S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 – “The Animator” Recap & Review

Writer: Mark Waid

Penciller: Humberto Ramos

Year: 2015

Last time we looked at S.H.I.E.L.D, we saw a multitude of superheroes desperately holding back a tide of armies from across the nine realms, while Coulson faced down a mad god. This week we see a single superhero hold back a tide of evil pizza, while Coulson faces down a teenager. Well, no-one could accuse S.H.I.E.L.D. of being formulaic!

We begin at the London Headquarters of Roxxon Oil. From the window, we can see the London Eye, fulfilling the trope in fiction that every window in London must show a recognisable London landmark. And it’s a good job it’s there too, or we’d never have guessed which city the London Headquarters of Roxxon were in.

In the Roxxon building we see a heavyset, bearded man on the phone to his daughter. We only “hear” his side of the conversation, but it becomes immediately clear that this isn’t the most cordial father/daughter talk. Beardy is angry that his daughter blew off an interview with the President of another company, Biochemco. Beardy believes his daughter is throwing away her brilliant education, as she’s moved to the USA to become a party planner. However, fans of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show have probably guessed who’s he’s talking to. English, interview at was is presumably a biology lab… yep, it’s Simmons, who is forced to hang up on her father due to a little issue at work. Said little issue is being in the middle of a firefight between S.H.I.E.L.D. and terrorist organisation A.I.M.

Like the flashback’s to Coulson’s past in S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, this little vignette has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, but does give us a little more character insight. Although unfortunately it is a little. Whereas Coulson’s flashbacks established him as smart, dedicated, good at a reading people and really obsessed with superheroes, Simmons is established – as having daddy issues. It’s not really in-depth character stuff, is all I’m saying.

We begin the story proper at Coles Academy High School, in Jersey City. Wait, we’re in a city and it’s not New York? Marvel, you’ve changed and it’s scaring me. The janitor finds a bag marked “Pizza Dough” and picks it up, saying it must belong in the cafeteria. Yep, because I know when I find something just laying around on the ground, my first thought is to bring it to a place where food is prepared. I know it’s marked as pizza dough, but what exactly was going through the janitor’s mind? Are deliveries to the school usually left clandestinely next to the backdoor overnight? And consist of a single bag of pizza dough, with not even a delivery report to say where it came from? I would make a joke about understanding why this guy’s just a janitor, but janitors do fine work, are really underappreciated and this moron is so stupid I’m actually surprised he got hired as one.

We then go to an Biology class in the school later that day. Simmons is filling in as a substitute teacher, using the alias Ms Steranko. The name is a nice shout-out to Jim Steranko, writer and artist on the 1960s comics Strange Tales (featuring Nick Fury) and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. His surrealist, pop art style and hip spy drama storylines on both books gave them a cool, James Bond-ish feel, making them cult hits in their day, and both are still remembered fondly. To many fans, while S.H.I.E.L.D. was created by Stan Lee, Steranko’s work really fleshed out both the organisation and the character of Nick Fury, meaning the Steranko is often considered the real “father” of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Simmons isn’t exactly holding the attention of the class, as we see that most of students are pre-occupied with doing something else, such as sleeping, listening to music and levitating books. Wait, what? Yeah, one of the students is trying to impress a girl by levitating his book. Of course, even in the Marvel Universe, students levitating their stuff is fairly notable, and he’s quickly spotted by both Simmons, who texts Coulson saying she’s spotted the “smuggler”, and another of his classmates, Kamala Khan.

Kamala’s our guest superhero of the month, like Black Knight and Valkyrie in issue 1. She’s the latest Ms. Marvel and is a fairly new character, only debuting in 2013. Kamala’s become incredibly popular incredibly quickly, with both her Ms. Marvel series and the comic’s sister title, Captain Marvel, becoming two of the company’s best sellers. It’s an interesting turnaround, since for years the Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel franchise hasn’t exactly been a hit for the House of Ideas.

Captain Marvel mk 1

The original Captain Marvel wasn’t a Marvel character, and indeed predates “Marvel” itself, first appearing in Whiz Comics #2 in 1940, back when what we now know as Marvel was known as Timely Comics. This Captain Marvel was ten-year old Billy Batson, who spoke the magic word SHAZAM to become his perfect superhuman adult self, complete with flight and superstrength. Captain Marvel became a big hit for his publisher, Fawcett comics, but in the early 1950s DC Comics sued Fawcett, saying that Captain Marvel was too similar to Superman. On the surface, it seemed they had a point – both were square-jawed, black haired, All-American heroes with superstrength, superspeed, flight and a cape. However, superficial similarities aside, Captain Marvel was very different, but DC won the court case and Captain Marvel was gone, seemingly forever.

