Fresh off an Agent
Carter-induced winter hiatus, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is back with new
episodes tonight.
When we last left Phil Coulson’s team, Agent Skye had gone
through terrigenesis and was revealed to be an Inhuman, gibing with the new
Marvel philosophy in which dormant Inhumans are everywhere and just need to be
woken up so the Marvel Cinematic Universe can have its own mutants.
We also learned that Skye – who as an Inhuman has earthquake
powers – is the MCU version of Daisy Johnson, a character who has existed in
the comics since 2004 and had key roles in several major events, including the
Secret War (that’s War, singular) and Secret Invasion.
Here are some more things you may not have known about Agent
Skye, if that is her real name, which it isn’t:
She’s the daughter of a supervillain: Daisy’s dad is Mr.
Hyde, a superstrong, supersmart, supercrazy baddie who has bedeviled Marvel
heroes from Thor to Captain America to Daredevil to Spider-Man. Hyde was
created by Stan Lee and Don Heck and first appeared in 1963’s Journey Into Mystery #99, the book that
would become The Mighty Thor. Hyde
was played on Agents of SHIELD by
Kyle MacLachlan, star of Dune, Twin Peaks, Portlandia and other things relevant to your interests. According to
the comics, Hyde mucked with his genetic makeup so much that he ended up
passing powers on to his daughter, whose mother was a prostitute.
She once fought on a team made up of the children of supervillains:
Fury’s Team White, featured in the book Secret
Warriors, consists of Johnson and the children of Ares, the god of War;
Doctor Druid, a former Avenger; the Griffin; the Phantom Rider; and the
Absorbing Man. A seventh member, Eden Fesi, is the protégé of Gateway, the
X-Men’s teleportation buddy from their days in the Australian Outback.
She’s pretty high up on the SHIELD clearance scale: Johnson
first appeared in 2004’s Secret War
#2 as an agent of original-recipe Nick Fury during a covert op against the
Latverian government. She has Level 10 security clearance within SHIELD, a
classification only otherwise afforded to Fury himself and the Black Widow. For
a time, she ends up leading the organization, between stints by Maria Hill.
She’s taken down Wolverine and Magneto: During Secret War, when a berserker Wolverine
tried to attack Nick Fury, Johnson exploded his heart with a mini-earthquake.
Obviously, he got better. Later, in New
Avengers Vol. 1 #20, she did the same thing to Magneto’s brain, rendering
him unconscious.
She’s not in the current SHIELD comic: At least not in the
first three issues, anyway. Writer Mark Waid’s book straddles the worlds of the
TV show and the comics, working Agents Coulson, May, Fitz and Simmons (and
Fitz’s monkey OS) into monthly standalone stories featuring the other denizens
of the 616. Fitting all that Daisy/Skye baggage into a book like that probably
isn’t the best idea. Still a very enjoyable read, though.
Read this: Secret
Warriors #1-28 by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman and Stefano
Caselli.
Watch that: Marvel’s Agents
of SHIELD, Tuesdays on ABC.
Dan Grote’s new novel,
Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing
for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days
when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.
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