AGENT CARTER: Crazy talk =)

Here it mostly is — a brain dump of crazy talk notions inspired by a couple of random words here and there in the pilot of AGENT CARTER last week! *not* a summary or critique of the episode but yes, full of *** spoilers *** ! Enjoy the madness!

Leet Brannis?

What kind of name is that?! Pretty frickin conspicuous, no? Well, anagrammatically, I like SILENT BRANE, and SILBERTANNE certainly has its dark connection to the era, but a google will reveal that it's a deep callback to Marvel Comics of the 1940s. Fraindeer Games's character is named for the leader of a gang of jewel thieves who went up against the Whizzer in an issue of ALL-WINNERS. I wonder who on the CARTER staff had that awesome bit of Marvel minutiae in his/her pocket. So, okay, an impressive callback.

But who's to say that's all it is or does? I mean, look at that frickin name! My first thought was to try to parse it as leetspeak/hax0r, but after a few minutes of trying character substitutions, I couldn't come up w anything sensible. Maybe there's a date or coordinates in "BRANNIS" but it seems unlikely. Character substitutions got me more slashes than numbers. Seems like a dead end. Still, I'd love to be wrong, tho, and have this choice of name/codename be a sign of knowledge, contact, or an origin in the future (our present, in which leetspeak exists).

My next thought was that it's an anagram. But at the level that military intelligence, secret agents, and industrial spies play, it doesn't seem like a credible hidden clue or message (except maybe for us, the audience). So, it got me to SILENT BRANE and SILBERTANNE, but I dismissed it in favor of a funner possibility…

Attempting to imagine Leet Brannis is Le'et Bran'nis, of the Shi'Ar, or Lee-T Bran-Nis of the Kree, or perhaps (pretty pretty please) Leet Brannis of Atlantis! =)

Agents of Leviathan.

Okay, SBD (Silent But Deadly, aka the guy in the green suit, the assassin on Leet's trail) works for Leviathan. Leet *used to* work for Leviathan. Both exhibit the scarring of an apparent laryngotomy. In the course of a fight w Agent Carter, SBD survived a fall out a building window onto a city street or alley from several stories up. So, maybe he's more than your average voice-box-less Earthican? Still, he's not invincible, as we see later that his left arm is broken.

Leviathan sent Brannis to rob Howard Stark's vault, presumably to deliver its contents to them. However, Leet has double-crossed them. Or at least has opted to make a bit more on the side for himself, choosing to put at least one bad baby (Molecular Nitramene/implosion grenade tech) up for sale. Can't remember exactly when, but at one point Leet humbly describes himself as a simple businessman just trying to make his mark, also mentioning that he's not a killer, but does business with them. He's afraid of Leviathan, but not so afraid that he won't challenge them. Apparently, he believes that Agent Carter and the SSR are capable of protecting him from Leviathan, as he asks her for just that. Unfortunately, Carter and the SSR don't get the chance, as SBD catches up to them and forces events that lead to Leet's death. The last thing Brannis tells Carter is in the form of a drawing he scratches in the dirt—what appears to be a heart, intersected horizontally by a wavy line. I *swear* this is familiar to me, but I canNOT remember how/why. His artificial voice box smashed, Leet can't explain what it means before he dies, but we're meant to believe that this is connected to what he left unspoken earlier: the one thing that Leviathan is interested in.

More than a laryngotomy?

Okay, so our Leviathan agents have lost their voices. They have access to some unusual tech, including the Fringe typewriter adapter, and likely whatever machinery it took to reach Howard Stark's vault. Maybe they're a little more resilient than the average human, too.

What if that scar was the physical sign of a much more involved procedure? Something that together with the vocoder device GAVE Leet and SBD voices they never had before? What if they'd been altered more significantly, to help them draw oxygen from the air, when most of their lives they'd been drawing it from ocean water? Throw in a full body skin bleaching treatment and I'm talking about modifying Atlanteans to pass for and survive (and communicate) as surface world humans!

Think about it. Code name: Leviathan—a giant sea beasty! With the industrial age and war production of the surface world, the oceans would be significantly affected by artificial pollution for the first time in history. World War 2 sea battles could have been responsible for untold undersea collateral damage. And the two atomic bombs that ended the war in the Pacific? An undersea civilization with advanced (or even comparable/parallel) technology is not going to miss those.

Yeah, it may be crazy talk, but I love the possibilities in it. We don't have to bring Namor in. Maybe Attuma. Start Atlantis with a true warlord in charge. Maybe bring Namor in as a moderate, ready to talk or negotiate? Although… When does atomic bomb testing in the Pacific begin? Perhaps that is the cover for a crippling attack on an Atlantean civilization that had negotiated a peace, but the surface world found too threatening. Secret history!

