Team Spotlight: Agents of SHIELD

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD premiered on September 24, 2013, as the first television series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It follows a small team of SHIELD agents, led by Phil Coulson, that generally acts outside the constrains of the larger SHIELD organization. Surprisingly, instead of choosing characters from the array of SHIELD agents already existing in the comics, or even promoting the agents (screen-first or not) already appearing in the movies and One-Shots, the show decided to go with wholly new characters: grumpy lone wolf tactician Grant Ward, stoic martial artist pilot Melinda May, tech engineer Leo Fitz, biochem engineer Gemma Simmons, and hacker-outsider-with-a-mysterious-past Skye.

With the show now in its second season, Marvel is debuting a new SHIELD comic that will be released on December 31. From all accounts, it seems to be a new version of Marvel Team-Up, with done-in-one stories and new guest stars each issue. The book will, of course, focus on this new team of SHIELD characters, minus Ward for obvious-to-anyone-who's-seen-the-show reasons, but plus the monkey Fitz has so desperately wanted since the first episode.