There’s very little that frustrates a comics fan more than an unfinished or abandoned comic series. It happens more often than you’d think; sometimes because a creator loses interest in the story, or because circumstances change at the publisher. But in the sad history of these comicbook cold cases; the Marvel title S.H.I.E.L.D. by Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver was one of the rare occasions when the story eventually did see completion; as the final two issues were ultimately published in June/July 2018, six whole years after the series seemed to mysteriously disappear without a trace. It must be pretty special to merit such a miraculous resurrection? Well, yes and no…
Hickman was actively writing for Marvel from 2009 until 2015; and his comics were distinguished by being much more intricately plotted than most, featuring multiple-strand storylines that often converged and overlapped upon one another. In effect, his comics had a very literary quality, and Hickman’s two biggest achievements were extended runs on the tentpole Marvel franchises; the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. is a 13 issue limited series (published as two 6 issue series with a one-off special in the middle) which could be considered as a complementary sandwich-filling between his other two blockbusters. The problem is that outside the context of those larger stories, this comic doesn’t quite stand on it’s own merits.
The pitch is an absolute cracker though; the story takes place in the recent past of the Marvel Universe, but posits that there was a secret history, centuries in the making, in which famous figures from the fields of Science and Arts served as forebears of the modern superheroes, and defended the planet from countless intergalactic threats. The common thread is an organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D, formed by Imhotep in ancient Egypt of 2620 BC, and carrying through to the present day (as recently featured in the Avengers movies). The driver for the plot is a civil war that erupts throughout the organization in 1956, between two of it’s most iconic leaders, the immortal Isaac Newton and time travelling Leonardo Da Vinci.
The artwork is stunning throughout, with Weaver realizing some stupendous scenes throughout multiple historic periods, and there’s plenty of action to keep the reader interested. The problem is that it’s all a bit dry; the gateway character Leonid, a recent recruit to S.H.I.E.L.D. that finds himself torn between the ideologies of his two new masters, is fairly sketchily mapped out. The cast does not include any comical characters, so there’s no comedy relief to punctuate the posturing on fatalism and scientific endeavor. Furthermore, there’s only one female character, who is fairly peripheral to the plot; so at times the series feels like 13-issues of guys explaining things to each other. Hickman has included a tremendous amount of world-building and spectacle here, so I can best describe the reading experience as like watching the original Star Wars trilogy, with jaw-dropping special effects added, but without any scenes using C3PO or R2D2, or Han Solo or Chewbacca, or Princess Leia. So, not really like Star Wars at all, I suppose.
I will come back to review Hickman’s Avengers run at some point, as I think it’s absolutely phenomenal, and the issue with Bruce Banner and the briefcase full of sedatives is possibly my favourite ever. But that’s a story for another time…