S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman (writer), Dustin Weaver (artist), Sonia Oback (colorist)

The Story: Stay in school kids, and you too can become an omnipresent being of light.

The Review: While we’ve had plenty of writers who’ve used the comics medium to produce stories that can be qualified as literary, there are only a handful that bring this standard to ongoing series, and even fewer within mainstream comics.  Hickman, like Grant Morrison, can definitely be classified into this select group; both have similar aspirations and even stylistic similarities which are worth thinking about in reading this issue.

You can quickly see one point of common ground between the two writers in this issue: their love of high-concept meta-science.  Michelangelo’s quantum physical explanation of déjà vu has vaguely omniscient parallels to Adam’s speech about symmetries in Morrison’s Superman Beyond #2, down to his multitude of forms surrounding the area around Leonardo da Vinci.  It’s this kind of thought-provoking scene that sets apart Hickman from the rest of the Marvel pack.

But as many Morrison readers know, he has the occasional tendency to drag the plot or obscure it under all those big ideas, and Hickman does pretty much the same thing here.  Michelangelo’s foreboding portents people notwithstanding (“A part of you will remain chained forever… Because in that very same way, you will always be free.”), most of the issue serves to recap the first volume of S.H.I.E.L.D. and show that Mike is responsible for all that’s happened so far.
Speaking of which, it’s curious what prompted Marvel to restart this title at a new number one, since the story picks right up from where #6 left off, and the creative team is pretty much the same.  In a way, this hurts both new readers and fans.  The new readers get thrown into the big conflict without getting to see the dramatic events leading up to it, and the fans have to tread water for a whole issue before they can get the next step of this story in the coming month.

In some ways, this issue acts as a character piece on Michelangelo, as we get to see him play a Phantom Stranger kind of role in guiding the principal cast to do…whatever it is he wants them to do, I suppose.  Even his little bio at the back of the issue indicates that Mike has been blessed from the very beginning to know and see all (“ascended” is the word it uses).  Why he gets this distinction, and from whom, remains a mystery, one that should be cleared as soon as possible.

Because frankly, Michelangelo is unhelpfully vague even when giving direct answers.  Leonid has desperately sought a third way from Newton’s fatalism and da Vinci’s determinism.  When Mike says, “…this is it,” you’d assume he’d be more specific than, “We must live our lives…in between.”  He offers no hint as to how we should do that, not to mention the fact that we probably all do that all the time anyway, so Newton and da Vinci’s battle seems rather pointless.

No matter what mumbo-jumbo Hickman cooks up, you can always count on Weaver to make it look great.  His clean, slightly sketchy lines can bring out so many details, like all the works of art in Michelangelo’s studio.  Oback’s colors are integral to heightening the metaphysical aspects of the issue, contrasting Mike’s liquid-light form against the solid, bold colors of the real world.

Conclusion: Not quite as meaty as it should be, as the status quo remains exactly as it was about four months ago.  That’s a long time to wait, only to receive some crazy genius-talk.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Wow, Newton’s a horrible person—and look at those crazy eyes.  Kind of makes you think he’s been at those books for too long; that’ll make anyone freak out.
– Poor, poor Morda.  Her man steals her secrets, destroys her city, and runs out on her; her kid gets taken from her; and her people eat her for dinner.  I don’t think it gets much worse than that.