5 Reasons You Should Care about … Sharon Carter

It was announced last week that actress Emily Van Camp (ABC’s Revenge) would be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Agent 13 in next year’s Captain America: Civil War, in a cast list that’s shaping up to make it Avengers 2.5.

Van Camp’s character had maybe the least to do in last year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but the truth is she’s been an important part of Steve Rogers’ life for nearly 50 years now, since her first appearance in 1966’s Tales of Suspense #75. She also played a very crucial role in one of the defining moments of the Civil War comics story from which the 2016 movie takes its name.

Here’s some more fun facts about this Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creation:

1. She’s the sequel to Agent Carter: Sharon was originally the younger sister of Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers’ love interest from World War II. Rogers was thawed out in the 1960s, when Peggy and Sharon being sisters would have been plausible. Comics’ sliding timescale has since made Peggy Sharon’s aunt and later great aunt. Minor point: The issue in which Sharon first appeared also marked the first appearance of everyone’s favorite French foot fighter, Batroc the Leaper.

2. She’s been Steve’s No. 1 gal far longer than Peggy: In the comics, Steve and Sharon have been on-again, off-again lovers for the better part of five decades. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, however, they just met, and her relation to Peggy hasn't been explicitly revealed yet. Also, in what is absolutely a good problem to have, Peggy has become one of the MCU’s most beloved characters, to the point where ABC last week announced a second season of her TV series (Marvel had a busy news week last week). Perhaps, with Revenge having just been canceled, there’s room for both Agents Carter to share the spotlight, in a passing-of-the-torch story that jumps between past and present.

3. She’s died at least twice in the comics: Sharon Carter was first killed in Captain America #233, when she detonated an explosive on her person while under the control of a group called the National Force led by perennial Cap villain Dr. Faustus. She stayed dead for more than 200 issues, finally returning in issue 444, at the hand of writer Mark Waid, who’d revealed Sharon had faked her death to run a covert op for Nick Fury and later got caught up in a plot to resurrect Hitler. Much later, in 2013, Rick Remender made it look like he’d killed Sharon again during his first arc on Captain America, during a mission to save Cap from a dimension ruled by the mad biogeneticist Arnim Zola. Instead, she survived and raised Steve’s adopted son, whom he’d taken from Zola.

4. She killed Captain America: In Ed Brubaker’s brilliant 2000s run on Cap, Sharon was brainwashed once again by Dr. Faustus, this time into shooting Steve in the stomach post-Civil War as part of a long-game plan by the Red Skull. Sharon was pregnant with Steve’s child at the time, unbeknownst to her, and loses the child amid a fight with the Skull’s daughter, Sin. Faustus then makes her forget being pregnant. Steve’s death set up his original sidekick, Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, to take his place for a time as the good captain.

5. She’s been an Avenger: Sharon was part of the cast of the 2010-13 volume of Secret Avengers, running covert missions alongside Steve, Black Widow and other heavy-hitters. Brubaker was the first among a chain of writers on this series.

Read this: Ed Brubaker’s phenomenal run on Captain America, which we've covered before and which served as the inspiration for the Winter Soldier movie. The lion’s share of it is available in three hardcover ominbi that start at the beginning of the run in 2004 and end with Steve Rogers’ resurrection in 2010.

Watch that: Watch The Winter Soldier again, because even though she’s barely in it, it’s just that damn good.

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.

5 reasons you should care about … Leviathan

“Leviathan is coming.”

“Who?”

“Leviathan”

“The mythical sea beast of the Old Testament?”

“No.”

“The eidolon that crashes the ship in Final Fantasy IV?”

“No.”

“The evil organization from Grant Morrison’s Batman run?”

“No. I mean, yes, it’s an evil organization, but this one’s Marvel.”

“Oh, so it’s like Hydra?”

“Wellllllll…”

The big bad of Marvel’s Agent Carter series has been hinted at as Leviathan, as bespake by the electro-throated men doing its bidding. If you’re like me, you heard the name and thought of all the above examples. But it’s none of those. Here’s what it is.

1. It’s the Cold War Hydra: Just like Hydra was a by-product of Nazi Germany, Leviathan was a by-product of Communist Russia, except most of its members were cryogenically frozen, much like a certain Winter Soldier, which is a great way to explain away how new characters with Cold War roots were supposedly always there and able to still operate in the 21^st century. Apparently, back in the day, SHIELD, Hydra, Leviathan and the Hand used to play war games, but as could be expected, things got out of hand and double-cross-y.

2. It was created by the architect of the Marvel Universe’s destruction: Jonathan Hickman created Leviathan during his run on Secret Warriors, the book about original-recipe Nick Fury’s underground special ops team made up of the children of supervillains. Hickman also wrote the SHIELD series that traced the agency’s origins back to the Egyptian Imhotep in a sort of League of Extraordinary Historical Gentlemen. Hickman can currently be found preparing to smash the multiverse together for this year’s Secret Wars event that may or may not be the end of the Marvel Universe as we know it.

3. One of its members was killed by Bill Paxton: Well, not really, but Magadan, Leviathan’s leader, was assassinated by cybernetically enhanced SHIELD Agent John Garrett, whom Paxton played on the TV show as the eventual big bad of Season 1. Garrett was created by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz for the 1980s Elektra: Assassin miniseries.

4. Nick Fury’s girlfriend was one of its leaders: Among the Leviathan brass was the Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine, regular flame of Fury and creation of SHIELD progenitor Jim Steranko. The contessa acted as a mole inside SHIELD and Hydra but was apparently working for the Russian organization the whole time. … except at some point she had been replaced by a Skrull, according to Secret Invasion. Twice.

