Come at me, Whedonites! I don’t know this August Ricky guy that Whedon has cast for S.H.I.E.L.D. So yeah, is this guy a good actor? Are you excited? Make me feel something! The medicine can’t! The repetitious smacking of my testicles with a boxing glove filled with jelly can’t. Make me. Feel something.

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Recently at SXSW, Joss Whedon broke down why Agent Coulson ain’t fucking dead. I mean, I thought that Whedon got a legitimate erection when he killed off a character. A throbbing, pulsating dong-hammer. So bringing the Agent back has to be for a good reason, right? Right?! Whedon’s reasoning makes sense to me.

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Joss Whedon can’t top 2012. He can’t. It was the year he bathed in the blood of delicious capitalist credits, and finally ascended to what many believe is his rightful place on the Geek Throne. Despite that, he is too young to retreat to a cave and live his days as an ascetic. So here is hoping talking about his next ventures.

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Fury, that wily bastard. It seems that Agent Coulson totally lives. When it was announced he was returning for the SHIELD television series, peoples of the Netterverse speculated he could do so via flashbacks. Not so. Not so!

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I imagine these two new characters announced for the SHIELD television show are going to bubble over with typical Joss Whedon repartee. I mean, what the fuck is a Whedon television show if everyone doesn’t speak a sterling form of geek eloquence? I’m just guessing. I’m probably right, though. Totally.

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Cobie Smulders is goddamn perfect casting for Maria Hill in the Avengers  flick, and I use the following images to corroborate my claim.

Hit the jump to see how right I am.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. // caffeine powered note: I begged rendar to let me write about shield #6. I had such a hard-on I needed to ejaculathink about it. He’ll be back next week.]

The final issue of the first volume of Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s Shield came out this week, and it struck me at the very core of my philosophical soul. An imbecile dabbling in impracticality, I spent a good portion of my twenties floundering through school and accumulating credits in various philosophy classes. Modern philosophy, medical ethics, existentialism, Ancient Greek, Medieval, and Social Ethics among others.

I absorbed them all but I did so with a problem lingering in the back of my head. The brightest philosophers, the most powerful thinkers, my very heroes; they were all, to an extent, full of fucking shit.

In ways both gorgeous and clinical, Hickman and Weaver make this argument in the final issue of the first volume of Shield. In a way I never could. I don’t have the components, I lack the wiring. But I know a classic when I see it.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

This week’s pick of the comics-litter is S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 by writer Jonathan Hickman and illustrator Dustin Weaver.

If all you care to know is which comic gets the Images & Words accolades, then you can stop reading right now. I offer only my thanks for entertaining my feeble expressions thus far and encourage you to plunk down $3 for this book.

For those of you interested in why this comic gets the nod: S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 affects me. Greatly. In that way that makes met step back and consider both otherworldly possibilities and the unactivated transcendences of inner-space.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

S.H.I.E.L.D. is the best comic book currently being published.

This isn’t a new revelation. I’ve held this opinion for awhile now. And I stand by it.

The newest issue simply reaffirms the beliefs I’ve held, further developing a story that delivers some heavy ideas through an original plot. What is the story at hand? Well, it’s pretty simple: Isaac Newton is in charge of the Shield, an organization that has protected the human race from extinction for thousands of years. Unfortunately, Newton is evil and has involved himself in a number of shady dealings like killing Galileo and enslaving Nostradamus so that he can uncover the secrets of the Five-Fold Understanding.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

I believe in ideas.

I’m not religious. I don’t belong to a political party. And I’m generally weary of aligning myself with institutions. But what I am unabashedly interested in is the formation, exploration, and discussion of ideas. Anything that has or can or will be done has come about by the processing of thought. Mental exertion. Trying to conjure up something that has yet to be plucked out of the nebulous pool that is the collective unconscious.

Human beings are squishy blots of flesh that exchange fluids with the world and rarely last one hundred years. They are fragile and gross and quite often unhinged mentally. And yet, within the few protective millimeters of skull is the capacity for goddamn anything.

Penicillin. Films. Sexual fetishism. Hospitals. Education. Genetic manipulation. Geoengineering. A hilarious anecdote about a dead relative. Cloned organs. Terraforming. Dinner reservations for two, no wait, three. Interstellar travel.

It’s all in there, in the goddamn ideaspace. The realized and unrealized.   The real and the fictional and the grey area where the two meet for conjugal visits.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is a comic book about these conjugal visits.

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