Oh oh oh! Maybe it wasn't a legit surface world government or coalition, but Hydra! Working thru its many heads, or is it legs? No, heads. Whichever. you know what I mean.

Something Leet said… Fight the Future?

"You're not going to like the future, such as it is…" Interesting choice of words. Cryptic… Big Picture-y… One reading is that he believes that Leviathan's "coming" specifically will bring some kind of ominous doom, if not for everyone, then at least for Agent Carter and her side/kind (America? the SSR? the Good Guys?). Another reading is that Leet actually knows what the future is/will be like, and that Agent Carter won't like it.

Of course my comic book brain wants to read everything possible into THAT. =)

Perhaps Leet is from the future, and Leviathan is based there, sending agents back in time to ensure that certain events in the past lead to a Leviathan-favorable future. But Leet turns out to be a non-believer and opportunist, and once he finds himself in 1940s America, he realizes that he could set himself up very comfortably for the rest of his life in this past. His profiteering ends up derailing Leviathan's apparent plan to exclusively control Stark's bad babies and discredit the man, and perhaps destroy his legacy, in the process.

Such a plot, originating in the future, would point to present-day enemies of Tony Stark, no? And, by identity and association, Iron Man, the Avengers, and perhaps SHIELD. That is a pretty tantalizing idea, especially given that AGENT CARTER is currently airing in AGENTS OF SHIELD's time slot until they return to finish season 2. *I* think that it would be great if the wrap-up to CARTER in the 40s leaves/connects to a legacy that the present day agents of SHIELD are dealing with.

Some reminders to myself… To the best of my AOS recollection, at the time of AGENT CARTER…

1. Whitehall is locked away.
2. Hydra is playing dead (Zola is working for deep dark SSR).
3. The Obelisk and blue boy are in storage w the Ark of the Covenant.

Some more reminders to myself… To the best of my AOS recollection, as of the mid-season finale of AGENTS, the following hot items are in play…

1. A hidden subterranean city below Puerto Rico.
2. Kree tech and genetics.
3. Inhumanity (terrigenesis triggered by the Obelisk in the hidden city chamber).

And, a wonderful wild card that I'm kind of happy and amazed has been kept in play in AGENT CARTER…

Vita-radiation! As far as I can recall, we have no stories as to its origin/discovery. What if its origin is extraterrestrial? Perhaps that fact is unknown even to its discoverer (was it Erskine)? Maybe a patron who knew of its ET origin gifted a scientist or several scientists w the opportunity to work with it? In any case, I'm glad this wild card is in play. It gives me some comic booky hope that we'll see something superpowered in Carter's case files. If not fully realized in that era, then maybe later in the MCU.

Do we know how old the MCU's Nick Fury is? =)

Keep on keepin on~

AGENTS OF SHIELD: The Clairvoyant: Hail Hydra?

Some more rambling on the Clairvoyant, incorporating some events and intel revealed in CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER.

]]] WINTER SOLDIER SPOILERS FOLLOW [[[

Let's say Clair Voyant, aka CV, is a SHIELD agent who's been recruited by Hydra. Let's say CV moved up the ranks of both organizations, to a level high enough to gain access to Zola's work, specifically the Insight Algorithm, perhaps an Alpha or Beta, y'know? Not in its ultimate, Hydra-ted form. CV sees a way to exploit the Algorithm for his own personal agenda, copies/steals it, and begins using it to plan and predict. The first thing CV would do would be to hide himself from both sides. How? Modifying his SHIELD file to project a competent, loyal, sufficiently high-level, but not trouble-making operative, basically painting the picture of a successful but forgettable drone.

What agenda?

I like the Clairvoyant as having a personal stake and/or a high ideal as the drive behind his clandestine machinations. On the surface, it seems like CV's operations, aka Centipede, are focused on the development and acquisition of exotic weaponry. I don't think we've seen that weaponry applied in the support of a particular ideology, right? Seems mostly like an arms dealer on the surface, traveling in the same circles as alien tech scavengers and exiled cybercriminals, right?

Not very satisfying to me, but that might be enough. Especially as a til-now-phantom-like third party in the SHIELD-Hydra dynamic. A mercenary villain, building an enhanced mercenary army for hire.

Wow. Can you imagine Hydra getting SHIELD on the ropes at some point in the WINTER SOLDIER struggle and Coulson cutting a deal with the Clairvoyant to *hire* his forces to help SHIELD? And maybe Hydra counters, but CV sticks w Coulson, as he can be trusted while Hydra certainly cannot.