5. There’s Brood stuff: X-Men fans know the Brood as the Chris Claremont-created Alien ripoffs that like to try to lay their eggs in mutants. Apparently, SHIELD, Hydra, Leviathan and the Hand at one point tried to use Brood technology to create super soldiers (because that’s all any global Marvel organization wants), which is where all the double-crossing comes into play.

Read this: Secret Warriors 1-28 by Brian Michael Bendis, Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Castelli

Watch that: Agent Carter, 9 p.m. Tuesdays on ABC.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.

TV Review: Dan Grote on Marvel's Agent Carter

Two of the unlikeliest success stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have been SHIELD Agent (now Director) Phil Coulson and pre-SHIELD Agent Peggy Carter, two people with absolutely no superpowers but, at their best, tons of personality.

Both got their own One-Shot short films – Coulson got two, actually. And now, both have their own TV shows and comics series.

Agent Carter, a seven-part miniseries, premiered last week on ABC. Meanwhile, at your local comics shop, Marvel dropped the first issue of Operation S.I.N., a five-issue series by Kathryn Immomen and Rich Ellis starring Carter and O.G. genius sass-mouth Howard Stark. The mini serves as both a stinger to last year’s Original Sin crossover and cross-platform marketing for Carter, a character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1966.

Carter the TV series picks up in 1946 with Peggy (Hayley Atwell) in pretty much the exact same spot she was in at the beginning of the Agent Carter One-Shot: Working at the SSR, relegated to secretarial work by a second-rate Mad Men cast of chauvinists who came home from World War II and took all the jobs they felt themselves entitled to as conquering heroes. To help refresh people’s memories as to why this show exists, the opening of the pilot splices in the scene from Captain America: The First Avenger in which Chris Evans crashes the Red Skull’s plane into the Northern Atlantic. Boom, instant pathos.

Then Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) comes calling a with problem only a Stark could have: Someone is selling Howard’s “bad babies” – a creepy-uncle term for some of his deadlier inventions – on the black market, he’s being persecuted by the government for it, and he needs Carter to go on a secret MacGuffin Quest to set things right. The first weapon is a chemical explosive (more of an implosive, really) called nitramene packaged in containment units that look like perfume bottles.

Aiding Carter in her quest is Jarvis – the human being, not the O.S. voiced by Paul Bettany. James D’Arcy’s Edwin Jarvis, not at all trained in the ways of espionage, helps Carter track down strange weapons while fretting about his domestic duties and the hell he’ll catch from his as-yet-unseen wife. There’s definitely shades of Niles and Maris from Frasier here (kids, ask your parents about Frasier). So far, Jarvis is the show’s breakout character, so I look forward to the 7-part miniseries next winter in which Jarvis raises a young Tony Stark and Mr. Belvedere-style antics ensue.

Oh, and Stark and Jarvis have some kind of hidden agenda in employing Carter, but that was probably obvious.

The main villain of the series is either a person or an organization called Leviathan. Which immediately begs the question: Are World War II-era evil organizations only allowed to be named after mythical sea beasts? Either way, Leviathan likes to employ people whose larynxes have been removed, which makes for some fun conversation scenes. Also, this person/thing communicates with his larynx-less henchmen via a self-typing typewriter, which makes me want to play Ouija and watch shows produced by Stephen J. Cannell at the same time (kids, ask your grandparents who Stephen J. Cannell is).

The men of the SSR are written to give the folks at Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce a run for their money, but of course those guys are on AMC and able to get away with far more. Shea Whigham is the chief who constantly looks like he smelled a fart, Chad Michael Murray is the alpha douche, Kyle Bornheimer is the fat slob, and Enver Gjokaj is the sympathetic one, on account of his bum leg. The one-dimensionality of their characters can best be summed up by a scene in which they use a literal carrot and stick in an interrogation scene that ends in a brutal beating administered by Murray.

Meanwhile, Carter gets to dress up in costumes and use fake accents as she goes about her business, which I suppose harkens to the Jennifer Garner Alias series, but for some reason I’m reminded more of Jim Varney dressing up as his own mother in the Ernest movies. Don’t get me wrong, Atwell’s a knockout, fun to watch, and even funny at times. It just may be because I watched Ernest Saves Christmas only a few weeks ago.

The second hour works in a Captain America radio play that Carter justifiably finds anathema. The program – which regularly pops up at inopportune times – features Cap, the Red Skull, and Army Nurse Betty Carver, Cap’s frail love interest who regularly gets herself kidnapped by the Skull. In other words, the anti-Peggy.

The first two hours feature some fun casting choices for bit players, including James Urbaniak (Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture himself) as a Roxxon scientist, Kevin Heffernan from the Broken Lizard troupe (Super Troopers, Beer Fest) as a rude diner patron, Ray Wise (Twin Peaks) as the head of the Roxxon oil company, and Lynsy Fonseca (Kick-Ass, Hot Tub Time Machine) as a waitress who finds Peggy a place to stay after her previous roommate a) contracts tuberculosis and b) is killed by one of the no-larynx guys.

The pilot also features an appearance by a young Dr. Anton Vanko, father of Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash from Iron Man 2. A teaser for future episodes includes shots of the Howling Commandos, which I’m definitely looking forward to as a fan of Neal McDonough’s Dum Dum Dugan.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. set the bar low for how an MCU TV show should start, but Agent Carter has a lot going for it. It’s built off established characters, it’s only seven episodes so there’s no time for wheel-spinning, and it doesn’t have to tie itself to whatever’s coming to the theaters. So what you get is a fun, pulpy, kinda soapy period piece with a heroine who has the honor of being Marvel Studios’ first female lead and isn’t entirely out of place on a network with shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.