Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Agents of Hydra

Agents of Hydra was the third and final story arc of Season 4

 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Agents of Hydra

Final story arc of season 4 does not disappoint

Do you remember the Star Trek episode, Mirror Mirror? The writers of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. do. In that episode, the crew visit a parallel universe where they meet the evil versions of themselves. That's exactly what happens in the third and final major story arc of season 4, "Agents of Hydra". This is familiar territory for Marvel, while it was D.C. Comics that first added the concept of parallel worlds to the pop culture landscape with the now infamous "Flash of Two Worlds" storyline, it was Marvel that ran with it in a regular comic called What if..? that explored alternate versions of it's heroes and villains. In tribute to that monthly comic that ran from 1977-1984, the first episode of this story arc is named, appropriately, "What if...".

Following on the heels of the "LMD" story arc, AIDA has captured most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and has them unconscious, living in a virtual world connected directly to their brains. It's up to Quake and Simmons to enter the Framework - think The Matrix - and find some red pill to snap them out of it. There they find a Neo-Nazi America (shades of another Star Trek episode), ruled by AIDA and a Josef Mengle-esque Fitz.

Like the arc where Simmons was on another planet, this arc is shot with a limited color palette and also tends to get a little relentlessly dark toward the middle. But at times it's also a very incisive commentary on the state of America today. And if that's not enough, it also features some great acting by all the primary cast members in twists on their usual characters.

***1/2 out of *****

Jonah Hex "Night of the White Lotus"

Mei Ling returns to the series

Jonah Hex: "Night of the White Lotus"

After taking their infant son and leaving back in issue No. 53, Jonah Hex's wife Mei Ling was been absent from the series for several issues. But as evidenced by this issue, neither has been far from the others' mind.

When Jonah encounters a strange Chinese visitor from Nanking named Wu Song Phat, however, the stage seems to be set for some adventure that will reunite them.

"Night of the White Lotus" isn't particularly notable as the series goes, but as the setup of an arc that deals with the long running Jonah / Mei Ling relationship, it's pretty important to Jonah's character arc.

The backup El Diablo story, "The Hypnotist and the Devil" reads like something out of the Silver Age Weird Western stories in that supernatural powers are all-powerful and every bad guy gets his comeuppance. Think of an early Spectre story set in the Old West and you have a pretty good idea of what it's like.
**1/2 out of *****

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD is the second major story arc of Season 4

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: LMD

In Season 4, the best season of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to this point follows up the excellent "Ghost Rider" story line,  with "LMD" which switches gears from the supernatural to the high-tech. Despite Agent MacKenzie's dire predictions that any attempt to create autonomous androids inevitably leads to a robot uprising, Fitz nevertheless assists Dr. Radcliffe in developing them. As predicted, the First Law of Robotics pretty much goes out the window fast.

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has touched on some robot and android related issues, particularly with Ultron and Vision, "LMD" takes advantage of the longer form TV medium to go deeper.

LMD stands for "Life Model Decoy", androids that have been part of the S.H.I.E.L.D. comics since the mid-1960s, and it's interesting to see their long-awaited integration into the show. While we experienced something similar in past seasons with the face-changing mask, now the show goes whole hog with the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, who-can-you-trust situations.

All-in-all, one of the series' better story arcs.

**** out of *****

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider appears in Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4; "Ghost Rider"

Ghost Rider rides again in Season four's first major story arc

When last we left the Ghost Rider saga, Johnny Blaze rode off into the Turkish sunset after saving a young boy. Now he has reappeared in Los Angeles where he's possessed Robbie Reyes, a young latino who drives a supercharged '69 Dodge Charger (why doesn't Ghost Rider ever possess some random dude who drives a beat up old Ford Taurus?).

Normally I hate reboots where the main character is drastically changed, but I am O.K. when it's with characters like Green Lantern, or Ghost Rider, which are really just offices held by different people. So I didn't mind Marvel's obvious attempt to bring diversity to its roster and court the massively growing Latin-American segment of the populace, but I have to admit to being more than a little surprised and pleased to see him popping up in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Ghost Rider story arc comprises the first 9 episodes of Season 4. Up to this point the supernatural in the on screen Marvel Universe has been comprised of the Jack Kirby, Asgardian, is-it-really-magic-or-is-it-science-so-advanced-it-seems-like-magic variety. With the release of the film Doctor Strange, magic proper is introduced, and in the Ghost Rider arc, the infamous Darkhold from the comics appears. But Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dials it back a bit, keeping it still a bit ambiguous - is it really magic, or is it inter-dimensional travel. Although, as Coulson puts it at one point when talking to Fitz:

Coulson: He claims he made a deal with the devil.

Fitz: Which is nonsense.
Coulson: You know, the rationalist in me wants to agree, but the skull on fire makes a pretty compelling argument for "Hail Satan".

The Ghost Rider story arc represents a welcome change of pace for the series. Frankly, the Human vs. Inhuman storyline was starting to wear pretty thin, especially since the X-Men films and the Heroes TV shows already explored the concept pretty extensively. It also takes this show into really high end superpower territory (really, can Ghost Rider even be killed?), but fortunately the showrunners have wisely chosen to make this a complete arc in only a third of the season rather than stretch it to a full 24 episodes.

