There was definitely some plot progression in this issue, but I'm still concerned for the second volume of this series. It's time for Hickman to pull back the curtain on what his story here actually IS . . . and I'm not sure that the actual content, once it's revealed, will actually justify all of the melodramatic build-up.

I liked it better when Hickman was just HINTING at what his story was and what it meant. I enjoyed Vol. 1 of S.H.I.E.L.D. because it was so full of allusions and portentous foreshadowings of great mysteries. But now all that build-up, all those mentions of things like "the quiet math" and "the hidden art", seem like empty rhetoric. Worst of all, Hickman's disjointed narrative, with all of its flashbacks and flash-forwards, no longer seems interesting. I used to LOVE how Hickman would cut to interesting scenes from different time periods. But now those scenes seem less inventive, less original, and less relevant to the overall plot. In this particular issue we get ANOTHER giant monster threatening a historically distant city. That setup was awesome the first time Hickman used it, and it was still cool the second and third times, but now it just seems lazy.

Dustin Weaver's art is still solid enough, but there are no mindblowing layouts and not as much attention to detail. The art is still good, but it's not as great as it was, which only adds to the underwhelming nature of S.H.I.E.L.D. lately.

Issue #1 of  Vol. 2 hardly progressed the plot at all. Issue #2 does progress the plot but it does so in ways that are quite predictable. Leonid has to choose between da Vinci and Newton, and, really, what kind of choice is that? Hickman has so grossly (perhaps even "unfairly") distorted Isaac Newton into such a two-dimensional villain that the reader knows that Leonid can't choose his path. (It would actually be interesting if Leonid DID opt for Newton.) At the end of this issue we're told that--shock--Newton "is right" about the nature of reality, that it does "end". Ironically, this somewhat hopeless viewpoint does give me some hope for the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D., because it suggests the possibility that Hickman has some sort of interesting resolution in mind.

Meanwhile, however, both the Newton character in particular and S.H.I.E.L.D. in general are starting to seem like parodies of themselves. When Newton reveals his hidden mechanical get-up, complete with big wings, it doesn't seem interesting: it seems absurd. Back when Vol. 1 of S.H.I.E.L.D. showed us Galactus towering over Renaissance Italy...it was awesome, interesting and evocative. But now all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s anachronistic historical mash-ups are starting to seem hollow and typical. This is because, at least for the last three issues (going back to the final issue of Vol. 1), Hickman has been relying more on name-recognition ("I am Michelangelo! [But I have no personality!]") and suggestion ("The quiet math... [Whatever that means]") than on actual specificity of content. For the first 4-5 issues of this series, he could get away with that, but now it seems that he's either unable to fill in actual content or else unable to come up with content that makes the characters and story seem as deep as they were heralded.

And even putting aside all of the highfalutin aspects, he's yet to develop Leonid (or Leonardo, or Tesla, or Richards and Stark) AT ALL. So much of their dialog is interchangeable. Leonid says nothing that any other stock "young protagonist" wouldn't say. Richards and Stark banter back and forth, but you could switch all of their lines of dialog, give all of Stark's lines to Richards and vice verse, and it wouldn't exactly ring hollow. That's a mark of poor, very homogenous characterization. On the other hand, there are indeed ways to tell great stories in which all of your characters are cyphers or cardboard cut-outs (heck, Homer in the Iliad didn't really develop his stock heroes' personalities all that much beyond a few token traits), but for that to work you have to have GREAT overall high-concepts that work and really say or represent something profound about the culture. Hickman does have high concepts--but they aren't working. The concepts don't really DO anything besides impress you on a face-value level. He's sacrificed things like characterization in order to shoot for the moon on high concepts. But it looks like he's going to miss his moon shot, so now the lack of personality seems all the worse.

Right now, the idea of this series is starting to seem so much better than the reality. The set-up seems a lot better than the execution and denouement. I hope so much that Hickman turns this around, though. I don't think it's necessarily all downhill from here. There's still so much potential to all of these concepts, and that potential is entirely due to Hickman's greatness as an idea man. He's really swinging for the fences--but I just wish he'd start connecting.