Group Spotlight: Dogs of Hell

Five years ago, almost to the day (March 11, 2014), Agents of SHIELD aired the episode "Yes Men". The episode is notable for a full-on guest appearance by Sif - not just a cameo like with Nick Fury - and for being an early hint that Ward is a bad guy, but it's also notable for introducing the Dogs of Hell to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Dogs of Hell are a motorcycle gang the the villain of the episode, Lorelei, is able to take control of through the hypnotic powers of her voice. This was their only appearance in Agents of SHIELD, but not their final appearance in the MCU. A different branch of the club played a major part in Daredevil season 2 (March 2016) as one of the three participants in the gang war that season revolves around. They later had brief appearances or mentions in The Punisher (November 2017) and both seasons of Iron Fist (March 2017 and September 2018).

Here's where it gets fuzzy. The Marvel Wikia claims that their first appearance in comics is in Civil War II: Kingpin #2 (August 2016). This would make sense, being only a few months after they were so prominently in Daredevil. And a biker gang DOES appear in that issue, but I can find no indication that they're actually the Dogs of Hell. If anyone can corroborate that information, let me know.

But that's all right, because they definitely do appear by name in The Immortal Hulk #1 (June 2018).

This is honestly my favorite kind of canon immigrant. It's not there to promote anything, it's not driven by any kind of nostalgia, it's just the comics realizing an adaptation filled a gap in some way and continuing to use it because it makes sense. Marvel never had a reoccurring motorcycle gang before. Now they do. And if they want, they can get a lot of mileage out of that.

Appearance Spotlight Addendum: Nick Fury

Way back in 2012, I posted about Phil Coulson making his way into the comics and noted that he was bringing along a black Nick Fury as well.

The way they did that was pretty convoluted, involving a son of Nick Fury named Marcus Johnson who ends up losing an eye and changing his name to Nick Fury, and oh yeah, he also happens to be black.

Well, it turns out Mighty Avengers #13 (May 2008) managed to do it in a much simpler - albeit admittedly less long-lasting - way a couple years earlier: it was a disguise.

Given the time frame, it's possible that this was a reference to the Ultimate line of comics, which is where the black and bald Fury originated. Or it could've been a tie-in of sorts to Iron Man, which was released the same month. Either way it counts, as I've included cross-reality immigrants before (here, here, and here).

In case you don't know, here's what Nick Fury usually looks like in Marvel Comics:

Appearance Spotlight: Hydra Logo

Hydra has been around in comics for a long time. In fact, their first appearance was in Strange Tales #135, all the way back in June 1965. And in that time, their organization's logo has pretty much been the same. Here are some examples:

The comics were still using this version of the logo in January 2011 when they published Captain America: Hail Hydra #1, and continued through all five issues of that miniseries:

When Hydra appeared in Captain America: The First Avenger (July 2011), they kept the symbol mostly the same, but they did make a few changes. The most noticeable is that it's red, both to tie in to the Red Skull - who leads it in this version - and to make the color scheme closer to the Nazi Party. The other change is that they made the negative space inside the tentacles resemble gears because this version of Hydra started as the Nazi science division. (There is an interview that confirms this but I can no longer find it. If anyone has a source for this information, please let me know.)

I don't have a definite date for its first appearance (although the earliest date I can find is 2013), but this symbol has become the standard in comics. Here are some examples of that:

As you can see, while all of the pre-2011 examples are green and yellow, the post-2011 examples have started using the red from the movie as well, in some cases.

Group Spotlight: Strategic Scientific Reserve

The Strategic Scientific Reserve is one of the most interesting additions to the Marvel canon that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made. Basically, what they did is use real history to fill in a story gap and create a connection to the present that wasn't there previously.

In the comics, you have Project Rebirth, which seems to be just an Army experiment, and then later on you have SHIELD. But the MCU said, "well, in real life the CIA was preceded during war time by the OSS? What if SHIELD was the same way?" Enter the SSR. This also allowed them to give the Howling Commandos ties to SHIELD despite not being led by Nick Fury in this continuity.

Which brings us to another alternate reality, but one in the comics this time: Spider-Gwen. Spider-Gwen is set on Earth-65, which is similar to the main Marvel universe on the surface, but with differences here and there. The differences generally fall into one of two categories - (1) characters are the opposite of what you'd expect; Peter Parker was the Lizard, Matt Murdock is the Kingpin, Frank Castle is a cop, or (2) women are put to the forefront; Gwen Stacy is Spider-Woman, Peggy Carter runs SHIELD, Captain America is named Samantha Wilson.

