(FORTUNE Magazine) – Comic book hero Nick Fury fought Nazis and secret agents with a lit stogie clenched in his teeth, but now -- as the result of a protest by a seven-year- old Houston card collector -- the gruff but lovable Fury is stubbing out his cigar . . . ''Heroes shouldn't smoke,'' Sammy Blum said . . . After Sammy, a collector of comic books and trading cards, wrote a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine . . . Marvel Entertainment Group agreed to stop depicting its superheroes as smokers . . . ''I wanted ((Marvel)) to stop showing them smoking because we need more heroes to kill the bad guys,'' said Sammy . . . -- From a news report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.