By the time this series debuted, we’d seen Nick Fury’s new underground team several times. Still, an introduction to them would be nice–especially since some of them are pretty new creations.
Oh, there’s a nice little summary of who they are. Thank you!
Quake is the team’s field leader. Nick Fury leads from a distance, which means he can basically criticize their performance as much as he wants without actually having to do anything. He’s such a dick.
Fury does do some of his own field work, though.
Like he sneaks into the Oval Office to interrogate President Obama.
Fury in these issues uses his team to uncover a Hydra infiltration of the government (and figures out that Obama is not compromised) and test the motives and limitations of HAMMER, Norman Osborn’s replacement for SHIELD.
Jonathan Hickman is a writer who is very adept at writing complexity, and he seizes this opportunity to chart out the relationships between various Marvel 616 organizations (Hydra, SHIELD, AIM, the Secret Empire, etc.), which makes for great nerd fodder.
You’ll notice in that infographic that SHIELD has been, unknown to Fury, under Hydra control all along.
There’s a deep Hydra history offered here and I’m not going to summarize it all because it’s why you should read this series for yourself. The main story is that with all the superheroes having been driven underground by Norman Osborn, Hydra makes a power move to take over the U.S. government. Fury’s team does all it can to mess with both Hydra and HAMMER through various covert operations.
In the early issues, we get to see some of Nick’s old allies recast now as fugitives and freelancers.
Later (below), we see Dum Dum now leads a mercenary group made up of old Howling Commandos.
The bad guys have some old and new as well. Among the new is a guy named Hive. Or more precisely, “guys” named Hive. They’re a group of parasites who can take over humans, and were engineered in a Hydra lab.
Also introduced in this story is Kraken, who will be exposed later as Jacob Fury–Nick’s own brother. And a mysterious new Madame Hydra, whose identity is revealed at the end of this story arc (see below).
who joins up with a bunch of old Nick Fury/Hydra characters to form another roundtable (Tony Stark had his illuminati, Norman Osborn formed a similar cabal, now there’s this one):
They bring Gorgon back from the dead to be their sixth member. Gorgon is as badass as he’s ever been.
He fights Nick’s team to a standstill–and they only survive because they flee.
But Hydra isn’t the only one recruiting new members. After Yo-Yo gets critically injured in a battle with Gorgon, Fury sends Druid and Quake to find the Australian mutant Gateway where he meets Gateway’s new protege, Eden Fesi–a mutant who will get the code name Manifold.
He has the ability to manipulate the universe, which appears to be a teleportation power but it sounds like it can do much more than that. I’m sure that will happen later.
Dum-Dum, Gabriel Jones, and others also help out as they are now the “Howling Commandos Private Military Company.” They become the lynchpin in the final battle, and by the end of this arc they agree to become Fury’s private army–along with hints that he has other “Secret Warriors” cells around the world.
A subplot involves a secret box that all three of the factions involved in this story are trying to capture, and in the last panel of this story we see Nick Fury talking with his old team-mate Contessa de Fontaine. She now has possession of the box, and is the new Madame Hydra.
There’s no way a simple summary can do justice to a story with as many characters and as much complexity as this one. Highly recommended.
English (US) · 