Jasper Sitwell

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caption=Jasper Sitwell
Art by Carlo Pagulayan.
comic_color=background:#ff8080
character_name=Jasper Sitwell
real_name=Jasper Sitwell
publisher=Marvel Comics
debut="Strange Tales" Vol. 1, #144 (May 1966)
creators=Stan Lee
Jack Kirby
alliance_color=background:#cccccc
status=
alliances=S.H.I.E.L.D.
previous_alliances=
aliases=
relatives=
powers=Trained in espionage, firearms, hand-to-hand combat|

Jasper Sitwell is a fictional, comic book espionage agent in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist and co-plotter Jack Kirby, he first appeared in "Strange Tales" vol. 1, #144 (May 1966).

Publication history

Jasper Sitwell appears as an agent of the fictional espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., beginning in the feature "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." in Marvel Comics' "Strange Tales" in 1966, and continuing into the subsequent series "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." in 1968. He became the S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison to defense industry contractor Tony Stark (Iron Man) beginning in the "Iron Man" feature in "Tales of Suspense" #93 (Sept. 1967), and continuing into that subsequent series as well. He was seldom featured from the early 1970s until the 1988 miniseries "Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D.", and then again in the 1996-1997 series "Iron Man" Vol. 2. Sitwell afterward appeared in a three-issue arc of the superhero-team series "The Avengers" in 2000, and in "Punisher War Journal" #1 (January 2007).

Fictional character biography

Young, crew cut, clean-cut Jasper Sitwell graduated at the top of his class at S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, with particular high marks in airborne jump school and underwater maneuvers. When first introduced to S.H.I.E.L.D. Executive Director Nick Fury, the new agent's eager-beaver attitude meets initially with mock (and occasionally real) frustration from Fury and second-in-command Dum Dum Dugan, but Sitwell soon proves himself and earned his fellow agents' respect — albeit tinged with occasional humor aimed at his youthfulness and idealistic naïveté. Mentored by Fury himself and occasionally appointed interim director when Fury is on solo missions in the field, Sitwell later is assigned to Stark Industries as liaison between S.H.I.E.L.D. and that defense-industry contractor, which designs and manufactures much of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ordnance and equipment. There he confronts costumed assassins and terrorists such as Spymaster (who shoots him and puts Sitwell in a coma for a time) and A.I.M., directly saves CEO Tony Stark's life at one point, and romances Whitney Frost (Madame Masque), a one-time Stark paramour. When Obadiah Stane takes over what was by then named Stark International, Fury sends Sitwell on an ultimately failed attempt to retrieve Stark's Iron Man armors.

Sitwell, like most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. leadership at the time, is seemingly killed by a self-aware, renegade "Deltan" variety of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s artificial-human "Life Model Decoys", and replaced by one such LMD, which was then installed as Executive Director. ["Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D." miniseries (1988)] The real Sitwell later turns up alive after having been brainwashed by a faction of the terrorist organization HYDRA, placed in suspended animation, released as part of a plot against Fury, and eventually deprogrammed. He has since become S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top interrogator, often paired with fellow agent Jimmy Woo. He has also worked closely with G. W. Bridge.

ee also

*List of S.H.I.E.L.D. members

Footnotes

References

* [http://www.comics.org/ The Grand Comic-Book Database]
* [http://www.maelmill-insi.de/UHBMCC/ The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators]
* [http://www.ironmanarmory.com/biosoz.html#sitwell Iron Man Armory: Jasper Sitwell]