I find it strange that, even though I am a comic-book fan through and through, with a particular preference or Marvel Comics, and even though I am also a fan of television adaptations of comic book series such as The Walking Dead, I have next to no interest whatsoever in following Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ongoing television series. I find it even stranger that, for all of the box-office clout that Marvel seems to wield at the box office, they seem unable to translate those all-conquering numbers, and the audiences they represent, into a similarly dominant number of television viewers.
Obviously, I have no intention of reviewing a series I haven't actually watched, but considering that the series is a far cry from the ratings juggernaut that Marvel Studios were no doubt hoping for, I thought I might give them some thoughts on what they may be doing wrong, as opposed to the creators of TWD, currently the most popular show on television right now.
Of course, it seems a bit ridiculous that Marvel should be taking unsolicited advice from someone like me, but hey, it's a free country, and more than that, ultimately it's the attention from the fans, or lack of it, that can drive these movies and T.V. shows to great heights of success, or right into the ground.
My theory is this: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., unlike the massive movie franchise from which it was spun off, has very few moorings in the comic books on which the movies were based, apart from the titular organization to which the characters belong. The lead character, Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson, is a creation exclusively for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and was a common thread running through most of the films, starting with Iron Man. Every other lead character, however, seems to have been created purely for the show, although a few minor characters from the comics, like Deathlok and Victoria Hand are featured, and some characters both from the comics and the MCU, like Lady Sif (Jamie Alexander) from the Thor series, as well as Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and S.H.I.E.L.D. head honcho himself, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) have done walk-ons as well. These appearances, however, seem to be few and far between, and feel like nothing more than crumbs from the MCU pie.
For me, the charm of the MCU is seeing characters I have grown up with in one medium vividly realized in another. The first Spider-Man movie, for all its flaws, was an utterly magical experience for me, and while I only started reading Avengers comics when I was quite a bit older, I was similarly enthralled when "Earth's mightiest heroes" had their big-screen team-up two years ago. I've loved most of these adaptations, even some of the less-well received ones, and it's in no small part because I grew up with the characters whose adventures were realized onscreen. Characters like the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men were all a part of my childhood and adolescence, and so, when their adaptations were well-done, and sometimes even when they weren't, I was happy. Judging by the grosses, so were a lot of other people.
With AoS, the rule is different, and the creators of the show seem less interested in tapping fans' nostalgia and instead cashing in purely on the Marvel brand. It calls to mind the short-lived, pre-Marvel studios television series Mutant X, which Marvel and some partners made in an apparent attempt to circumvent the exclusive license enjoyed by Twentieth Century Fox to produce X-Men related films and shows, although no similar legal issues exist here. Basically, Marvel wanted to sell audiences a product with their name on it, but with next to none of the history that truly made their name resonate with so many people. That seems to be eerily similar to what's happening here, although AoS certainly has more polish that Mutant X ever did, at least based on the little I've seen.
With TWD and even Game of Thrones, people know that they're getting the main characters from the books on the small screen; it's one of the reasons why Vol. 1 of TWD comics, (a collection which, by the way, is over ten years old) has been a consistent bestseller ever since the T.V. series premiered; people wanting to see where the show came from get almost exactly what they're looking for, as Season 1 was remarkably faithful to much of that first volume, the usual liberties notwithstanding.
Marvel, to be fair, has made some attempts to draw connections between the MCU and AoS, as evidenced by the aforementioned guest appearances and, most recently, a significant narrative tie-up between the show and the highly successful film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. At the end of the day, though, Marvel still hasn't addressed the fact that AoS has very little to do with the comic books on which the whole MCU was based.
While I understand the imperative at Marvel is to bring as many characters as possible to the big screen (which isn't even necessarily true, given that Daredevil, a character worthy of a decent feature film if ever there was one, will have a Netflix series next year), there are, to my mind, plenty of supporting S.H.I.E.L.D. players who really wouldn't be able to support a feature film on their own but who might just go the distance in a T.V. show, like the Contessa, Clay Quartermain, and maybe even Gabe Jones and Dum Dum Dugan, who were Howling Commandos in the first Captain America movie but who also happen to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the comics. If there's a problem with aging them, then maybe their kids could be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents instead. It's a pretty substantial list, and any of those characters would more likely resonate with fans than generic, made-exclusively-for-T.V. characters with cookie-cutter names like Ward, Fitz and Garrett. With shows involving superheroics like Heroes and Alphas, and more investigative/conspiracy shows on the air than you could shake a stick at, AoS needs something to set itself apart, and that could have been characters derived from comic books with decades of history.
Not only that, but if the show won people over with their stories, then fans of the television series could then dive into old S.H.I.E.L.D. comic books and relive the fun in another format, just as the newly-won-over fans of TWD did when they went off in search of the trade paperbacks.
As it is, well, it really just strikes me that, in the great, MCU scheme of things, AoS just doesn't matter, and to many of the millions of people who pay good money to patronize the MCU, the T.V. show feels like a side dish they can skip.
Again, this isn't me dissing the show, which I can't do because I don't watch it. It is me, however giving my opinion as a virtual lifelong geek as to why the billions of dollars in box-office revenue from the MCU are not translating into chart-topping ratings for AoS.
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