Yaya wrote:
Well, I'm glad somebody understands what the hell is going on in that title.  Cause he lost me around the time when Galileo was copulating with an alien...on panel.   If ever there was a 'WTF' moment in a comic, that was it. 
I have to go with BF on this, he's gotten too self-indulgent.   Needs to reign things back in.   In the case of S.H.I.E.L.D., he needs to stay off the drugs.   In Fantastic Four, he needs to tighten up the plot lines up a bit.  He starts too many dangling threads and just keeps adding to them.   
He's obviously a brilliant writer, but needs to get back to Earth so the rest of us can enjoy it.
 It's actually pretty simple to understand, once you get into Hickman's mindset.  
The organization of SHIELD with Nick Fury is created by the former organization of SHIELD that was founded by Imhotep in ancient Egypt, trough an imagination-suggestion machine, that effects the subconscious of whoever it is directed at. This machine is featured in the background of nearly every issue, it's one of the ways that old shield controlled the world.
Old shield in itself is the result of a temporal paradox, wherein the shiny glowing man that appears troughout all of history to ask geniuses to join SHIELD ( such as Imhotep) is actually the grown and fully evolved Leonid, the kid that serves as the readers PoV. The reason SHIELD cries out" THIS IS NOT HOW THE WORLD ENDS!!" and always have faith that they will save the world, is because they KNOW that the Earth isn't doomed yet. Adult Leonid exists on a multi-temporal level, that has no doubt occured after he grew old enough to live until the End of the Universe ( which I suppose means Leonids best pal is Mr Immortal from GLA...). 
Leonid himself is the son of Galileo and a female Deviant ( genetically unstable human off-shoots created by Celestials). I'd say some of his weird cosmic powers are the result of Galileo's dabbling with the Deviants forbidden quantum-magic. 
Leonid was however taken from the 18th century at the point in time when Galileo killed his mother and the Deviant colony, by Night Machine/Nikola Tesla.
( I had him figured out as Nikola Tesla by #2 because of his moustache and the fact that he was the only multi-super genius from history that was missing from the story, and of course the fact that he is powered by some type of tesla-generators) 
Tesla then brought him back home to the 40's, and raised him. Tesla was of course instructed to do so by the adult Leonid, since had he been raised by Galileo and the corrupted SHIELD, the world would have ended in chaos.
I could go on with even more story-details, but I'm guessing everybody has had quite enough by now...
I think I must have a differently organized brain than the majority of peeps online, because it does appear as if I belong to a minority that can actually see the patterns in Hickman's writing. 
I think I've got an idea why that is tho, but it's going to sound very self-indulgent and self-gratulatory, but who gives a sh*t? 
When I read Hickmans stuff... it's like we think in a similar way. I'm involved in world-building of a comic here in Sweden, ( got a couple of my first stories on their way to become real comics, yay!) and some of my ideas, regarding use of non-linear time and space in the story-telling, theoretical science and metaphysics, and what I myself call "inept quantum-theory" are actually similar to some of Hickman's own ideas.
Reading his comics, is therefore incredibly inspiring. The man is cooler than school!