***1/2 / *****

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Slingshot

Marvel and ABC finally entered the digital realm with Slingshot a six episode web series set between Seasons 3 and 4 of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Slingshot is a snack-size portion of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Set between seasons 3 and 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot is a web series based around Yo-yo's unsettled score with Victor Ramon over the death of her cousin. She signs the Sokovia Accord contract, but then finds her hands immediately tied when the new Director refuses to hear her concerns. Aided by May she takes a Quinjet to Baltimore in pursuit of Ramon. She soon crosses paths with fugitive Daisy whose own mission has led her to Ramon. Each episode is about 5 minutes long, meaning the entire series is shorter than a single full episode of the TV series. While it's a nice way to consume a snack-sized portion of the show, one can't help feeling this is just an episode of the show that was cut from the regular season and slit up into 6 parts. Nevertheless, it's nice to see Yo-yo get some time in the spotlight. *** out of *****

Doctor Strange: Mystic Apprentice

Doctor Strange movie tie-in

Doctor Strange: Mystic Apprentice

Eminently skip-able origin elaboration may be worth it for those who've never read the Lee/Ditko original. (*** out of *****)

It's unclear why Marvel chose to release this one-off origin issue of Doctor Strange. Perhaps it was a pilot for a new series?

Whatever the case, they needn't have bothered. The original material here reads like deleted scenes from the Doctor Strange movie covering in unnecessary detail the time Strange spent trying to master the mystic arts in Kamar-Taj. Art and story are adequate, but nothing special.

The remainder of the issue reprints the Doctor's origin story from Strange Tales #110. For anyone who hasn't read the original Stan Lee / Steve Ditko story, this is the highlight, but c'mon, who hasn't?

Just as this comic reprints that story, we reprint here our review of that story from way back in March of 2013:

There were pretty much three big talents at Marvel in the early days - Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. In my opinion, Ditko was the least of the three, his writing/plotting was generally inferior to Stan's and his art was inferior to Jack's - I'd rank it below even some of the holdovers from Timely like Don Heck.

But Steve Ditko did have a few really high notes, and one of them was the early tales of Dr. Strange in Strange Tales. Ditko co-wrote and drew this character's stories from the very beginning - this story, "Dr. Strange Master of Black Magic!".

The story opens with a very well drawn, moody scene of a man waking from a nightmare on a rainy night. The next day he visits Dr. Strange, who agrees to help him. First Strange briefly visits his aged master halfway around the world via astral projection, then later that night he actually enters the man's dream where he confronts not only the dream-figure that has been tormenting the dreamer, but also an embodiment of nightmares themselves!

Even though Dr. Strange needs a little rescuing himself by his mystic mentor, what's amazing about this story is that it manages to do all of this in just 5 pages. And Ditko really seems much more appropriate as the artist of Dr. Strange than he does of Spider-Man.

Every Dr. Strange fan ought to have read this story by now.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

As you can surmise from the title,
there is nothing new here

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Unnecessary sequel adds nothing new

The 2007 Nic Cage vehicle (see what I did there?) Ghost Rider was a worthwhile, if low-rent Marvel Knights™ (licensed out by Marvel) film that fell well below the quality of the Marvel Studios™ in-house productions that began showing up the following year with the Iron Man, but was still far superior to the Marvel movies and made-for-TV movie of the week specials of the 70s and 80s. The 2011 sequel, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance however falls squarely around the quality level of the best of those lackluster early efforts such as the 1989 Dolph Lundgren film The Punisher.

While Nic Cage reprises his role as Johnny Cage, this film looks and feels quite different from its predecessor. The character design of Ghost Rider gets an upgrade - he no longer has a (comics accurate) white flaming skull, but now has a charcoal black skull, and similarly his shiny black leathers are replaced by what looks like charred black leather. Unfortunately that's the extent of the upgrades to this film.

The chain forked, pan head custom Harley-Davidson chopper of the first film is replaced here with some sort of Mad Max-ish Yamaha, and that right there symbolizes the kind of downgrade the whole movie gets. All classic American Western elements of that elevated the first film a bit are gone as the production was shot on location in the much more slashed budget friendly Romania and Turkey.

The film's biggest crime is a total lack of acknowledgement of it's predecessor. Instead of Mephistopheles played by Peter Fonda, we get a different demon played by a different actor (Ciaran Hinds) that somehow claims to be the one that Johnny Blaze sold his soul to, and flashback scenes were shot to retrofit him into the story. Also Blaze's motivation in this film is to get rid of his Ghost Rider curse, even though at the end of the last film he was offered just that by Mephistopheles, and his chose just the opposite - to remain Ghost Rider - and nothing in this film explains how or why he changed his mind.

Lacking any of the charm of the original Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is pretty much just moves from action sequence to CGI sequence and back for most of its hour and a half running time, making it a passable diversion at best.

**1/2 out of *****