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S.H.I.E.L.D. #6: Review

Jun 2018
Jonathan Hickman, Dustin Weaver

Story Name:

I am the Sun

Review & Comments

Rating:
4.5 stars

S.H.I.E.L.D. #6 Review by (July 23, 2019)
Leonid says here that Isaac Newton raised him. This is not strictly true as Newton abandoned the mother before Leonid was born, and he was given by the Forever Man to Nikola Tesla and his bird/woman companion. Newton *did* induct him into the Brotherhood Of The Shield as a teenager and train him for a few years.

This raises the question of when and how did Newton know Leonid was his son? It was never made clear why he brought him into the Brotherhood, and we never saw them acknowledge their relationship. It was only in v2#2 that da Vinci referred to the parenthood in their joint presence. Leonid's shocked expression there may indicate that it was news to him. We don't see Newton's reaction.

To what time does the Human Machine return at the end. The surroundings are ambiguous.
Since Howard Stark leaves a message for his son Tony which is supposed to foreshadow the creation of SHIELD then it must be long before the present day. But Marvel's sliding timescale now allows a lot of leeway between 1960 and Fantastic Four #1. It also implies that Howard will return to his family before dying for real in the car crash that kills his wife as well. A different crash from the 1 the Brotherhood allegedly arranged (see v1#5) to explain his absence working for them.

The Forever Man/Michelangelo, Nostradamus, the Last Caliphate brothers, the Star Child and Tesla's unnamed bird/woman companion disappear from Marvel history here.

Leonardo da Vinci goes on to set up the earliest Zodiac organisation, including Nick Fury and his brother Jake, in a flashback in Secret Warriors #25. And he's still hanging around in the background in #28. SHIELD (2015) #9 will claim that he's been pulling strings behind SHIELD all along. And in Iron Man #599-600 he'll start creating a replacement for the defunct group (but nothing more has been seen of that).

The Brotherhood continues to appear, though not named exactly that.
Nikola Tesla/Night Machine shows up in issues of Red She-Hulk (2012) between #59 and #67, and in the last issue he inducts her into the Ancient Order Of The Shield.
She and that Order then move over to issues of Hulk (2014).

(Isaac Newton won't have any future apps, but he's 1 of the past Sorcerers Supreme in the Dr Strange & The Sorcerers Supreme series.)

Iron Man (2013) #10 has a flashback panel of Howard Stark meeting with someone in Brotherhoood attire in their Immortal City under Rome. In my synopsis of that issue I lazily assumed it was Isaac Newton, but it doesn't look anything like him. Marvel Fandom Wiki suggests it's Leonid, and that would be a much better likeness. It would suggest that he took over the leadership of the Brotherhood after this series.

This brings us neatly to the problem of connecting Howard's apps in this series with the rest of his documented life. Although he's dead before we 1st meet his son Tony in Tales Of Suspense #39, Howard will have a long life in flashbacks and retcons. For instance his app in Avengers 1959 #3 should occur while he was trapped in the far future between our v1#2 (1955) and v1#6 (1960).
More significantly we have the question of the birth of Tony Stark. Howard in the IM(2013)#10 FB is trying to find a cure for what's affecting his unborn son (actually Arno Stark, and Tony will be adopted at the same time, but the timing is still a problem). But at the end of our issue (and in fact in earlier issues) Howard is dictating information intended for his son Tony. The Marvel Chronology Project has coincidentally created a gap between Stark's epilogue and the rest of this issue and put the Av1959#3 app in there as a compromise. They haven't documented IM(2013)#10 yet but it's FB (along with others in surrounding issues) could fit in there too.
They have also placed 3 other things in that slot. New Warriors (1990) #4 has Harmon Furmintz working for Stark in the 50s (but surely this should be before our series). In Citizen V And The V-Battalion #2 Stark and Nathaniel Richards are scientific partners (sounds a reasonable proposition). Then comes Av1959#3 FB where he lends the team a hydrofoil. Lastly they have the last page of Astonishing Tales: Dominic Fortune digital comic #6 which happens years after the rest of the series.
The 1st app to follow Howard's epilogue is an Avengers: The Crossing FB where Tony remembers his 1st girlfriend.

The MCP has Nathaniel Richards next in the CV&VB#2 flashback with Howard above. And after that it's FBs to the boyhood of Reed Richards in Fantastic Four #570-572 and Four #17 before he abandoned his family and went to an alternate timeline which eventually spawned Kang The Conqueror. This is represented by an FB in Avengers Forever #9 and then FF#272-273 where the FF found him there (which was his 1st actual app in Marvel comics).





 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

S.H.I.E.L.D. #6 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
Our gang used the Human Machine to follow Isaac Newton and the Celestial Star Child into 3 versions of the future 2060. Last issue they fought and now in each timeline there only remains Newton, his estranged son Leonid and Michelangelo the Forever Man in his multiple golden bodies from different times and/or timelines. Forever Man has rebuilt the Human Machine for Leonid, merged from all 3 futures, to ride to where he needs to be.

