Marvel Comics revealed the global organization S.H.I.E.L.D’s ultimate anti-superhero contingency plan, the extreme nature of which casts a new light on Marvel’s original Civil War crossover event, which split the publisher’s heroes down an ideological divide embodied on each side by Captain America and Iron Man, respectively. When considering what backlash against superpowered individuals could have ultimately led to, Iron Man’s position in the crossover becomes much more understandable.
Avengers A.I. #11 takes the amnesiac A.I. called Alexis on a tour of a future overrun by artificial intelligence. One returned to the past, Alexis reveals that the dark timeline she witnessed came through weaponizing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s a secret nano-fleet, capable of wiping out Earth’s heroes in days. As Alexis states: “nothing is safe” from this potential threat.
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s nano-weapons are only deployed in this alternate future, but they’re implied to already exist within the main timeline. And if S.H.I.E.L.D. had this sort of tech available, then Iron Man’s Civil War position may have, in fact, been right.
At least to readers, Tony Stark was ostensibly seen as the villain in the Civil War event series, for leading pro-Registration forces against his fellow heroes. Seeing cooperation as the only way to prevent more catastrophes involving superheroes, Iron Man willingly worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. and alienated half of the hero community in the process. The Armored Avenger saw this route as the lesser of two evils, and considering that S.H.I.E.L.D. potentially had this gun pointed at the heads of Marvel’s unregistered heroes, Iron Man was arguably right.
Tony believed that the superhuman community needed to police itself, otherwise the rest of humanity would do it for them, and these devastating nano-weapons strongly make that case. If the entirety of Marvel’s heroes had risen up and defied the Superhuman Registration Act that kickstarted the Civil War, S.H.I.E.L.D. would’ve had no choice but to go to war with the heroes they once fought alongside. Considering the power levels of Earth’s heroes, the nano-fleet depicted in Avengers A.I. #11 was potentially the only thing that could have defeated the Avengers, though at a terrible cost.
Iron Man’s actions during the Avengers’ Civil War still haunt him and his allies to this day, but it turns out that he was far more justified than even he realized. With access to such dangerous weaponry, S.H.I.E.L.D. really could have wiped out Marvel’s heroes faster than anyone realized. In the current era of Marvel Comics, the fan-favorite spies’ operations and resources look drastically different, but odds are they’ll be making a comeback sooner or later. And when that happens, Marvel Comics’ Avengers, and all of its greatest heroes, should remember that S.H.I.E.L.D. is far more dangerous than they let on.