Do you enjoy seeing Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) as Nick Fury? If you do, you owe Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch a big thank you. They used his likeness in Marvel's Ultimate Universe in 2002. When the actor learned of it, he contacted Marvel and expressed his interest in playing the part if the opportunity ever presented itself in the future. The rest as they say is history.

Millar recently spoke to Business Insider and they discussed the moment that he encountered Samuel L. Jackson for the first time on the set of Kingsman: The Secret Service, which is an adaptation of one his comics. "The first thing I said was I hope you don’t mind me completely exploiting your appearance in my book thirteen years back, and he said, "F**k, no, man. Thanks for the 9 picture deal," Millar said.

"I wanted an African-American Nick Fury to be director of SHIELD because the closest thing in the real world to this job title was held by Colin Powell at the time," Millar explained. "I also thought Nick Fury sounded like one of those great, 1970s Blaxploitation names and so the whole thing coalesced for me into a very specific character, an update of the cool American super-spy Jim Steranko had done in the 70s and based on the Rat Pack, which seemed very nineteen sixties and due for some kind of upgrade."

When Millar and Hitch thought of someone that would fit this new version of Nick Fury the first person that came to mind was Samuel L. Jackson.

Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury returns in Avengers: Age of Ultron, which makes it stateside debut this weekend.