[1]Comic book movies have exploded onto the big screen in the past decade, cementing geek culture as the cornerstone of many movie-going seasons. Marvel Comics has been especially successful in marketing movies like Thor and Ironman to an increasingly tech-saavy audience, and the Marvel superheroes that make up the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D., will be coming to television as well.
[2]ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [3]” television series will follow superheroes and special agents as they deal with extraordinary threats across the globe. But one stand-out set piece, a vintage Corvette driven by the star of the show, Clark Gregg as special agent Phil Coulson, is more than meets the eye according to a Wall St. Journal report [4].
The 1962 Corvette is introduced in the pilot episode as a special piece of the team’s hardware, though exactly what its use is isn’t explained until later in the show. Apparently the Corvette is also a jet, allowing the super-powerless Coulson to fly off into the sunset after another heroic mission. No wonder Coulson took the time to name his flying Corvette “Lola.”
The series follows Coulson and his team of hand-picked agents as they go around the world solving out-of-this-world problems. The Lola Corvette seems to be a big part of the plans as well. Considering the S.H.I.E.L.D. team works mostly with high-tech gadgets like lasers and rail guns, a vintage Corvette seems out of place, at least until the wheels fold in and the jet thrusters launch it into low orbit. It’s a convertible of an entirely different kind.