It's fine storytelling if you're talking about a franchise made up of a lot of different stories.
In the context of the movie The Avengers, it would have been completely pointless to make mention of any of that stuff because it had no bearing on that particular story.
Doesn't mean you can't, in another story set in the same world, say "oh, here's a person you haven't met yet."
I dunno, I feel like characters that could have potentially helped out definitely do have a bearing on the story, that's background information that could have changed the story potentially. That's why its a bad idea to later say they existed. With one or two, it's passable. With three or four, it begins to seem a bit incredulous. With a whole Marvel Universe, it would be stupid character-wise for no one to have said "Where's the..." Fantastic Four or Heroes for Hire, or Spider-Man or X-Men or other X-Men or Defenders, even though story-wise it would have been necessary for them not to say that. I guess I'm repeating myself now, so we can just agree to disagree here.
I think any pre-existing heroes will be like your Golden Age example, people who in no way could be even vaguely considered active circa Avengers.
Get Mark Valley as Clay Quartermain and I'll be interested.
That would be pretty frikkin awesome. That was an awesome show.
I agree I definitely am not against cameos or even recurring characters (stuff like Carol Danvers showing up) and such but I definitely want the focus to be on SHIELD and not the superhero of the week guest star.
That's a pretty good example of SHIELD operatives that are/become superheroes themselves. Personally, I'd like to see a few characters like that, and a few non-powered awesome ppl with equal footing/story/rank/etc.
You know I might be the only one but I actually would like this show to be based off Item 47. The main cast would be the characters from Item 47 with the addition of Maria Hill and maybe Agent Carter (hopefully played by Amanda Righetti).
The plot would be about the lower ranking Shield agents investigating and capturing low level superpowered bad guys that rob banks, murder and whatnot. Their HQ should be that building that Steve Rodgers came out of in NY, while the Helicarrier (a separate department of SHIELD, hence the different logos) is used by Fury for catching bigger fish. I assume that in the MCU that the FBI, Homeland Security and possibly CIA don't exist or perhaps combined to form Shield. So basically i look at this show as a FBI type series but with Marvel characters.
I would like to see them catching crappy bad guys like The Walrus, Ruby Thursday, Wrecking Crew, etc, every week. Characters that would never in a million years show up in a movie but at the same time there should be a seasonal story arc that leads to the plot of the movies. Like for example, Shield learning more and more about A.I.M. which will then lead to Iron Man 3.
In order for the show to work I think it should serve to fill in the gaps for each movie but also having their own voice. Also, all the big guys like Avengers and Fury should only make appearances via tv news or surveillance footage.
I feel on the overall low-level-bad-guy hunting, but Fury is their boss, he should show up as often as possible. And as much as I wouldn't watch a espionage show with the tone of Item 47, the idea that Chitauri technology has fallen into the wrong hands seems like a great starting point. The misuse of the Phase II stuff couldn't make things much better.
I dunno... I feel that the show shouldn't bee too heavily focused on superheroes. Remember, this is SHIELD the TV series, and not Avengers the TV series. Meaning, guest starring superheroes should not happen regularly and/or overshadow the main characters.
One interesting question is how morally grey should the protagonists be? One of the things that kept coming up on The Avengers was how Fury was as bad as Loki in ruthlessness and past sins, and how SHIELD is actually a pretty shady organisation. Think about it... their top operatives were former assassins (i.e. murderers-for-hire), were willing to develop new weapons of mass destruction, and already have a number in their arsenal (in the movie, the Helicarrier had at least two whole nukes; and the way it was shown left me with the impression that those two weren't anywhere close to their entire nuclear stockpile).
Given their perceived escalating arms race between themselves and metahumans (mainly off-worlders), it would make sense that they would want to develop superpowered beings of their own that they know will operate on SHIELD's terms. In this regard, I think it would be quite fitting to have an episode or overarching subplot where the characters do things like try to steal the Iron Man tech from Stark, etc.
SHIELD is an intelligence organization, with the secrets necessary to run such a thing, I think there are stories to tell there, but at no point should SHIELD be 'the bad guys.' Even if the main character is caught in an 'enemy of the state' situation, SHIELD is on the side of the angels... just really close to the line because that works best for them.
On the superhero thing, I think part of making it a SHIELD show and not a West Coast (Great lakes?) Avengers show is only having one or two people with powers as main characters. It is cool that a team of 'normal' people can take down some of these super powered people, and reclaim some of these powerful devices. This is also necessary for TV. You really can only afford 5 or so visual special effects shots per episode (other than blur/travel powers). You need one in the beginning usually to illustrate the threat, and one mid way to show the threat escalating. That leaves you only about three for the climax. You don't want to have to split that between three or more characters because then some of them can't use their powers that episode, and you have to come up with shenanigans. Better to have, say, Quake or Brand to introduce the idea of a powered agent and add in Carol later. Everyone else is just bullets.
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