20 cool psychedelic comics to read after seeing Thor: Ragnarok

Cover of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1968) #1 (Image via Marvel)

20. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

No, I’m not talking about the failed 1998 TV movie, wherein David Hasselhoff plays the title character. I suppose, if you consumed the right substances, it could be trippy, but we’re not in the business of encouraging quasi-legal trips here.

Instead, we’re focusing in on the already trippy art of the series by Jim Steranko. His art was, without exaggeration, truly groundbreaking in the comics world. His innovations broke open the conventions of comics art. Where, before, artists felt bound by the strictly sequential series of boxes seen in earlier comics, Steranko played with the form.

In the mid-1960s, Steranko brought his artistic innovation to “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, which was first featured in Strange Tales #135 (August 1965). Jack Kirby used this series to introduce now-standard features like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Helicarrier and evil organization HYDRA.

Steranko was initially doing newbie Marvel artist work by penciling and inking over Kirby’s layouts. Two issues later, however, he began to do all the penciling for the series. With issue #155, he even began to take over writing duties for the series.

While the stories themselves were not necessarily trippy or psychedelic, the art certainly was. Steranko routinely ignored such petty conventions as panel edges and standard perspective. Rather than running through an enemy compound, Nick Fury might instead make his way through an increasingly psychedelic landscape of colors and shapes. Reality was oftentimes secondary to the art on the page.