Quake, Interrupted: "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. #3" by Guggenheim, Peralta & Rosenberg

The Tarantino -shot cover lacks the very ugly Standoff logos.

When the Jeph Loeb-headed television branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe began back in 2013, it opened with a thud, inaudible even to Matt Murdock. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. featured an inexplicably resurrected Phil Coulson leading a team of lesser-ranking super-spies going against even lower-status agents of Centipede. The series centered around Skye, played by Chloe Bennet, a stressed-yet-gorgeous hacker who managed to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. using only her wits in the back of a van. The rest of the cast, filled out with Abercrombie models, "nerdy" characters by your usual "TV-ugly" brand of actors, and the legendary Ming-Na Wen, playing a character well below what she deserved. I expected it to die a quiet midseason death, after an episode meant to tie into Thor: The Dark World featured Peter MacNicol as a former Asgardian.

Something happened around The Winter Soldier in 2014, however: the show crystallized around a main MCU plot and began moving. Suddenly, Brett Dalton's performance as Agent Grant Ward became an intentional cypher of a "good guy," and the rest of the cast began to fill out like a regular Whedonesque ensemble, and not just the disconnected facsimile they were in the first 16 episodes. The show was also pursuing a LOST-style mystery around Coulson's resurrection (going so far as to link his rebirth to the Tahitian ISLAND) that it quickly dropped in favor of making threats to the world explicit in the rebirth of Hydra.

Season 2 added even more to the show, opening with actual Marvel villains like the Absorbing Man and TV-ready heroes like Mockingbird. Talented actors like Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood jumped on to the cast (and will sadly be missed moving forward) and mainstays of the MCU like Samuel L. Jackson and Hayley Atwell dropped in for world-building scenes. Most importantly, the show performed some breathtaking storytelling parkour in destroying the ground underneath Skye's feet by turning her into Daisy Johnson (not yet Quake) and establishing her as an Inhuman (as well as the daughter of Mr. Hyde, played gleefully by Kyle Maclachlan) having just experienced Terrigenesis. The show also found new depths to old characters like Deathlok (played by Whedon alum J. August Richards) and space for experimental episodes, like the Agent Simmons showstopper "4,722 Hours." Renewed already for a fourth season, Agents rests comfortably now as a Once Upon a Time-style fixture on ABC's schedule, while fans bite their nails in anticipation of a third season of Marvel's Agent Carter.

Great, expressive action shots help move the story along in issue #3.

It makes sense that Marvel wouldn't want to launch an Agents tie-in that takes 2 years to get good, and it's a good thing that they pulled in rival showrunner Marc Guggenheim from the CW's Arrow to make things sing on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and his storytelling expertise shows from issue #1. The book plays out like a "best of both worlds" compilation of characters from the show, as Quake leads Coulson's field team consisting of Agents Fitz, May, and Simmons. Mockingbird and Deathlok are also on hand for the spy capers of the show, and each character gets plenty of face time. Rick Jones even swings by for a bit to help Coulson with the mission at hand.

Peralta and Rosenberg do great work with pacing and color, as you can see in the explosive opening shot above, and there's plenty of space for Guggenheim's dialogue-heavy action to dominate the panels. Deathlok hasn't been so simultaneously fearsome and friendly in years, and to see him drawn this way is a joy for longtime fans.

Ironically, my only misgiving with an issue like this is that the Agents book, unlike the show, loses something when it has to tie into a bigger picture. The Standoff crossover is currently occupying a rather boring miniseries by itself, while also splintering into some dull stories in other books. Sam Wilson: Captain America is strong enough by itself to survive the crossover, but Agents lives and dies by the high-powered adventures that refresh themselves between issues. Standoff forces these characters to flip into the continuity of a bad lead-up to Civil War II, and it really shows. Guggenheim and Peralta got hired for their ability to tell a great story on their own; here's hoping that Marvel lets them out of Inhuman jail long enough to do it!

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