HOWLING COMMANDOS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. No. 4, March 2016 |
As “the lowest selling Marvel All-New All-Different book
of December [2015]” it’s hard not to let hindsight read too much into the somewhat
choppy script for Issue Four of “Howling Commandos of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, as Frank
J. Barbiere’s narrative rather abruptly not only brings ‘sparring partners’ “Dum
Dum” Duggan and Warwolf together as friends. But also has Director Maria Hill supplant Paul
Kraye as leader of her agency’s Threat Analysis for Known Extranormalities
after the doctor “went crazy” and started “torturing our new recruit” Nadeen
Hassan.; “Dammit, I knew I should’ve fired that weasel!”
Such an incredible turnaround of events, especially ones
which up until this edition the American author appeared to be very slowly
building up to, invariably leads to the supposition that the former English teacher both knew that “Marvel
Worldwide” was already going to cancel the short-lived series before he
finished writing this comic’s storyline and realised he was going to
have to resolve all of his subplots concerning S.T.A.K.E.’s secret projects
within the space of just a couple of twenty-page periodicals.
If this was the case then such a convoluted combination
of ideas genuinely appears to have taken its toll upon the quality of Barbiere’s
penmanship and his contrived handling of characters such as Orrgo, who has
apparently been surreptitiously “transferred out of base” and Captain Martin
Reyna; whose willingness to readily side with “Dum Dum” against his tech
division superior occurs far too quickly considering his previous hostility
towards the Life-Model Decoy, and the additional fact that in doing so the mechanically-armed
agent declines a promotion to team “commander”. Certainly Nadeen’s inexplicably abrupt transformation into a fully-fledged bandage-wearing ghost-manipulator, complete
with mummified face, seems terrifically artificial considering the prisoner’s entire
makeover occurs within the space of a single panel?
Brent Schoonover’s illustrations for this ‘gestalt of
ideas’ are also somewhat inconsistent in places. “Hailing from the epicentre of
culture known as South Beloit” the artist can undoubtedly draw an impressively
mean-looking Duggan, who despite occasionally appearing a little too much like
one of James Cameron’s Terminators when battle-damaged, visually dominates
every panel within which he appears. Disappointingly however the same cannot be
said for Kraye, Hassan and the numerous poorly-depicted armoured S.H.I.E.L.D.
agents who populate the rest of this comic's breakdowns.
Writer: Frank J. Barbiere, Art: Brent Schoonover, and Color Art: Nick Filardi |
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