Nick Fury plays a big part in Civil War too, and in the comics he finds himself in a very similar state of affairs as Samuel L Jackson's movie iteration does right now. At the end of The Winter Soldier SHIELD has been completely dismantled, following the revelations that the Nazi group Hydra had been covertly infiltrating them since day one and doing Very Bad Things. The climax of that film saw Fury faking his death and disappearing off the face of the Earth, leaving the rebuilding of SHIELD in the hands of Agent Coulson and his TV team. In the comics, Fury has similarly vanished after being discredited and shunted out of SHIELD command. Instead it lies not with Coulson but with Maria Hill, the character played by How I Met Your Mother's Cobie Smulders in the films. Their relationship in the comics is a lot more antagonistic and this sort of spin could easily wind up in the Civil War movie, as Hill stands firm on the government's pro-registration stance whilst Fury, already working underground with the Avengers, helps to fight back on the anti-registration side.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
