in Ultimate xmen. issue 8 i believe. they made an ethnic nonspecific nick fury. then Ultimates 1 came out and they used sam jack as reference, and actually got sam jack to sign off on letting them use him as reference. their reasoning being that fury needs to be the coolest of the cool, and apparently thats sam jack nowadays.
Ok! Good! I'm glad it's not Sam L Nick! Cause I'm weirded out that all of a sudden he was black. they should have made Sean Connery Fury and Sam L coulda been Cardiac! They had a good chance for some Cardiac fame!