Comics: Watching SHIELD in Modern Times
Sep. 29th, 2006 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dewlineThis is going to take a little while to explain.
Once upon a time there were two comics series published by Marvel: one called Strange Tales, and another one entitled Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. The former was an anthology, the other was set in World War II with its title characters a group of special ops troops operating mainly in Europe.
At some point in the early 1960's Stan Lee and a few of his Bullpen crew had the idea of showing Nick Fury, the lead of the latter title, in modern-day adventures alongside the rest of the Marvel Universe pantheon. Then came the brainstorm: make Fury a spy, to set him apart from the super-heroes that made up that pantheon.
So it was that Fury's adventures would be part of the Strange Tales anthology, and more than that: in order to give him adventures to match those of the aforementioned heroes, he would be more than a mere secret agent. Fury would be given the directorship of an agency unlike any other intelligence service: SHIELD.
The first I'd read of those original SHIELD stories with Fury was at an art gallery exhibition featuring the art of Jim Steranko when we -- those of us alive then -- were all a lot younger. I was hooked on SHIELD from that point onward.
Back then, its full name was Supreme Headquarters - International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. I suspect that this was something of a nod to the naming practices of NATO's chain of command and, before NATO, that of the Allied Forces of WW2. Eventually, it would be slightly reorganized, its stated affiliations expanded from the US and NATO to the United Nations, and renamed as the Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Directorate.
Eventually they got their own series, which has been revived and shut down at least as many times as Alpha Flight, but I digress...
By either name, SHIELD was more than a mere cloak-and-dagger shop for all that it liked to conduct itself as if it were such. No mere intel agency, for example, could boast an arsenal that included aircraft carriers that themselves flew through the skies under their own power: the Helicarriers.
Those Helicarriers put SHIELD in the realm of planetary defense and security and they eventually learned to act like it, defending their version of Earth with equal fervor against hostile ETs and mob bosses with designs on straight-forward planetary takeover as against the costumed, exotic-tech terrorists such as Hydra and AIM that launched their Strange Tales appearances.
Such is SHIELD's role now, and if you've been following Marvel of late, especially in the wake of the launch of the Civil War mini-series, you know they've found themselves some new contract work on the side from Washington since then. (And here's where I start to get to the point of this entry.) That "contract work" as I call it, is enforcing the key breaking point for Marvel heroes appearing in Civil War: the Superhuman Registration Act, an effort to finally begin regulating the conduct and methods of the American super-hero community, viewed by the rest of the UN as a prototype for future laws to be passed within their other member nations' borders.
Nick Fury's not in charge at SHIELD right now, at this most critical juncture. Nick effectively disgraced himself into a fugitive's forced retirement by way of a covert operation some months earlier that led to very ugly blowback against the United States and its super-heroes.
The current boss installed by the UN Security Council is one Maria Hill, who's found herself on top of a snakes' nest in dealing with both the wide-ranging operations of SHIELD itself and the priorities of her nominal bosses, including the White House which -- owing to the bulk of SHIELD's personnel, funding and tech being supplied by the United States -- considers itself her true boss, never mind the SHIELD Charter Treaty.
As it now stands, SHIELD is more interesting to me as a framework for telling stories than it ever was before. And I've long been curious about them. I'd very much like to see an ongoing series about SHIELD and its agent-soldiers themselves, rather than see them as mere supporting cast and antagonists in everyone else's books. I grant you those appearances across the line certainly offer a lot of exposure, and it's fun to see them in such an active context again.
But, it's time to try again.
Once upon a time there were two comics series published by Marvel: one called Strange Tales, and another one entitled Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. The former was an anthology, the other was set in World War II with its title characters a group of special ops troops operating mainly in Europe.
At some point in the early 1960's Stan Lee and a few of his Bullpen crew had the idea of showing Nick Fury, the lead of the latter title, in modern-day adventures alongside the rest of the Marvel Universe pantheon. Then came the brainstorm: make Fury a spy, to set him apart from the super-heroes that made up that pantheon.
So it was that Fury's adventures would be part of the Strange Tales anthology, and more than that: in order to give him adventures to match those of the aforementioned heroes, he would be more than a mere secret agent. Fury would be given the directorship of an agency unlike any other intelligence service: SHIELD.
The first I'd read of those original SHIELD stories with Fury was at an art gallery exhibition featuring the art of Jim Steranko when we -- those of us alive then -- were all a lot younger. I was hooked on SHIELD from that point onward.
Back then, its full name was Supreme Headquarters - International Espionage, Law-Enforcement Division. I suspect that this was something of a nod to the naming practices of NATO's chain of command and, before NATO, that of the Allied Forces of WW2. Eventually, it would be slightly reorganized, its stated affiliations expanded from the US and NATO to the United Nations, and renamed as the Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Directorate.
Eventually they got their own series, which has been revived and shut down at least as many times as Alpha Flight, but I digress...
By either name, SHIELD was more than a mere cloak-and-dagger shop for all that it liked to conduct itself as if it were such. No mere intel agency, for example, could boast an arsenal that included aircraft carriers that themselves flew through the skies under their own power: the Helicarriers.
Those Helicarriers put SHIELD in the realm of planetary defense and security and they eventually learned to act like it, defending their version of Earth with equal fervor against hostile ETs and mob bosses with designs on straight-forward planetary takeover as against the costumed, exotic-tech terrorists such as Hydra and AIM that launched their Strange Tales appearances.
Such is SHIELD's role now, and if you've been following Marvel of late, especially in the wake of the launch of the Civil War mini-series, you know they've found themselves some new contract work on the side from Washington since then. (And here's where I start to get to the point of this entry.) That "contract work" as I call it, is enforcing the key breaking point for Marvel heroes appearing in Civil War: the Superhuman Registration Act, an effort to finally begin regulating the conduct and methods of the American super-hero community, viewed by the rest of the UN as a prototype for future laws to be passed within their other member nations' borders.
Nick Fury's not in charge at SHIELD right now, at this most critical juncture. Nick effectively disgraced himself into a fugitive's forced retirement by way of a covert operation some months earlier that led to very ugly blowback against the United States and its super-heroes.
The current boss installed by the UN Security Council is one Maria Hill, who's found herself on top of a snakes' nest in dealing with both the wide-ranging operations of SHIELD itself and the priorities of her nominal bosses, including the White House which -- owing to the bulk of SHIELD's personnel, funding and tech being supplied by the United States -- considers itself her true boss, never mind the SHIELD Charter Treaty.
As it now stands, SHIELD is more interesting to me as a framework for telling stories than it ever was before. And I've long been curious about them. I'd very much like to see an ongoing series about SHIELD and its agent-soldiers themselves, rather than see them as mere supporting cast and antagonists in everyone else's books. I grant you those appearances across the line certainly offer a lot of exposure, and it's fun to see them in such an active context again.
But, it's time to try again.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 05:50 pm (UTC)As for the idea of Nick as "gadfly" to the institution that SHIELD's become in the Marvel Classic Universe...it's certainly an interesting one. I wouldn't object to it, if I understand your end-goal correctly.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 10:29 pm (UTC)No, but they were convenient to have available for that purpose at the time, weren't they?