In Spider-Gwen #2 (November 2015), we get a lot of Captain America's backstory. The first part comes in a flashback, where we see the SSR in action:

But we don't learn it's the SSR until a text piece in the back, which gives a fuller history of the character:

It's not the 616 universe, which is a little disappointing, but I'm hoping this is the first step to learning the organization existed there in some capacity as well.

Character Spotlight: Katya Belyakov

This one isn't as cut-and-dried as I'd like it to be, but I think there's enough circumstantial evidence for it to count.

In 2013, Marvel debuted Agents of SHIELD, a show that followed a small team of SHIELD agents led by Agent Coulson. Like Agent Coulson, the rest of the team were original to the MCU. They consisted of Melinda May, Grant Ward, Liam Fitz, Jemma Simmons, and Skye. Skye turned out to be a pre-existing character later on, and the rest made their way into the comics eventually. You can read more about all of that and some other canon immigrants from the show here.

Over the course of the first season, we learn that May is nicknamed The Cavalry, but stories differ on where the name comes from. We know it happened in Bahrain, and we get hints here and there about what went down, but we don't learn the full story until the season 2 episode "Melinda" (April 2015), where we discover she had to kill a child Inhuman named Katya Belyakov to save the people Katya was mind controlling.

2015 was SHIELD's 50th anniversary, and Marvel commemorated that by releasing a series of SHIELD one-shots as well as a new SHIELD ongoing series. To be honest, this was all pretty much an excuse to introduce MCU elements into the comics. The series uses the tv characters, and the one-shots are based on SHIELD members that are prominent in the MCU, as you can see below. But we're here to talk about May.

In The Cavalry: SHIELD 50th Anniversary Special #1 (September 2015), we see May training some new cadets. We also get flashes of her backstory, particularly this one:

Now here's the thing. The issue never says this is Katya Belyakov. It never says she's an Inhuman. It never says it happens in Bahrain. But I think "Cavalry + little girl + similar positioning" is enough to say that's what they were going for. There are other shout-outs to the show as well (an aircraft is named the Tancharoen Hawk after the showrunners, and a character sings a song from Mulan, who was voiced by Ming-Na Wen, who plays May), so I don't think they're trying to shy away from the inspiration for this issue.

Group Spotlight: World Security Council

This is an interesting one. Before today, this entry would've looked something like this:

The World Security Council is an international group that oversees SHIELD operations. They were first mentioned in Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant (2011), to set up their appearance in Marvel's The Avengers (2012), where they were a shadowy organization that ordered a nuke on Manhattan. They later appeared in the light - both figuratively and literally - in Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014) with some different members, and one of the original members appeared as an antagonist on Agents of SHIELD season 3 (2015-2016).

The World Security Council did not appear in the comics until Sam Wilson: Captain America #2 (November 2015), and even then, it was only a mention...

...until they appeared for real in Avengers Standoff: Assault on Pleasant Hill Omega #1 (April 2016).

That's how it would've looked.

But then, as I was finding pictures for this post, I stumbled upon this:

it's clearly older than the movies (I'm guessing the 80s), and I found it on the site of the VFX company that designed the World Security Council's look. It was provided to them by Marvel, so this group is clearly the inspiration for the World Security Council.

Here's the thing, though: I have NO IDEA where this came from. The site doesn't say, and I can't find any evidence online of Nick Fury ever answering to a shadow council (except The Shadow Council, but that was a very different group and they are only a few years old). Whoever this group is, they're definitely not called the World Security Council, so I'm still counting it.

If anyone has any information about this image, please let me know.

EDIT: Thanks to user Idran, I know that this group (which ComicVine calls the Executive Board of Directors, but I don't know if that's their official name) first appeared in Marvel Graphic Novel #18: The Sensational She-Hulk (September 1985). They've only made two appearances since then, in Incredible Hulk #336 (August 1987) and Nick Fury vs. SHIELD #1 (April 1988). And the last of those times were actually imposters.

Character Spotlight: Grant Ward

It took some time, but Marvel has finally been getting around to introducing its MCU SHIELD characters. It started with Coulson back in 2012, before Agents of SHIELD existed. Then, after a couple years, we got a team including Coulson, May, FitzSimmons, and Quake, Daisy's nickname "Skye", Mockingbird and Lance Hunter's relationship, Quake's mother Jiaying, Coulson's car Lola, and Raina, all in fairly quick succession. But there's one major character missing from that list.

Grant Ward.

(The reason why is spoilers, so if you haven't yet watched past the first half-season of Agents of SHIELD but plan to, come back later.)

For those of you who don't know, Grant Ward was an operative on Coulson's special team in the first season of Agents of SHIELD, but after the events of Captain America: Winter Soldier (March 2014), he was revealed to be a HYDRA mole. So by the time they started introducing the characters into the comics, he was no longer part of the team.

