S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier

Man oh man, did I love that S.H.I.E.L.D. "helicarrier" when I was a kid. Top image is the very first time it was ever shown, in a splash page from Strange Tales #165, which is Nick Fury's 1963 origin story (written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby, of course). ("Origin" isn't quite right, since the Fury character existed in a successful WWII series Marvel had going already.) Below that is Bill Sienkiewicz' wonderful watercolor rendition of the helicarrier silhouetted against the haze of a Washington D.C. sunrise, from Frank Miller's mind-blowing Elektra Assassin (1986), one of my favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. stories (just because Fury is presented as a "boy scout" figurehead who's got no idea what evil things the agency's up to).

Below that are shots from the Japanese Avengers trailer which reveal the delightful information that the helicarrier is in the movie. That must be the new helicarrier: Cal posted about this and sounded drily nonplussed and excited about the design, so maybe it looks like that now. Who cares! It's still totally wicked.

The helicarrier is such an exuberant example of comic book elements that don't make any real sense at all but get lovingly created and presented anyway. Notwithstanding the usual George Lucas/Roland Emmerich/Robert Zemeckis problem of "how the hell does it get off the ground" (little round fans in the corners aren't going to cut it), can you imagine how much fuel that thing must use up? Just to get some aircraft into a tactical launch position? I mean, the whole point of an aircraft carrier is that you can't fly that far... Never mind; it's a comic book. I get it. I wish we actually could make building-sized machines just float around like that (as in so much great sci-fi imagery).