S.W.O.R.D. Ongoing

Cool. I like Agent Brand and Beast. They make a nice couple. Plus, Lockheed is fun, too. [Link]

When the series begins, readers will discover a new status quo has established itself in the S.W.O.R.D. regime, with Henry Peter Gyrich leading the organization and forcibly removing all alien beings from Earth.
"When we actually start the series, [Agent Abigail] Brand is abstractly still in control of S.W.O.R.D.," says Gillen. "Joint control with the new appointee Gyrich, admittedly, but still in a position of responsibility. It's Gyrich's machinations that allow her to be sidelined. Which, as you can imagine, [is something] the ever-personable Brand doesn't take particularly well."
And while Gyrich may have wrested control of S.W.OR.D. from Brand, that doesn't mean she'll play any less of a role in the series, alongside a few other familiar faces.
"She's still the lead," confirms Gillen. "Well, co-lead with Beast. While the book is about everything that happens on this boundary between the cosmos and the Earth, the relationship of Beast and Brand is the real heart of the series. They're our mutual stars, and I think make a brilliant couple. When planning on S.W.O.R.D., [series editor Nick] Lowe and I became obsessed by the idea of the 'adventuring couple' which seems to have fallen out of common use. We figured we could have some fun with that.
"[Brand], Beast, the empath Sydren and Lockheed are Brand's A-Team of operatives, the core away-team group who go and look at whatever little problem may be threatening life as we know it. Obviously, in an ideal situation, she'll be supplementing that with the resources of S.W.O.R.D. She's often in un-ideal situations."
While Lockheed will appear prominently in the series, though the mini-dragon has seen better days.
"Lockheed is especially fun [to write], though he wouldn't agree with that particular analysis," Gillen remarks. "The loss of Kitty Pryde has really changed the dragon. He's fuming, angry, depressed and aggressive. In actual practice, he's the team's Wolverine; which, yes, gets some laughs, until he sears off someone's facial features."

Of course, anytime Beast is in a book that's not the X-Men, I hope to see Wonder Man there as well.

More on S.W.O.R.D.

S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) is a fictional counterterrorism and intelligence agency in Marvel Comics' main shared universe. Its purpose is to deal with extraterrestrial threats to world security.

The group was first introduced in Astonishing X-Men vol. 3 #6 by Joss Whedon. S.W.O.R.D. is a counterpart of the better known S.H.I.E.L.D. but since the departure of Nick Fury as director of S.H.I.E.L.D., relations between the two organizations have become strained. The head of S.W.O.R.D is Special Agent Abigail Brand. Its primary command-and-control HQ is aboard the orbital space station known as the Peak.
S.W.O.R.D. had an undercover operative in the X-Mansion. In Astonishing X-men #17 the identity of this undercover operative was revealed as Lockheed.