This is reflected in his sort-of-first appearance in Secret Wars Hail HYDRA #1 (July 2015):

It's also reflected in his first ACTUAL appearance, in Agents of SHIELD #5 (May 2016).

I can't explain the Iron Man armor, even though that's totally something the show's Ward would do if they had the budget. But there you have it - the set is finally complete! Well...not counting Mike Peterson or Joey Guttierez or a few others. (For what it's worth, Mike Peterson is represented by a Deathlok in the Agents of SHIELD book, but that Deathlok's name is Henry Hayes.)

Character Spotlight: Raina

One of the many issues people have with Marvel's Agents of SHIELD is that it almost insists on using original characters despite the depth and breadth of characters available to it from the Marvel Universe. This was especially true in the first few episodes, which is where we were introduced to Raina:

Raina, played by Ruth Negga, first appeared as the "Girl in the Flower Dress" in the episode of the same name (2013). She was a mysterious woman obsessed with "evolving", and right away she showed that original characters weren't always to the show's detriment. In fact, she was such a good character that the episode title was changed to focus on her, from its original title "Scorch".

She appeared several more times over the course of the season as a lackey to various bad guys, though she always seemed to have her own agenda. The first hints we got she was part of something bigger came in the final shot of season 1, when we learned she knew Skye's father, and then in season 2 we finally got to see her "evolve" as we learned she was an Inhuman.

She was quite a popular character and that was shown when she made an appearance in Inhuman Annual #1 (2015), complete with flower dress. In this issue, she is one of several people who get told telepathically that she's an Inhuman. To date this has been her only appearance, but who knows; there may be more in store for her down the line.

Gadget Spotlight: Lola

This is a short entry because there's not much to say.

The Agents of SHIELD pilot (2013) introduced Lola, Agent Coulson's flying car.

Lola later made an appearance in Deadpool #22 (January 2014) of all places, flown by Agent Coulson. Side note: it'd be great if this season of SHIELD had Scott Adsit playing Agent Scott Adsit.

Lola has since appeared in several issues of SHIELD volume 3.

Character Spotlight: Jiaying

I recently mentioned that Quake has moved a lot closer to her tv counterpart, Skye (and I didn't mention it, but Skye is also moving closer to her comics counterpart, Quake). And this month's Quake: SHIELD 50th Anniversary Special #1 (September 2015) continues that trend.

In SHIELD #7 (June 2015), we learn that Quake's mother is an Inhuman. This month, Quake meets an Inhuman named Jiaying who implies she knew Quake as a little girl.

If that name sounds familiar to you, it's because Jiaying is the name of Skye's mother (an Inhuman) in Agents of SHIELD. She first appeared in the episode "The Things We Bury" (November 2014).

Relationship Spotlight: Mockingbird and Lance Hunter

Mockingbird, aka Bobbi Morse, and Commodore Lance Hunter have a lot of things in common. They're both secret agents (Morse works for SHIELD, Hunter is the head of STRIKE). They both debuted in the 70s. And they both made their first appearances in England: Bobbi at the front door of Ka-Zar's mansion, Hunter in the pages of Captain Britain.

And that's about where their similarities end. They certainly don't have a similar number of appearances; Hunter has only shown up in a handful of issues since his debut, and the majority of those were in the spring of '77. Other than that, he's only appeared in a Civil War tie-in in 2007 and one issue of a miniseries involving Marvel UK characters called Revolutionary War in 2011. That is, until this month's Mockingbird: SHIELD 50th Anniversary Special #1 (September 2015). Which is the most important.

See, last year - for whatever reason - Lance Hunter became a recurring character in Agents of SHIELD season 2 (2014-2015). He wasn't the head of STRIKE; heck, he wasn't even a member of STRIKE, which in the MCU is an elite subgroup of SHIELD. He was just a mercenary. But he was British. And as a new wrinkle in his backstory, he took Hawkeye's place as Mockingbird's ex (as Hawkeye was in the movies and off-limits, and - as we'd later learned - married with kids anyway). Over the course of the season, we see them move slowly from angry exes to a love/hate relationship.

That relationship, at least to some degree, is now codified in the recently mentioned Mockingbird special. Whether it'll continue remains to be seen, but as Hunter seems to have been de-aged (no more combover) to more closely match his tv depiction, I think it's likely.

Daisy Johnson...or is it Skye now?

ComicVine posted an article yesterday about some new information coming out of SHIELD #7 (June 2015), which you can read at http://www.comicvine.com/articles/shield-7-merges-the-marvel-tv-and-comics-character/1100-152710/

But the jist is that Daisy's mom was an Inhuman, and Daisy is nicknamed Skye now (for a dumb reason). Mr. Hyde was also drawn to look like Kyle MacLachlan in this issue, but I don't think that'll stick.

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.