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.)