Jack's story is interesting, but Don Heck on pencils is really dragging the art down, especially when nobody in the inking stage is helping. Between Heck, Esposito & Ayers, it's a toss-up as to who's doing the WORST inks. When Joe Sinnott inked Heck several issues earlier, at least it was "clean".

The irony is that Don Heck has done SPY books other than this-- DANGER and THE MAN FROM UNCLE. But on SHIELD, he's just not cutting it, perhaps because he's not doing his own storytelling. It's similar to what happened on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, when Stan pulled John Romita off to do other things, and had Heck doing pencils over Romita's story & layouts. In that case, the results were nicer (that series is "simpler" and doesn't require as much visual "pizazz"), but it still wasn't nearly as good as it might have been had Romita done the book solo.

One rather oddball bit of continuity is, as far as I can make out, the scene where Count Bornag Royale arrives as the SHIELD heli-carrier, and the readers are given no evidence that he's a bad guy, came out before his cameo in TALES OF SUSPENSE, where it was revealed, with no doubt, that he was this storyline's main villain. Yet, his cameo in SUSPENSE showed him departing their secret HQ, en route to his 1st meeting on the Heli-Carrier-- so I have to figure that could be viewed as a "flashback".

Of course, the dialogue doesn't help. I believe Stan got confused as to what was really going on here, and also as to who "A.I.M." or "Them" were, since he uses the terms interchangably, and they're not really the same thing. "A.I.M." is a BRANCH of "Them"-- "Them" is a code-name for the REAL organization behind this whole mess.

Another interesting bit of long-term continuity (for me anyway) is that The Fixer said "Them" supplied him with his equipment, including the "Thru-The-Ground Tank" with which he attacked SHIELD HQ. That tank was IDENTICAL to the ones used by both The Hate Monger and The Rabble Rouser in earlier stories. Which means... "Them" was supplying Adoph Hitler with equipmemt. I find that an interesting tie-in when the true identity of the "Grand Imperitor" is finally revealed, still quite a few months down the line.

Last Edited By: profh0011 Mar 20 12 2:23 PM. Edited 4 times.