What if CV tweaked Insight to do more than hide himself, but also cripple Hydra, perhaps out of philosophical disagreement? That would be a nice touch. Like when the mob turns its Tommy Guns on the Nazis instead of the cops, cuz, F that—Nazis! Y'know?

So, on the surface, Centipede looks like an exotic arms developer and dealer and super army for hire. But what does the Clairvoyant really want out of this? What end would this be a means to? Well, it's the creation of a force that can stand toe-to-toe with SHIELD and perhaps Avengers. I've gone on quite a bit about my wild hopes that there is time or dimensional travel involved, that the Clairvoyant doesn't just have SHIELD files from the present, but from the future as well. Well, the algorithm renders that unnecessary. So, maybe CV has used the algorithm and discovered an imminent Earthican catastrophe—Insight itself? The rise of a supervillain or superpowered force? The age of Ultron?—and created Centipede as a pre-emptive strike or defense against it. Or as a force against which SHIELD (and Hydra?) can be tempered and strengthened, to better face this coming apocalypse.

I say Earthican because the algorithm operates on recorded personal history and data, and we can assume that CV would only have access to human information…

Or can we? What if CV is an extraterrestrial, or has access to extraterrestrial data? Perhaps the algorithm, applied to an ET-net, revealed that another battle in the higher form of war is going to take place on Earth soon and in his way is helping to arm and prepare the adorable Earthicans.

Would be a nice comic booky "Humans Number One!" to have a mad Earthling scientist develop something like the algorithm that no one's seen applied in the rest of the galaxy. Hari Seldon's psychohistory, anyone?

Or, we go back to one of my old theories that doesn't require ET data or the algorithm, but simply Nick Fury's do-what-has-to-be-done-to-protect-humanity directive. SHIELD as the world knows it is too massive (so massive that it's unwittingly become home to Hydra as well) and transparent (compartmentalized, sure, but everything is logged somewhere) to do the dirty work needed to properly defend the Earth in a higher form of war. So, Nick sets up an independent rogue op, completely disavowed and unconnected to SHIELD, to develop weapons and soldiers in the wild, to fund itself any way it needs to, and then to get big enough that it has to lock horns with SHIELD, and in that conflict, SHIELD gets smarter, stronger, and when it wins, acquires weapons that it would otherwise have been unable (read also as unallowed) to ethically and safely develop on its own.

Keep on keepin on~

WINTER AGENTS: syncing up CAP2 and AOS…

I made some connections between AGENTS and WINTER SOLDIER when doing my post-movie debrief ramble, but let me try and think it thru in more detail…

]]] WINTER SOLDIER SPOILERS (and the usual crazy talk) FOLLOW [[[

(Note that this is based on the assumption that events of AGENTS and SOLDIER sync up as soon as possible. Here's a ramble that allows for more time.)

In AGENTS OF SHIELD: End of the Beginning… Before Victoria Hand returns to The Hub, she relays that Agent Sitwell is to report to the Lemurian Star. This is the SHIELD barge that Cap and the Widow are sent to free from Batroc and his pirate mercs (enlisted by Nick Fury).

In AGENTS OF SHIELD: End of the Beginning… May relays to Coulson that Fury is back on the grid. He can contact him to discuss his problem/s. Not sure where this falls in relation to WINTER SOLDIER, but there's definitely no news of Fury's death/assassination in the episode, so it must be before Fury's shot.

In AGENTS OF SHIELD: End of the Beginning… Fitz attempts to set up a secure hard line between The Bus and Simmons at The Hub. He succeeds in getting a broken signal, and while he's working on it, Simmons explains that there's a sudden burst of activity, that a group of agents have stormed the situation room. I *thought* this would have lined up with Steve Rogers's outing of the Hydra tendrils in SHIELD, but none of the Agents have heard about Fury's assassination, right? So, this must be early in the course of WINTER SOLDIER. Perhaps it's a reaction to Fury's assassination/death, which happened at 2am or so, D.C. time, I think? When Fitz cuts May's line, perhaps he cut all comms on The Bus? In any case, in the minutes following that, everyone on The Bus is engaged in gunpointing and doubletalking, right? No time to acknowledge a message from the Triskelion about Fury's death.