In 1967, Marvel cottoned onto the fact that the name Captain Marvel was no longer trademarked, with the character at that time seemingly defunct. So Marvel released their own Captain Marvel and quickly trademarked the name. In a cruel twist of irony, this meant that when DC comics acquired the licence to Fawcett’s Captain Marvel in 1972 and began publishing the character, they couldn’t call the comic Captain Marvel, or licence any merchandising under that name. Eventually, DC would just call it quits and rename the character Shazam in 2011.

As for Marvel’s Captain Marvel, he couldn’t be more different. Whereas the original Cap had been a ten-year old boy with a magic word, this new Captain Marvel was Captain Mar-Vell, a member of the alien race the Kree. Mar-Vell was sent to Earth was check whether it was a threat against the Kree Empire, but ended up falling in love with the place.

Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree - aka the "really weird Captain Marvel"

The character was never a big hit, but a psychedelic, surrealist revamp by writer Jim Starlin in the late seventies made Captain Marvel a brief cult hit, which prompted Marvel to release a spin-off, Ms. Marvel, in 1977. This Ms. Marvel was Carol Danvers, an Air Force pilot who’d been a supporting character for Mar-Vell back in the '60s. Badly injured in a fight between Mar-Vell and his nemesis, Yon-Rogg, an exploding Kree device had merged Carol’s genes with Mar-Vell’s making her a human-Kree hybrid and granting her superpowers.

Ms. Marvel lasted for 23 issues, and Carol soon became a “meh” character for Marvel, never being obscure enough to completely disappear, but never becoming an A-list superhero. That is until the mid-2000s, when Avengers writer (the comic, not the movie) Brian Michael Bendis gave Carol the push into the spotlight she needed and, frankly, deserved. Carol quickly became an A-lister and eventually took the title Captain Marvel – Mar-Vell himself being long dead by this point. The new Captain Marvel book was a smash hit both with critics and fans and remains to be so, with Marvel even announcing that Carol will get her own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in 2018, the first MCU movie headlined by a female superhero.

Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers. Formally known as Ms. Marvel.

But, just like the name Captain Marvel itself, Marvel doesn’t like to let a trademark name go to waste, so soon a new Ms. Marvel appeared. Kamala Khan is an Inhuman, a genetic offshoot of humanity created by genetic experiments by the Kree to ancient humans back in the Stone Age. Inhumans appear perfectly human until exposed to Terrigen Mist, i.e. super-science powers granting magic space fog. In Kamala’s case, the powers she got were shapeshifting and Plastic Man-esque stretchiness. Like the new Captain Marvel, the new Ms. Marvel has quickly become a smash hit and a critical darling, both for being a genuinely great book (or so the reviews say, I must admit I’ve haven’t read any Ms. Marvel myself) and for Kamala being seen as an extremely positive icon and role model. Kamala is an independent and smart female character whose appearance, attitude and costume isn’t done for pointless male fanservice, making her a strong feminist character. On top of that, Kamala is a very positive portrayal of a Muslim character, as well as being Marvel’s first Muslim character headlining her own book.

She's here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and she's all out of - oh, wait, nevermind.

Given the character’s popularity, it isn’t surprising to see her guest star her in S.H.I.E.L.D. #2. It’s an old comic staple, using a guest appearance of a popular character in a new series to boost readership sales, and one we’ll see repeated in S.H.I.E.L.D. #3 with an appearance by Spider-man. This comic also acts as a good introduction to Kamala for those who haven’t picked up Ms. Marvel, like myself.

Back to the story. The kid levitating his books, Grayson Blair, quickly realises he’s been rumbled when Simmons asks him to speak outside the classroom with her. Not quite sure what else he expected after showing off in class. Grayson quickly texts his accomplice (see what you’ve started, Simmons? Now they all think that it’s ok to text in class) and tells him to meet him at his locker after the “distraction”. Grayson then activates said distraction from his phone, causing a “Power Glove” to burst out of his locker and start smashing the school up. Kamala, it turns out, is like Coulson, and by that I don’t mean looks damn fine in a suit and tie. She’s an uber-nerd too, quickly recognising the Power Glove as one belonging to the Wizard (insert your own The Wizard/Power Glove internet meme joke here). The Wizard is an old Fantastic Four villain, or more accurately an old Human Torch villain – the Johnny Storm Human Torch, the human Human Torch, rather than Jim Hammond, the non-human Human Torch. The Wizard, as his name suggests, is a super-intelligent scientific genius with absolutely no magical abilities whatsoever. Between that and having a non-human Human Torch, I’m beginning to see why non-comic fans say comic books are confusing.

