On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

Okay...we're seeing more than a little bit about SHIELD on the web of late.

Wired and Gizmodo have reported that the US Defence Department's PR people backed away from technical advising on the Avengers movie specifically because of SHIELD, and their uncertainty over SHIELD's place in the scheme of things.

lawmultiverse provided a little commentary of their own on the subject, and it wasn't their first attempt to understand how SHIELD could fit into legal pictures either.

Today, rfmcdpei made his own mention of a blog entry from Andrew Barton where the issue of creators needing to understand exactly what their fictional creations are supposed to be and be capable of, even if that understanding doesn't get all the way to the paying audience in full detail.

Here's what Andrew said exactly:

You know what, though? The military is right. According to the Defense Department, their main problem is that they couldn't figure out where the US military stood in relation to S.H.I.E.L.D., which Wikipedia describes as an "espionage and secret military law-enforcement agency," which really narrows it down - and, hell, I imagine it's easy as hell to maintain secrecy over something like a giant flying aircraft carrier. S.H.I.E.L.D. has, from what I understand, been the subject of fan debates over just what it is for a good chunk of the last fifty years.

Answering questions like this is important. They define what you can and cannot do in a story, and as such reduce the unmanageability of everything being possible into more restricted channels that can guide the flow of a narrative. Something that is shadowy, nebulous, and ill-defined even to the people writing it does not lend itself well to the best writing. Creators need to know how their creations work, even if that information never filters down to the audience.

I've had my own understanding of what SHIELD is supposed to be - mainly informed by the stories of Bob Harras and Dan G. Chichester published in the Nick Fury vs. SHIELD mini-series and the later relaunch of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD in the 1990's when SHIELD was reinvented for the first time, and somewhat further filled out by Jonathan Hickman's work on Secret Warriors and SHIELD in recent years. Among other sources.

It's my hope as a fan that we can get back to that framework: SHIELD as a planetary defence/intelligence service. The ultimate Blue Berets and as flexible as need be to handle the work in the back alleys as on the battlefield.

Your distance-travelled will vary, of course...

Some of you may have already seen the new Metropolis map that showed up a week or two ago in the pages of Superman Secret Files 2009. I was looking forward to seeing how whomever was contracted to do the artwork - I thought probably Eliot Brown would be hired for the job at the time, as he'd done a couple of works on the subject for previous Secret Files installments - would embellish the existing "Six Boroughs" map established by John Byrne and company back in 1986, and revealed to the public at large in 1988 via Mayfair Games' second edition starter kit for the DC Heroes Role-Playing Game.

Turns out that I was a little off on my expectations.
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With apologies in advance to DC Comics and Mayfair Games.

This is the map I was telling fajrdrako about a few days ago on her LJ. (Since amended as we've both moved from LJ to Dreamwidth.)

I've specifically highlighted the neighbourhood I spoke of in that earlier posting, Lafayette, which according to the authors of the original DC Heroes Gamemaster's Manual of 1985, was home to an Acadien-originated settlement. In fact, it was described as having a largely Francophone community to that date.

Granted, the city's since been through some changes beginning with the renovations of Byrne, Wolfman and Helfer begun over phone calls and business correspondence probably that very year and put into action the following year with Man of Steel. Kurt Busiek put some of the neighbourhoods from that earlier Mayfair-designed map back into the modern Six Boroughs during his tenure on Action and Superman, though...so why not Lafayette as well?

And yes, there is a certain resemblance to Montréal in that older map, isn't there?