Four Comic Book Companions To Tonight’s Premiere Of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Tonight, the new TV show Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premieres on the Seven Network for Australian audiences, following a successful launch in the US earlier this week. The show’s somewhat of a big deal. Not only is it a direct tie in with Marvel’s cinematic universe — with its characters existing side by side with the likes of Thor and the Incredible Hulk, merging television and film properties to an extent we’ve never quite seen before — but it’s  produced and co-written by Joss Whedon, the man responsible for writing and directing The Avengers, and, more famously, creating the cult TV shows Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse.

Set after the events of The Avengers and Iron Man 3, the show follows a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents — the familiar intelligence organization that’s so far appeared in all of Marvel Studios’ films — as they deal with a world now filling with growing numbers of superheroes, powered villains, aliens and gods. Don’t expect to see Iron Man or Captain America, though; this show isn’t theirs. Rather it’s about the little guys, the majority of Earth — S.H.I.E.L.D. agents included — that can’t brawl one-on-one with supervillains. It’s about the people that in most comics (and movies) get relegated to supporting character or extra status, doing whatever they can to get by and have some sense of control in an increasingly super world.

Ironically though, S.H.I.E.L.D. comics aren’t exactly essential reading. They include a really convoluted backlog, and the team actually gets utilised more in other people’s comics. However, its themes and ideas can be seen in a variety of other titles that to some extent cover the same territory in interesting ways.

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Powers; by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming 

How do you perform an autopsy on someone with skin denser than diamond, or investigate the motives of a murder without even knowing the victim’s secret identity? These are the questions that Powers, co-created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Oeming, has so much fun answering as it follows the exploits of two homicide detectives investigating murders involving the super community.

Powers #5; art by Michael Oeming [image via Icon Comics]

Blending crime noir with the tropes of the superhero genre, it manages to have a sense of realism, often being both graphic and brutal without sacrificing the inherent ridiculousness and charm of a city populated by cape-clad heroes. Not only was it one of the first comics to base itself on normal individuals in a super world, but its imaginative story arcs show just how quirky and inventive S.H.I.E.L.D. could be.

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Gotham Central; by Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka 

Powers influenced a whole generation of comics, leading to a lot of shit imitators. Gotham Central isn’t one of them. Focusing on the policemen of Gotham, issue #1 opens with two officers about to clock off from their work investigating a tip-off concerning the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl. They climb up the steps of an apartment block, and knock on door #309. Mr. Freeze opens it. Batman doesn’t save them.

Gotham Central #1; art by Michael Lark [image via DC Comics]

Written by comic heavyweights Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker, this forty-issue series from DC deals with the GCPD (Gotham City Police Department) feeling impotent, powerless, and over-reliant on the Caped Crusader.

Obviously a bit darker than anything we can expect from S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the things it does so well is its treatment of Batman. Though he rarely appears in the comic itself, his presence is everywhere, influencing plot, villains and dialogue, but he does so without ever overshadowing the comic’s grounded characters and plot. This is the balance that S.H.I.E.L.D. the TV show needs to manage: between showing us the heroes everyone wants to see and hear about, it needs to make us actually give a shit about the show’s original human characters.

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The X Files Season 10; by Chris Carter, Joe Harris and Michael Walsh

Just released a few months ago, The X Files Season 10 is a comic book continuation of the hit TV series, specifically set following the events of the last film, 2008’s I Want To Believe. Season 10 sees Dana Scully and Fox Mulder once again forced to tag team after someone starts mysteriously murdering people connected with the long disbanded X Files unit.

The X Files Season 10 #3 (variant cover); art by Andrew Currie [image via IDW Publishing]

The comic has both ‘Monster of the Week’ standalone issues, as well as longer arcs dealing with the show’s mythology of worldwide conspiracy and looming alien colonization, with all the black goo, crashed UFOs, unmarked freight trains, and swarms of bees that entails. Mulder and Scully are again the little guys fighting against an omnipresent force that’s infiltrated the White House, the U.N., the Pentagon, and Mulder and Scully’s very own FBI. S.H.I.E.L.D. will be similar in terms of story structure and plot, with a large portion of the show no doubt devoted to the intrigue and conspiracies found within S.H.I.E.L.D. itself.

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Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8; by Joss Whedon

I may have cheated with two TV-to-comic adaptations, but fuck it. The last three comics haven’t really reflected the tone we can expect from S.H.I.E.L.D.; this one does.

In 2007, four years after the conclusion of Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s last televised episode, series creator Joss Whedon brought Buffy back in comics form, in order to continue slaying for an official eighth (and now ninth) season. Unconstrained by the budgets of TV, Season 8 kind of lost the more modest grounding of the show. Willow now flies, Buffy has an army, and an eye-patched Xander — a clear reference to Nick Fury — is staking out in a Scottish castle, organizing and communicating to slayer teams worldwide.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 #26 (variant cover); art by Georges Jeanty [image via Dark Horse Comics]

While Buffy’s focus on the little guys isn’t as pronounced as these other comics, it’s still present, with a big plot point of the season being how Buffy and other powered individuals find themselves increasingly criticised for ignoring the laws of conventional human society. More significantly, it has that trademark Whedonesque banter, ensemble based storylines, pop culture references, and overall sense of fun that we can expect to see in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. premieres on the Seven Network at 7:30pm (AEST) tonight.

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Paul Dalla Rosa sub-edits fiction for Farrago Magazine, co-hosts ‘The New Pollution’ podcast, and reads too many comics. Find him on twitter @PaulDallaRosa