Now as Leonid departs in the Human Machine, Michelangelo (now reduced to 3 bodies) can no longer see the future(s). Leonid considers the 3 futures (the Height Of Modernity, the Rebirth Of Man and the End Of The World) and all the possibilities in between them and he wants the conflict to end. He generates his forcefield and there's a big explosion.

We see the universe created out of nothing, evolving to contain stars. And in 1 of the stars is a pregnant female Celestial (ie a version of the 1 in v1#4 that gave birth to the Star Child). But this time she produces a different creature that looks like Leonid in his forcefield.

Next we see Newton and the 3 Forever Men facing a very different Star Child (looking more like a version of a Nimrod Sentinel from X-Men, but with the Human Machine diagram etched on its face). Then it opens up and Leonid steps out, evolved into a humanoid with the universe as his body (like Eternity) but still with 3 overlapping bodies (like the end of last issue).

Leonid greets his father and asks him to abandon his fixation on humanity ending in 2060 so that they can discuss things rationally. Newton still insists it is fated and blasts his son. The blast passes through the body which then reforms unharmed. Leonid says he's trying to save everything including his father, and Michelangelo asks Isaac to listen. Newton is adamant so his son takes a drastic measure to compel his attention - he splits 1 side of Isaac's body into anatomical components.

The FM asks Leonid what the Human Machine did to him. Newton  joins in, possibly hoping that if understands what his son has become it might show him how to fight back. Leonid says the HM is designed to explore potential, but then so is life itself. Cue a montage of the history of life on (Marvel) Earth.

We see simple cells, then amoeboid life, then fish and amphibians. At least the latter stages are watched by Celestials and possibly helped along. The space-gods certainly seem to affect the evolution of humanoids as do the Kree and their Sentry robots. And the Watcher watches super-powers emerge early on.

Leonid says that now that man has conquered land, sea, air and space he inevitably asks "What now?" Newton states his position that all things, including species, have a finite span within which to do what they are meant to do. (And his Quiet Math proved to him that humanity's span ends in 2060.) Michelangelo on the other hand believes mankind has the free will to choose its own destiny.

Leonid believes he can give both of them what they desire. He collapses all of time into an instant and shows them a god's-eye view of the universe. From this POV people are continually making free choices but the result is the foregone conclusion of all those choices. He asks if such a universe would satisfy them both, and they both agree.

We see a montage of elements from the preceding issues of this 2 volumes plus 1 issue series (as Leonid rebuilds history?). Forever Man comments that time loops back on itself producing an evolving unified history. (This could be a description of the Marvel comics universe where retcons continually change the past and the sliding timescale keeps moving the dates but the whole still hangs together.) This is definitely a universe that *he* approves of.

And now we see the moment in that universe (in v2#4) when the assembled characters set off from 1960 in the Human Machine to follow Isaac Newton and the Star Child into the future. But instead of going to 2060 they find themselves underground, and they step out into a tunnel dug by an excavation machine and Leonardo da Vinci welcomes them to a busy street in Rome (in our present or only a few years later?).

Da Vinci asks Leonid what took so long, and he says he had a little problem to solve. (So all the chars who died last issue are alive in this version.) Nikola Tesla/Night Machine asks what happened to Newton? Leonid says he's given him and the Star Child another Earth where mankind has died as he wanted. (We see an image of Abu Musa in v1#3 trying to do a similar thing. He failed, but we know from the same issue that Galileo successfully used the same technique to save Earth from Galactus by creating another world for him to eat.)

We finish with an epilogue of Howard Stark using his clunky voice-controlled typewriter to leave a message for his son Tony. He has already entered the history of these events (and of the Brotherhood Of The Shield) as we have seen in previous issues. He gives him advise on how to solve problems, and hence help the world. Visualise the problem and its solution in your mind's eye until you can see it clearly. "Everything begins with an idea. Everything begins with an image." And we see images from v1#1 where we 1st heard those words. Panels of the battle in 2620 BC against the Brood that kickstarted the Brotherhood Of The Shield. And the image on a shield that became the symbol of the Brotherhood. An image that resembles that of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s emblem to be.



Dustin Weaver
Dustin Weaver
Sonia Oback
Gerald Parel (Cover Penciler)
Gerald Parel (Cover Inker)
Gerald Parel (Cover Colorist)
Letterer: Todd Klein.
Editor: Nick Lowe. Editor-in-chief: C. B. Cebulski.

Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.


Brotherhood Of The Shield, Forever Man (Michelangelo), Howard Stark, Isaac Newton, Last Caliphate, Leonardo da Vinci, Leonid, Nathaniel Richards, Night Machine (Nikola Tesla), Nostradamus, Star Child.

> S.H.I.E.L.D.: Book info and issue index

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