming, "American! American!"
- Spotting the Thread: Agents Steve and Dave believe that Fury murdered their fellow agents Cochran, Severn and Brent and dumped their bodies outside a brothel to make it look like they were mugged... except Dave learned that all three of the men were gay and pretty much everybody who worked with them, including Fury, knew about it. With this knowledge, the agents deduce that if Fury had wanted to murder them and make it look like an accident, he would have known better then to dump their bodies outside of a straight brothel and that the real killer had to have been somebody in the know about the heroin trafficking ring whilst not knowing the three agents well enough to know they were gay. Somebody like Castle.
- Stating the Simple Solution: As Dave and Steve debate how to get rid of Frank and Nick, tossing out and then shooting down complex ideas like arranging for a B-52 to "accidentally" bomb the Hanoi Hilton or having a spy assassinate them, a clearly disgruntled General Mackie suggests that they just wait for Frank to rescue Nick and then murder them at the exfiltration point.
- Take That!: Nick, while trying to get another prisoner to stop antagonizing their captors, yells, "This is not a goddamned John Wayne movie...!"
- To the Pain: The NVA officer interrogating Fury promises this for him if the latter refuses to co-operate.
- Troll: Giap starts the story by saying that food, drink and sex no longer have any appeal for him at his age, and the only thing left is mischief. Though it also shows that, like Fury, he too has been utterly burned out by all the wars he has fought and the people that he has lost, in addition to the disillusionment that he feels on account of the cause he had fought for so long ending up being a full-circle revolution.
- War Crime Subverts Heroism: Nick and his captors come across a village that was bombed by the US Air Force at the end of Issue #2. While surveying the devastation, Nick awkwardly declares, "They missed the target. Or they had the wrong coordinates. You know what bombing's like by now."