I love Kamala’s thought process here. She quickly recognises that both the levitating disc Grayson was using, plus the Power Glove, equals Wizard. Not only does she think this in an equation, with pictures, but she almost thinks < Ms. Marvel, complete with a picture of her costume. I love it when comics have their characters think in pictures, since it's a quirky way of using the visual medium to show us a character's thoughts.

As the kids flee the attacking Power Glove, Kamala sneak away, grabbing her superhero costume from her locker. Inside the classroom, Simmons saves two of the students from the Power Glove, but it causes a large piece of wall to come crashing down, straight towards Simmons and the students. As rescues go, that’s a real frying pan/fire kinda deal.

However, Ms. Marvel arrives to save the day, grabbing the wall before it can squish Simmons, then reaching out and grabbing the flying fist in one giant, stretchy hand. Simmons’ reaction… is to order Ms. Marvel to leave the area immediately and leave this to S.H.I.E.L.D. Yeah, because you’re doing a real bang-up job so far, Simmons. So far all your involvement has led to is a bunch of terrified students and a couple of hundred dollars in property damage. I’m actually kind of surprised it’s not Ms. Marvel telling you to back off while she sorts this mess out.

Meanwhile, Grayson is in process of cleaning out his locker (of black market supervillain weapons, he hasn’t just decided now would be a good time for a good tidy) when Coulson arrives on the scene and arrests him. Noticeably, we have a different artist this issue, so Coulson looks a lot less like Clark Gregg. There’s still similarities and Coulson is still recognisable, but after the almost-perfect Clark Gregg likeness that Carlos Pacheco gave us in #1, it’s a little distracting.

Simmons meets up with Coulson, and Ms. Marvel is still with her, rightly having ignored Simmons’ order to stay out of this. Even more sensibly, she’s not going to hand over powerful supervillain tech to someone claiming to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent without more evidence that they are who they say they are. However, Kamala is quickly distracted by the contents of Grayson’s bag, which she describes as a “villain museum”. Back in my review of issue 1, I theorised that writer Mark Waid would use the series to reference as many obscure Marvel characters as possible. We see more evidence of that here, with Ms. Marvel spotting the “Animator”, a gun used by a villain known as Plantman. Remember him? Yeah, I thought not. Heck, I’m a fairly knowledgeable nerd and even I had to Google who the hell that was. It’s this guy.

Not exactly the most threatening villain look ever, is it? Unless he yells “smell my flower!” while shoving your face into his crotch. That would be disturbing.

Coulson, desperate not to be out-geeked, gets into a short argument about whether the gun is the “Animator” Plantman used on the Sub-mariner, or the earlier “Vege-Ray” he used on the Human Torch. That would be the human Human Torch, by the way. Whichever it is, it doesn’t factor into the story any further. Really worth naming the story after, wasn’t it?

Coulson’s impressed with Kamala’s knowledge, but still orders her to stay out of their investigation. She still doesn’t, and I’m actually surprised Coulson doesn’t realise that there’s no better way to get a plucky teen hero involved in something than to tell them not to get involved. While being escorted away by Simmons – or rather while Simmons is attempting to escort her away, without much success, Kamala overhears Coulson ask Grayson where the “dough” is, and he’s not talking about money. Kamala quickly realises that today is “pizza day” for lunch and rushes off towards the cafeteria.

In the cafeteria, it’s lunchtime and the students are indeed being served pizza. Got to hand it to these kids, if my school had just been attacked by a superweapon, almost killing students and causing property damage, I wouldn’t just got back into my daily routine. Maybe that’s just life for people in the Marvel Universe – supervillain attacks don’t even count as an annoyance anymore.

It’s easy to guess that the pizzas are made with the dough the janitor found outside at the start, and I hope it's implying that he just left it in the kitchens and it was found later on. I really hope he didn’t just walk in and say to the cook “Hey! I just found this on the floor outside! Want it?” and the cook replied “Do I? Unexpected pizza dough left outside on the floor? Of course, the kids will love it, I see no health and safety concerns there!”

Surprise, surprise, all the students eating the pizzas are violently sick. However, all the sick is alive, apparently sentient and have little faces. That is not a sentence I ever thought I’d write. They’re actually little Doughboys, blob monsters created by Nazi scientist Arnim Zola. The Doughboys seal the lunchroom shut, locking Coulson, Simmons and Ms. Marvel out. In a clever little moment, Ms. Marvel asks Coulson if he can shoot the lock, to which he replies:

Coulson: A.K.A. “Fire into a lunchroom of high school students”? No.

It’s a nice reminder that Coulson’s isn’t just your normal action hero, and prefers tactics and thought to brute strength. Case in point, Coulson realises that they need Ms. Marvel for this one, pointing out that she can change her shape, so should easily be able to get under the door. Kamala’s excited by this, never having considered that she could go paper-thin.