In AGENTS OF SHIELD: End of the Beginning… Fitz does a wonderfully lame job of talking his way out of the cockpit and mentions their imminent landing at the Triskelion (to deliver Ward). Perhaps the course change that The Bus makes—a flying U-turn—is made remotely, or pre-programmed and triggered, as part a Nicholas Fury contingency plan: if things get messy (i.e. I have to fake my death) get Coulson and his team as far away from Hydra/SHIELD as possible. Perhaps The Bus and Coulson's team is MMU Fury's Secret Warriors, his answer to a Hydra-corrupted SHIELD, outfitted with last generation equipment (which might make them safe from certain modern technological vulnerabilities) and an eclectic mix of operatives and specialties, including two 084s (one natural—Skye, one man made—Coulson) and their highly skilled watcher (Agent May, reporting to Fury).

In AGENTS OF SHIELD: End of the Beginning… Victoria Hand at The Hub issues orders to bring down that plane (The Bus) and kill everyone on board except Agent Coulson. Hrm... No interest in Skye? Perhaps because she already has her blood at The Hub, thanks to Simmons. The latest this could be in the events of WINTER SOLDIER would have to be Fury's death. Hand would not show her hand as a Hydra minion yet, but maybe The Hub has been strategically staffed with Hydra, and Hand doesn't need to take over by force. But—SOMETHING happened that Simmons mentioned over the static-y secure line… Perhaps Hand, directed by Pierce, used the Fury assassination as pretense to apprehend potential troublemakers, which would include all of Coulson's team. Not sure if I remember enough to piece together a decent string of logic to explain that, tho. Is there a way to connect the dots from Wade killing the supposed Clairvoyant (Dourif) to Fury's assassination by an unknown/ghost (Winter Soldier).

So, the next chunk of this season of AGENTS OF SHIELD plays out in the course of the second two-thirds or so of WINTER SOLDIER, after Fury's assassination. In the epilogue of the season finale, I hope to see Coulson speaking loudly and clearly, knowingly at Fury's grave (the place that Cap is supposed to send anyone who wants to see Nick), as we pop thru the headstone's surveillance camera and monitor to see Nick watching, listening, and grinning at Coulson's report from some unlikely safe house. Maybe across the street from Cap? An office in Stark Tower? Working a food truck? Renting a room at Aunt May's? Heh.

Oh—I know! Coulson shows up at Fury's grave to drop off the objective of his final mission as a SHIELD agent: the eyeball of Victoria Hand. For Nick to have inserted into his socket before returning to the Triskelion near the end of WINTER SOLDIER. =)

I know it looks like Victoria could be Clair Voyant, but I'd really like for her to be yet another link in the chain.

And, I'd still like for Centipede and the Clairvoyant to be something separate from cut-off-one-head-two-more-shall-take-its-place Hydra. Perhaps the Clairvoyant went double-rogue, lifted Zola's algorithm for a specific, not as high-minded as forcing freedom on the thankless masses purpose, but what? Making lots of money via exotic weaponry? Seems kind of lame and base to me. Gotta be something bigger and better. Maybe the exotic weaponry is means to a more personal end.

I want it to be personal somehow. Involvement of time or dimensional travel a bonus. =)

Maybe it's to take down SHIELD and Hydra for something they did to the Clairvoyant? Or *will* do?

I want the Agents vs. Clair + Centipede to outlast the mothballing of SHIELD.

Hrm… AIM, anyone? =)

Oh, and cuz I haven't said enough crazy but totally likely stuff yet this post… Is Skye Spider-Woman? Or Ms. Marvel? Kree flesh wouldn't reject Kree chemistry the way human chemistry would, right? We've been told that her parents died, but we were never told they were human, right?

RE: Dourif as the Clairvoyant prop. Man! That was some lovely wonderful brilliant casting and yarn spinning! Casting Bard Dourif and not hiding it (having his name, plain as can be, in the opening credits) was a stroke of simple genius.

Brad Dourif? O man, he's *totally* the Clairvoyant! Why else would you get Brad Dourif? I'll bet I'm the 167th to tweet it, too! Duh, Internet!

But hey, not only is this the Marvel Universe, but a chunk of the Whedonverse, so think about it, people! Who's gonna take sweet, sugary convention, like casting Brad Dourif as your vile evildoer, and then punch you in the stomach while you're lapping it up?

But, y'know, in the supercoolest way possible? In the way to which you can only respond: thank you, sir, may I have another?

I'll tell you who: a Whedon. Or TWO, even! Nicely frickin done, MoJed. =)

Keep on keepin on~

AGENTS OF SHIELD: WWNFD?

What would Nick Fury do?

