The Shield: Who He Is, and How He Came to Be, II

When last we left our hero, THE SHIELD, his dad got blowed up real good in the Black Tom Explosion and he was being raised by J. Edgar Hoover. Yes, really. As crazy as foreign saboteurs blowing up munition ships off the Jersey shore sounds, it's even crazier because, well, it actually happened. Who said comics aren't educational?

Comic books have a long tradition of heroes being inspired by their parents' dying words.

• Uncle Ben's "With great responsibility, comes great whining."
• Jonathan Kent's "Whatever you do, son, don't marry Lana!"
• And, of course, Thomas Wayne's "AAAAAAARGGHHkkk --*thud*!"

So it was with the Shield, as Joe Higgins' father leaves him with the immortal words:

"Anatomy formula S*H*I*E*L*D! Carry on, Joe!"

Put that on your tombstone. Oh, and I really wish we would have gotten a thought balloon from J. Edgar here: "Now the boy is all MINE!"

Now, any normal person would simply conclude that the Black Tom Explosion had left shrapnel in Lt. Higgins' brain, causing death-bed dementia. But the Shield is no normal person! He, instead, proceeds to waste 12 to 15 years and three large panels becoming a presumptuous chemistry geek so he can "carry on".

Even after he gets his Ph.D. in chemistry, Joe is still laboring to complete his father's experiment.

Told ya so.

In his quest, Joe employs the most advance scientific equipment of his day, including:

the Bikini-filled Bingo Dispenser

the Bio-magnetic Lobster Trap

the Table of Pain & Pleasure

the Perspective Device

the Atomic Plant Hanger

the Flying Static Balls

and the Device That Renders Boyfriends Unnecessary.

This hoo-hah proves useless, of course, because all great superhero origins are capped by an utterly random moment of self-realization, like a bat flying in a window. The Shield's moment comes as a hallucination induced by pipe-smoking the weed he grows on his coffee table.


Inspired, Joe dons the latex sex gear he wears only to church on Sundays, grabs some topical poppers, and heads to the Table of Pain & Pleasure.


What could have caused this inspiration (I mean, other than all the chemicals Joe messes around with)? Can you imagine..

He saw this:

SWEET BABY JESUS ON A SWING-SET,
WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!

I really don't have the intestinal fortitude -- or, rather, the "innervation" -- to examine the so-called Anatomy Formula SHIELD.


Suffice it to say that since the next step is... ...

to rub his Dad's improved formula on those parts of his body and lie still under a strobe light for 12 hours, I am simply dying to know how he rubbed in on his HEART, his LUNGS, and most titillatingly, his SACRUM.

I'm betting that it somehow involved using the Device That Renders Boyfriends Unnecessary....

TO BE CONTINUED