Kamala gets into the lunchroom under the door, but the Doughboys spot her and attack, smashing down the door as they do so. Well, that’s one problem solved, but they’re left with a few bigger ones. The obvious being the small army of evil blob monsters, but the other, more pressing matter is that eating evil Nazi genetic experiments isn’t healthy, so all the students are now badly poisoned. Simmons realises this first and heads to the chemistry lab to do her brilliant scientist thing. Ms. Marvel fights the Doughboys until Coulson gets a call from Simmons saying she needs help. Coulson tells Ms. Marvel to help her out, saying that he’s always trusted her and known she could help, it’s just that he’s being protective of her.

Coulson: I’ve got you at arm’s length because I don’t want your world to get too big too fast. That’s all. But since you’re here – go show me what you can do.

It’s a nice little speech that shows another of Coulson’s strengths – he’s a nice guy, who’s good at motivating and inspiring people. It’s something we see a lot of in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., where he has a mentor, even partly parental, relationship with Skye, much like Giles had with Buffy on Joss Whedon’s earlier show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s one of my favourite parts of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and, since Skye isn’t in these comics, it’s nice to see that side of Coulson shown here.

In the chemistry lab, Simmons has almost put together the cure for Doughboy poisoning, but is about to be attacked by a large mass of Doughboys. Ms. Marvel arrives and does her Big Damn Heroes thing, using her new trick of going flat to surround the Doughboys in a big ball, mushing them together.

Ten minutes later, Ms. Marvel has mushed all the Doughboys and got them wrapped, turning herself into a big ball. Simmons kills them – or, she insists, renders them “inert” by "neutralising their microaerophilic lactobacilli".

Ms. Marvel: That sounds like a politer way of saying “dead”.

Yeah, it’s hard to argue with that. Ms. Marvel’s also brought time for Simmons to find a save the students from poisoning, so the day is saved.

While a S.H.I.E.L.D. hazmat team comes in to put the Doughboys into secure containment units, Simmons has a heart-to-heart with Kamala. Simmons guesses that Kamala’s family doesn’t know that she’s a superhero, explaining that she can relate, as due to the classified nature of her work, Simmons’ family thinks she’s a corporate party planner. Simmons admits that she’s kept the secret for years, and she misses the days when her parents really knew her – and yesterday’s phone call with her father must be on her mind.

It’s a nice scene, although it does raise a few questions. S.H.I.E.L.D., while being a secretive organisation, is not a secret organisation, or at least if they’re supposed to be, turning up at a public school with huge vans marked with their name and logo means they’re pretty terrible at being one. I get that Simmons’ work would be classified, but the fact that she’s a scientist for S.H.I.E.L.D.? Why would that need to be kept secret? Simmons has only be in the field a matter of weeks at most, before that she was a lab rat, so it’s not like she was a top secret agent or something. Government scientists in the real world sign official secret acts to keep their work classified, they don’t pretend to just give us a promising career in science and go into a completely random, unconnected area of work just as cover. In fact, a gifted, well-educated biologist just dropping everything to become a corporate party planner is more suspicious than just having her cover be, for example, working for a corporation that has labs all over the world.

Coulson thanks Kamala for a job well done, saying that he liked what he saw from her today and that her day will come to be a fully-fledged S.H.I.E.L.D. asset. We also see that Simmons has slipped her a note, advising Kamala to call Simmons if keeping her secret gets a bit too much – and that Kamala was right, it was absolutely the Animator.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #2, like #1, is a fun read, although overall it’s a weaker issue. While it’s an enjoyable little team-up, and I can easily see why Kamala has such a fan following, the lack of any main characters aside from Coulson and Simmons hurts this issue. We’re given a bit of character stuff and backstory for Simmons, but aside from her little talk with Kamala at the end, it doesn’t really factor into the story. Ultimately, this too much Kamala’s story, with even Coulson and Simmons relegated to supporting characters. Which would be fine, if this were an issue of Ms. Marvel, but this is S.H.I.E.L.D., and Coulson, May and Fitz-Simmons are supposed to be our main characters, the characters we focus on.

Despite that, S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 is great and I recommend it – especially if you’re a fan of the new Ms. Marvel. But please Mr. Waid – can we have a little more S.H.I.E.L.D. in our S.H.I.E.L.D. comic? As next issue stars Spider-man, I’m not holding out much hope, but we’ll have to see.

We’ll return to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the near future, but next week it’s back to DC, where all H’el has broken loose… and no, that’s not a typo.

S.H.I.E.L.D. #2 is the property of Marvel Comics.