Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26066818-20151123195954/@comment-61022-20160128183218

So I've been thinking about this for a little bit and, granted my thoughts are entirely speculative, I think we can make sense of the whole SHIELD timeline what with all these stories doing period pieces from the 1960s that contradict established continuity.

Given the Winter Soldier and SHIELD 50th stories, I think it's safe to say that SHIELD has existed earlier than originally coined. What's been laid out in Secret Warriors and Original Sin and SHIELD Vol 1, seem to point that the Brotherhood of the Shield had something to do with the formation of SHIELD. Fury certainly had a hand in it in maneuvering other organizations such as Leviathan, Hydra, et al. We already know that Fury was also running secret operations defending the Earth since taking over after Woodrow and Howard Stark. Perhaps Fury saw the formation of SHIELD in the 1960s. But SHIELD was a top secret organization nobody knew about. Putting it into a Cold War context, the United States could have formed SHIELD to carry out operations pertaining to US interests while maintaining a covert status for plausible deniability from the United States government.

I still don't think that makes it likely that Original Sins #5 fits in this era... But I don't think it would be totally outlandish based on the above theory.

Now that brings up two counter origins. The first one being Marvel: Lost Generation #11 which states the United States government tapped Fury for SHIELD and that it was a completely government invention that was being organized about a decade before the modern age. Taking the above into account, perhaps instead of CREATING SHIELD, they were really deciding to make SHIELD public, with Fury in the position as director of the agency at the time. One could suppose that this idea was scrapped for any reason the US government wouldn't make it public at that point: plausible deniability of SHIELD's previous operations, issues with Fury's liability and character, and the state of the world at the time. Also we can't discount that Fury was still running all the angles, manipulating the various terrorist organizations as well as SHIELD to suit his own goals, as seen in Secret Warriors.

Then we get to Strange Tales that said that SHIELD was Tony Stark's baby. I think by this point Fury or the government was maneuvering a situation to make SHIELD public in a way that the public would accept. Tony Stark is the ideal person to use as a PR move. Namely, because his father's ties with SHIELD in the past, his wealth, success and popularity at the time. Maybe they even led Stark to believe that SHIELD was his idea, again plausible deniability for past SHIELD operations while they were still covert, and make the general public accept SHIELD as a public organization. While would also explain all the statements and Stark's involvement in Fury #1 and Iron Age #1-2.

Perhaps the selection of Rick Stoner as director was all a PR stunt. Fury is such a shady character, they had to install someone more respectable and then have him tragically die and make Fury the hero so he could be unopposed in taking leadership of the organization he's secretly been running for years. The fact that he has been manipulating Hydra from the word go could explain how Hydra was able to assassinate Stoner. Also since Stoner was a World War II veteran, you could explain away the Sliding Timescale issues by supposing that Stoner was a LMD (which Fury has used before, look at Dugan) that was programmed with the "I maintained my vitality because of the Infinity Formula through a blood transfusion" explanation that Dugan was programmed to spout as well.

Of course that is all fan speculation on my part, but it would be great if a writer went through and wove something together that explains all of these inconsistencies in such a way. If I could puzzle it out in a logical manner, I'm sure a Marvel writer could. If they don't want to plug it into the premise of the story, they could probably cram it into a handbook and be done with it.