Argus and others

[CRaymond]

Marvel’s pretty simple, if you can believe it. SHIELD is the good guys, HYDRA is the bad guys, AIM are evil weaponsmithimg scientists.

I’m fuzzy on the distinctions between DC’s various secret agencies. How the overlap, how they don’t. What they do, how they do it. Can someone help? ARGUS, Checkmate, Stormwatch, Cadmus, SHADE, etc.

[PyroTwilight]

Honestly even DC's pretty loose with what these various groups do in comparison to one another.

Even the Supergirl comic makes it clear the DEO and ARGUS have huge overlaps with generally each agency having to rush to a situation to claim it for themselves over the other.

ARGUS generally focuses on collecting artifacts of huge power or danger and it's also often nowadays one of the bigger agencies it seems like, and sometiems containing specific individuals of huge danger.

The DEO seems to try to aim strictly at aliens and the like and anyone involved in cases with them.

Checkmate is more a strictly legal group trying to keep human and metahumans in peace through more secretive government dealings, though it also tends to do a lot more than that almost having essentially its own espionage groups.

Cadmus aims largely at scientific advances and cloning in particular.

SHADE I forgot about until this was mentioned, aims at more the mystical and monster side of the DCU. Things like Frankenstein and the Creature Commando's. If it's weird but not alien SHADE will be called it to investigate and generally just to destroy.

Stormwatch in DC isn't a government group the same way as these others, don't know much about its Wildstorm self though. They're specifically an alien danger monitoring group essentially. Created to watch and prepare for the possibility of a Daemonite invasion by these Cosmic Arbiters essentially, though they deal with other huge threats in secret, so secret they're virtually unknown by even other government agencies if at all and often stop threats the rest of the DCU never gets to even know of.

[CRaymond]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's mixed up about the whole thing. Your descriptions helped a lot though! thanks!

I realize Stormwatch was a nu52 acquisition of Wildstorm, but I thought it was interesting to position it as a global response force.