Okay. You're in command of SHIELD, an intelligence agency dedicated to protecting humanity and the world. You've been made aware of threats by forces known, unknown, shadowy, and superhuman, intent on engaging in a "higher form of war." Thanks to a synchronicity of special individuals, events, and artifacts, you were able to help win the first spectacular engagement in such a war. Unfortunately, along the way, your secret, plan A, defense was revealed to be built on tech developed by or co-opted from the Bad Guys of earlier conflicts. When this is uncovered, the Good Guys (many of whom might individually be considered WMDs) take issue, apparently on moral grounds. So, the tech is destroyed, or at best, mothballed.

But how can you count on being AVENGERS-lucky in a consistent way when new, supernatural threats from unexpected quarters arise with greater and greater frequency? You can't.

We know that Fury wants Earth, humanity, but most especially, SHIELD to be ready, properly armed, to combat the powerful and dangerous forces involved when fighting a "higher form of war." But, he knows that the greatest advancements in tech and enhancement require taking steps that most men and women who believe themselves to be good, moral people, would not agree to. At least not in the light of day. So, how to take those steps without actually taking them?

Have the people who don't care about being seen taking those steps take them. The scientists and businessmen and despots and just plain villains who don't care about being branded "Bad Guys," or who consider themselves and their work beyond such a naive concept, they can develop and test the next generation of WMDs in the wild, unregulated, without oversight. SHIELD identifies and brands them as the enemy, a threat to security, the common good, even existence, then captures them and appropriates their advanced tech, weapons, and research.

Yes, such progress is made at the cost of others' well-being and safety, perhaps involving extortion, blackmail, mind control, and murder, but it's made. By the Bad Guys. Not SHIELD. But hey! Why throw away a perfectly functional Chitauri blaster, right? Why not reproduce and perfect the dimensional portal opener that accidentally trapped an unwitting guinea pig between dimensions? Why not use the super soldier serum knock-off since it's been perfected (after hundreds of mortal failures)? Some of these Bad Guys might be self-made, but others could be run from a disavowed, invisible arm of SHIELD, some branch granted its own initiative—kind of like a dark version of Coulson's team—branch that might produce something like Centipede.

So all this rambling means is that I like Centipede as a a straw man and incubator for SHIELD R&D. I would *LOVE* for it to have been masterminded by a SHIELD Agent from the future (who in our present might come to be called the Clairvoyant, no?). An Agent who survived a reality without Centipede and the stronger SHIELD that it enables, a SHIELD that is/would've been properly armed to deal with a catastrophic threat that destroys the world, or America, at least. =)

Maybe the future Agent is Nick himself, or a apocalypse-hardened Coulson, or… a Deathlok. Would *love* to see present and/or future Deathlok side-by-side w Cap in an episode or movie! =)

Hrm… Does "WWFD?" work better than "WWNFD?"

In a completely unrelated bit of theory crazy talk…

I would love for the ultimate conflict w Thanos (most likely involving a certain set of reality-shaping stones) to be resolved in part by Captain America seizing the gauntlet/staff/raincoat/whatnot of Infinity and using it to reverse all of the terror, tragedies, and deaths caused by the machinations of the Mad Titan and the Elders of the Universe, but, with just a little something extra—a little reality tweak for Cap himself, an order to the stones to rewrite the universe so that he could be reunited with his best friend Bucky Barnes, thusly rewriting a timeline that we may never see into the one that we do see in WINTER SOLDIER. That would be crazy, tho, right?

Keep on keepin on~

"Agent of E.A.G.L.E." makes the Colbert Report gallery!

"Stephen Colbert: Agent of E.A.G.L.E." joins "ColberTron" in the Colbert Report's "Art Me Up" gallery this week!


Alas, it didn't get a mention on the show like "ColberTron," but hey, that's *two* portraits up for my quiet-guy-keeps-to-himself self—woohoo! =)

I am a little disappointed that someone else's THEY LIVE riff made the gallery instead of mine. I guess he gets points for making the LIVE-ness the primary and more iconic focus of the portrait, whereas I split focus with a wordier LIVE message and the "Stephen's Colored-In Friend" portrait layout. Shmeh.

Gotta say, I like my rambling patter for that one, too. O well.

You can see all of my "Art Me Up" goofs (so far =) in this flickr album.

Keep on keepin on~

Stephen Colbert: Agent of E.A.G.L.E.

Originally titled "Stephen Colbert: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." =)

Another insomnia-fueled Colbert portrait goof. This time, Stephen Colbert, Superpatriot, is drafted to serve with the elite Platinum-Ops agency, The Enforcement of American God-Loving Enterprise... =)

Hrmm... Is "Enforcement" or "Expansion" better?


See earlier portrait riffs here. =)

Keep on sleepin on~