What are Marvel’s Secret Warriors (and what they may mean for the next season of Agents of SHIELD)?

Stewart here…

So if you’ve been following the teases for the next season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, you might have heard the phrase “Secret Warriors” come up. What does that mean to this show? Clearly its a link to something related to Marvel comics, but what exactly? Hopefully this brief article will help explain that comic book connection.

The first thing is the book itself: Secret Warriors, a book written by Jonathan Hickman (with a brief assist on the first story arc by Brian Michael Bendis), about Nick Fury’s secret conflict with HYDRA. At the time of the book coming out, Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin for those not in the know) became America’s top cop after squashing a Skrull invasion, and most heroes like Fury (the white Fury, BTW) went into hiding. It’s in the first arc that Fury assembles a black ops team of super powered agents, among them Daisy Johnson (which should ring a bell, SHIELD viewers). It’s also here that Fury discovers a dark truth about SHIELD: its been under the thumb of HYDRA for most of its existence.

So already, we got another connection to SHIELD and the MCU right there, but Secret Warriors takes that concept further. In its two year run (28 issues in all), Fury would use his team in a brutal chess game with Hydra and other players, like the Russian organization Leviathan (sounding familiar, Agent Carter fans?) and other shadow teams Fury had set up. And then there’s the final arc of the series, which weaved in elements of Hickman’s farther out there Marvel book, SHIELD, into a gambit that turned all that the series had set up on its head. It was certainly one of Marvel’s more ambitious series in that era.

Which brings us to where this series fits in Agents of SHIELD. At the end of last season, Coulson and Skye decided they needed a super team of their own to handle any future Inhuman-style threats. While it seems Coulson will be the Fury role in this, Skye is seemingly in the same place as her comic book counterpart in squad leading this team. While it doesn’t seem they’ll be dealing with Baron Strucker (Fury’s nemesis throughout the book), Grant Ward looks like he might be leading what’s left of Hydra in an all new conflict with SHIELD.

Besides being available digitally, the series is available in a hardcover omnibus or a two volume paperback collection (the second of which will arrive at the end of August). Just don’t be surprised if you gotta do some Wikipedia work, because its steeped in Marvel lore. As for Agents of SHIELD, expect the new season to start around the end of September.

So if you want to discuss your thoughts on either Secret Warriors or Agents of SHIELD, leave a comment below…