I love Abigail Brand. I’ve wanted to dye my hair green ever since she first showed up during Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run as the head of S.W.O.R.D. – the CIA to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s FBI – with her alien-green hair and sweet sunglasses.

Whedon’s golden-touch when it comes to kick ass female characters was turned to eleven when he created Abby. S.W.O.R.D. (Sentient World Observation and Response Department), headquartered on an orbital space station, deals with alien threats to Earth and Abby’s in charge. It’s kind of like if Fox Mulder had Dana Scully’s anatomy and got to chill out on the JLA Watchtower. From the word go, Abby was her own woman – a lot of second and third string characters in the Marvel U don’t really stand up on their own because they were created to fit a team dynamic, but Abby blows that all to hell. Homegirl’s saved the world from countless alien threats – she even snuck on board a Skrull ship during the invasion and killed every single Skrull on board by her damned self.

And she’s a good shot too, she targeted a cannon on a Ghost Box, FROM SPACE, and saved the world from yet another interdimensional invasion.

She’s got good taste in men; she’s dating Beast. Who, while covered in blue fur, is actually a human, so everyone just calm down. Brand herself is half alien, and apparently her father was a big blue thing too, so Beast’s appearance doesn’t phase her one bit. Her half-alien heritage has given her some sweet powers of her own; she can generate heat and speak in alien languages no other human could physically vocalize. It’s about damn time Beast got a real AWESOME girlfriend. (Watching him leap to her rescue while her escape pod plummeted to earth in this week’s Astonishing X-Men was awesome – “I mean, I’ve lost girlfriends before, but losing one to a ballistic re-entry in half a spaceship is just going to seem gauche when people ask.”)

This is a woman who can kill scads of Skrulls, cry when she sees the destruction they’ve wrought, then turn around and fuck their shit up even more. Abby can be gruff, but she’s doing Nick Fury’s job on a galactic scale, you’d be a bit cantankerous too!

As director of S.W.O.R.D., Abby is basically on constant Galactus watch. I feel safer already. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of her in Spider-Woman and I can’t freakin’ wait for S.W.O.R.D. #1, starring Brand, Lockheed, and Beast. Now I just need to figure out who I’m going to commission my “Abigail Brand, Agent of S.W.O.R.D.” classic Steranko-style Nick Fury cover mock up from. It’s gonna rule.