Set in the shared Marvel Universe, the series is part of the Dark Reign era and centers around the titular Government Agency of Fiction, its director Abigail Brand, and her boyfriend Hank McCoy (better known as the mutant superhero Beast). S.W.O.R.D. is the Sentient World Observation and Response Department, a sister agency to S.H.I.E.L.D., and is tasked with diplomacy and defence for extraterrestrial matters. Brand herself is half-mutant and half-alien, a cynical pragmatist who's trying to keep Earth safe while dealing with the aliens in a fair manner.
Unfortunately, as a result of a recent invasion by the alien Skrulls, S.H.I.E.L.D. has now been discredited and disbanded. Its replacement, H.A.M.M.E.R., is being run by Norman Osborn, a Villain with Good Publicity, and Osborn's managed to get his own representative - the xenophobic bureaucrat Henry Gyrich - appointed as Brand's co-director.
Gyrich has a very different plan for S.W.O.R.D., and Brand and her allies will hate it. But that's not a problem, as Gyrich has a plan for them as well - and they're going to like that part even less...
The first issue was released November 11, 2009. The series ended with #5.
A Sequel Series of sorts, also called S.W.O.R.D., was released in 2020 as part of the Krakoan Age. It focuses on Brand again, as leader of a revived S.W.O.R.D. that's controlled by the new mutant nation of Krakoa, not human governments.
S.W.O.R.D. (2009) contains the following tropes:
- Affably Evil: Unit is calm, polite and friendly. He's also an extremely dangerous Well-Intentioned Extremist with a Compelling Voice. And he's playing a very long game which, in the short term, sometimes manifests as Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Unit assists Gyrich against Brand, but betrays him to the Drenx. He then assists the Drenx before betraying them to Brand and Beast. All of this is justified by his Well-Intentioned Extremist aims.
- Compelling Voice: Unit's held in a maximum security cell with anti-subliminal fields. As soon as they're turned off, his voice can control anyone who hears him speak. This is represented by his Speech Bubbles shifting to white text on black backgrounds.
- Drowning My Sorrows: At the start of the series, Lockheed is miserable and drunk following the apparent death of his best friend Kitty Pryde in Astonishing X-Men. Sydren tries to snap him out of it, with little success.
- Facepalm: A group of giant rock aliens seeks to avenge the deaths of four noble creatures whom humans had decapitated and put on display... at Mount Rushmore. Once they learn the nature of the error, this trope occurs.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: When Unit meets the Drenx, his head and face shift from his human features to Drenx. He even discusses the change in these terms.Unit: Let me slip into something more comfortable... [His face blurs and shifts, becoming a Drenx face] Well, more comfortable for you.
- Smart People Play Chess: Beast and Unit, implied to be the two smartest beings in the series, start a game of chess during one conversation. Just to reinforce their intelligence, they're mentally keeping track of it, with no need for pieces or a board.
- Speech Bubbles:
- Death's Head gets pale yellow speech bubbles with jagged tails, representing his robotic voice.
- When Brand speaks in Skrull, she gets green speech bubbles. When she speaks in Kree, they're blue.
- When Unit's able to use his Compelling Voice, it's portrayed with white text on black speech bubbles.
