Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: The Marvel Universe's Men in Black

When you think you've seen something extraordinary--unbelievable, even--men in dark suits and unmarked vehicles will show up to convince you otherwise. Your computers and cell phones will lose their hard drives, rendering evidence lost, and your uploads will be removed from the Internet. Stop us if you've heard this one. It's not just the kind of behavior we've seen glimpses of in Thor, but the Rising Tide viral site describes the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as basically Marvel's Men in Black. So how does that work as their series sees them apparently interacting pretty openly with the world? Well, The Avengers changed everything. S.H.I.E.L.D. spent years successfully covering up all of this kind of stuff, so that it became myth and the Rising Tide are like the Lone Gunmen from The X-Files; conspiracy nuts hoping to "out" the superhuman community. Obviously, though, they were beat to the punch by the Chitauri, who made enough of a mess that it can't be hidden and The Avengers were too big a part of turning the tide back to deny. That doesn't mean they won't be playing some games with people, though. "We Keep Posting videos...and someone is taking them down. We don't know who, but we won't be silenced," says one of The Rising Tide's posts. That's interesting in that the first viral campaign video, featuring the "Hulk fire" footage, was taken down off the ABC YouTube account almost immediately, with a lot of people assuming it wasn't meant to go live until the official pickup announcement for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. What if it was an elaborate part of the viral campaign to remove it once it was trending in the press? Keep an eye out...