Off My Mind: S.H.I.E.L.D. And Rewriting Marvel's History

S.H.I.E.L.D. is about to make its return but not in the way we thought. In the first issue, we will see that the organization has been around way before Nick Fury was on the scene. According to the solicit for issue #1, Leonardo Da Vinci, Issac Newton, Imhotep, Zhang Heng, Galileo and many others have been members of S.H.I.E.L.D. They've all apparently fought off the likes of Galactus (way before Reed Richards), the Brood and even the Celestials. Is this one of the best kept secrets in the Marvel Universe or just some fancy creative writing?
 
Speaking of writing, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be written by Jonathan Hickman. That right there sells me on the book. The reason I felt the need to write about this (besides that this could be a cool concept) is I wonder how it will all play out. If S.H.I.E.L.D. has been around for centuries, is it just a coincidence that this organization and the one we know share the same initials? Nick Fury is the man that seems to know everything. Did he know about this?
 
I've been a big fan of Hickman's writing on both Fantastic Four and Secret Warriors. What I'm not a huge fan of is when big secret histories are written into comics. I'm not crazy when we get big revelations of events that happened that we simply didn't know about but are supposed to believe happened in the past of the characters we read.
 
A recent example could be the shared history of Black Widow and Bucky Barnes. You've probably seen our video on Black Widow and I do like the connection and current relationship between the two. Unless I missed it, are we just to accept that she knew about Bucky and never thought to bring it up to Steve Rogers while fighting along side him in the Avengers? We just have to accept that all the time Black Widow was around, she knew Bucky didn't die way back when Steve thought he did. Perhaps it was just a matter of her memory being fuzzy when her government tried manipulating her.  There's also the history of Sentry that we're just supposed to accept. Yes a nice neat explanation was made but it's still something that's been forced upon us. This past weekend I even had a discussion with JoeyF about how Vulcan, Cyclops and Havok's brother, was inserted into the X-Men's past without us knowing about it until Deadly Genesis. And let's not even talk about the "relationship" between Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy and the results of it.
== TEASER ==

I know we're just talking comics. We're talking entertainment. I'm not usually one to get uptight when writers and publishers throw these creative monkey wrenches at us. As I mentioned, I am definitely curious to see what Hickman is going to do with this series. It's just the idea that Galactus was a threat before and no one knew about it when the Fantastic Four had to fight him. I guess I see it as the history of Marvel being rewritten. Should we just sit back and allow things to be changed?
 
I can easily see the new S.H.I.E.L.D. series being something really cool. If it's a hit, will this give Marvel (and perhaps even DC) the idea that new ideas could be rewritten into the past of existing characters and we'll simply eat it up?  Fred Hembeck recently did a humorous story on Little Pete ( Spider-Man) and his first encounter with Johnny and Sue Storm years before they all received their powers. Are we going to seem more of this? 
 
We'll have to wait to see where S.H.I.E.L.D. goes. It's definitely within Nick Fury's character that he  has known about all these brilliant historical figures secretly having been involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. Then again, perhaps the name is just a coincidence. 
 
I just don't want to find out later that Aunt May and Doctor Doom's uncle went to prom together in high school.