SHIELD #11 December 2015

 

Story by Mark Waid and Art by Howard Chaykin.

This series is basically a tie in to the Agents of SHIELD TV Series and the cover promises us a young Dom flirting with Simmons and Melinda May but neither lady appears in the comic and it’s old man Dom again.

Dom turns up to SHIELD’s covert headquarters asking for Nick Fury, who he hung around with in 1959. 

Coulson sees Fortune, and one of the techs mentions that Fortune looks too young to be 100 (as the story is set in 2015 and he was born in 1915) Coulson says there’s a story but it’s above the tech’s paygrade.

Coulson greets Fortune with a similar reverence to how he met Captain America in The Avengers (2012).  When asked what he can do for Dominic, Coulson is told to get Hydra off his boat The Mississippi Queen.  Clearly, Dom had reacquired it after finding Raven but woke up with a headache and the revelation that he had gambled the boat away to Tug Freeland, an internet financial advisor. 

Coulson takes Fortune to the ship in the flying corvette and shows off a very handy suit feature that changes his business suit to a tuxedo. (Q section – borrow this for the next bond film.)  Fortune gives Coulson a bill for his services but Coulson brushes him off.  Which is a nice bit.

They go to the party, there’s some banter with Tug and Dominic then talks to Obsidian Mars also known as Sid.  Tug tries to throw Dom and Coulson off the boat but Dom starts a fight and when everyone is watching, tells Freeland that Coulson is SHIELD.

Coulson is taken below deck and Dom is given a warning. Dom sneaks after Tug and hears their plan – steal all the data from their wealthy guests, use it disrupt the stock market, maybe a little blackmail with the photos.  But Sid says that Tug thinks too small, just blow up the boat killing multiple billionaires, that would throw the market into chaos.  Dom is caught and thrown into the same cell as Coulson.  He tells Coulson that he knows the plan.  He then reveals that when Raven died she left him the Mississippi Queen and he has frittered it all away.  Dom mentions that he used to have a decent pitch but he stopped watching baseball when Bob Feller lost his edge as he couldn’t stand to watch.

Coulson then hits a button on his shirt and calls a SHIELD strike team.  Tug and Sid take off in a helicopter and Dom finds the bomb she planted on his bed.  Dom pitches the explosive and blows up the chopper.

Later, Coulson hands over the title to the Mississippi Queen to Fortune and tells Dom that he has cured him of his romanticising of Dom’s generation.  Dom then toasts a picture of Sabbath Raven.

This is a really nice story for Coulson and would have made a good  episode to give the other actors a break. 

Dominic Fortune was meant to appear in the world of Agents of SHIELD, played by Delroy Lindo in the spin-off Most Wanted working with Mockingbird and Lance Hunter.  That was filmed in 2016 and never released so we are still waiting for Dom to appear in live action.

A fun idea might be a Disney + series with Clint Eastwood as Old Man Dom and Scott Eastwood as the younger Dom splitting episodes with flashbacks. 

For now this is the last appearance of Dom in any fashion but this is comics so never say never.