S.H.I.E.L.D. #1 – Review

By Jonathan Hickman (writer), Dustin Weaver (artist), Christina Strain (colorist)

Sturgeon’s Law states that ninety-percent of everything is crap. Books, movies, politicians, your mom’s cooking, and my love-making abilities.

Ninety percent of all of it: crap.

We’ll save my prowess in bed and your mom’s quiche for another day. For now, let’s talk about how this relates to comics. I won’t go so far as to say that nearly all comics are literally overpriced pieces of fecal matter, but I do think it’s safe to say that nearly all comics, and by default the industry that spawns them, perpetuate a necessary cycle of mediocrity. As I grow older, I tend to believe that the purpose of comics is increasingly less about telling great stories and delivering dynamic art than it is selling us the illusion of change one issue at a time.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like The Godfather wisely pointed out, “it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.” More to the point, this is a business that operates on razor thin margins; a business where it makes more financial sense to milk established brands like Avengers and X-Men for every penny possible than to risk investing in a new idea that might bomb and cost them much more money in the long run.

If you’ve made it this far in my review, you’re probably wondering where the hell I’m going with this, and you’d be right to do so. As it turns out, none of what I’ve just said has anything to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. #1. Miraculously, this issue is the other kind of comic, the kind that exists in that rare ten percent of things that are anything but crap. In fact, I’ll take it a step further and assure you without hesitation that this is a damn fine comic, perhaps one of the finest Marvel has ever produced.