Hawkeye

Hawkeye

What an awesome tv series.  Definitely the most rewatchable of the lot so far.

Highlights:

Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop.  She’s a perfect fit for the MCU in every way, I can’t wait to see more of her.  But as good as she is, she’s still no match for…

Florence Pugh is back as Yelena Belova!  She’s as delightful here as she was in Black Widow, and I couldn’t get enough of her.  She’s hilarious, lethal, and nails the emotional bits when it comes to her love and grief regarding Natasha.  Her chemistry w/ Steinfeld is the best part of this show, and I hope to see much more of them in future movies.

Jeremy Renner.  So nice to see Renner get a chance to explore the depths of Clint Barton’s character, an opportunity that was largely denied him in the films.  He finally gets a few showcase action moments as well, especially in that third episode.  Speaking of which:

Bert and Bertie.  I’d never heard of this directing duo before, but they make that third episode sing in a way that brought the series alive after the somewhat lackluster first two episodes.  The car chase is one of the best action moments in MCU history.

Tracksuit Mafia.  Bro!

Kingpin: Great to see Vincent D’Onofrio back in this standout role.  But did they really kill him off after only one episode?

Echo.  I’m not as high on Alaqua Cox as everyone else seems to be, but there’s definitely potential here.  It’s probably for the best that they didn’t focus on her mimetic abilities so close to the appearance of Taskmaster in Widow, but it also takes away from one of the things that makes her awesome in the comics.  Still interested in her upcoming series.

Linda Cardellini.  So happy to see that there’s more to her than loving housewife.  Hope to see more of her moving forward.  

The LARPers.  That initial scene with them is hilarious.  

Rogers the Musical.  I mean, it’s horrible.  There’s no denying it.  But I’m also thrilled that a fully produced number exists.

All in all, a thoroughly entertaining series and my favorite of the bunch.  Time to start ranking them!

1. Hawkeye

2. Wandavision

3. Loki

4. Falcon and Winter Soldier

Regret watching: No

Would watch again: Yes

Would buy on DVD: Yes

Rating: Good with flashes of Really good

Thompson Hawkeye, She-Hulk

Hawkeye 13-16

The last issues that I was missing in the run came out in trade last week.  The book starts with the Generations: Hawkeyes issue that I’ve already reviewed (very briefly).  I did not expect it to have any repercussion on the main title, which is silly in hindsight.  Kelly Thompson wrote both, so it stands to reason that she’d tie in the Generations issue to the storyline proper.  

Thompson’s Hawkeye is very fine work.  It’s a worthy successor to Fraction’s run.  There’s just as much humor and heart, starring a protagonist who’s just as flawed as her mentor (though in different ways).

Things that I liked:

Madame Masque and Kate complaining about each other’s costumes.  Because of course there was a reason for both of them to put on the other’s.  

For all their bickering, the two Hawkeyes really make an amazing team, and it’s so fun to watch.  And Leonardo Romero makes the action sing.

I like that Kate’s friends are so fiercely loyal to her.  It’s a small thing, but it’s heartwarming to see.

Kate’s brief time with her mother is beautiful.

There have really been a ton of fights between Masque’s minions and Hawkeye.  It’s nice to see that acknowledged. “I cannot be kicked in the face again today by a Hawkeye!”  Heh.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

She-Hulk 1-3

Dan Slott’s back with Juan Bobillo after a too-long dalliance with Paul Pelletier.  Unfortunately, it’s still not as fun as their first couple issues in the previous volume.  There is a nice meta rant about comic fans waiting for the trades, which I enjoyed.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Fraction/Aja Hawkeye, Thompson Hawkeye

Hawkeye 8-22, Hawkeye Annual 1

I’m falling behind on everything.  I’d better catch up this weekend, or I’m going to be totally screwed.  

Hawkeye 9.  Halfway through, I started asking myself if it was as good as issue 3, and by the end, it proved itself to be so.  Let’s see why!

First of all, it answers the burning question from the previous issue: Why are the women in Hawkeye’s life standing around with cards on their foreheads?

The answer is the obvious one - they’re playing Indian poker with Clint.  Why are they all dressed like gogo girls? Because David Aja draws the hell out of them that way.

Fraction spends the rest of the issue following up on each of these ladies as they respond to the unexpected kiss in their own way.

This looks bad in 8 out of the first 9 issues.

Natasha (The Work Wife) chases down the offending woman.

Bobbi (The Ex-Wife) serves Clint with their divorce papers and beats the crap out of some Bros for good measure.

Her wet hair is beautifully drawn in that last panel.

Don't know how it took me so long to see Aja's resemblence to David Mazzucchelli.

There's something startling real about how he draws that dress strap.  I'm serious.

Kate (Kate) is woken up in the worst possible way, by three exasperated and concerned Avengers.  She does her best to save Clint from the wrath of these woman, and also beats the crap out of some Bros for good measure.

Seems like the best alarm clock ever until you realize it isn't.

The bros aren't having a good day.  Seeeeriously.

Jessica (The Friend-Girl) calls Clint out on his crummy behavior, as the boomerang from issue 3 comes all the way around to smack him in the face.  

And at the end of the issue, when things couldn’t seemingly get worse for a physically and emotionally thrashed Hawkeye, Matt Fraction kills Grills!  What the heck??? And even worse, he doesn’t follow up on this cliffhanger for another three issues. I completely forgot about it the first time around, 3 months is a long time to leave a thread hanging with no reminder.

Those three sidebar issues each focus on a different supporting character - The assassin Kaziu, the pizza dog Lucky, and the brother Barney.  All fine character studies, with some particularly fine work by Aja depicting Lucky’s thinking process.

Parallels Clint's shot from issue 3.

Nice homage to Anatomy of a Murder.

Not all of Fraction’s experiments go quite as well.  While it was fun and easy to read the iconography used for Lucky, the sign language in issue 19 fared far worse.  

I really struggled with this issue.  The sign language ground the momentum of a compelling story to a halt, and actively reduced my enjoyment of the issue.  Same with the Chris Eliopoulos-drawn issue 17, which was a complete waste of time with the animated Winter Friends. They can’t all be winners, and considering how amazing the rest of the run is, I’m more than happy to forgive these missteps.  

Kate’s sabbatical to the West Coast succeeds more as a wonderful character study than a fun story.  The weird incorporation of Beach Boy and Elliott Gould analogues baffle me. The Madame Masque stuff is fun, and I like how what could have been a one-and-done impersonation back in issue 4 has become a running antagonism that’s run through Kate’s solo title as well.  

Annie Wu is amazing at body language:

This was seriously a team.

Love how the word balloon fades into the environment as he passes out:

 

The final two issues play out the confrontation that’s been building for the entire run - The Barton Building versus the Bros.  It’s suitable epic, and they didn't kill Lucky! And when it’s all over, we’re left once again with two partner, silently doing what they do best.

Lovely ending.  Check out the little look he gives her.

I had completely forgotten just how amazing this title was.  It reads so much better all at once. Taken monthly, too many of the callbacks and chronological storytelling devices get forgotten over four weeks.  Read in three days, it shines as a single piece of art. So. Good. Staying on the shelf, my OCD can live with splitting The Nam across two boxes.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Really good (Pure Joy for issue 9, Nice for the Wu issues, Disliked 17, Fine for 19.)

Hawkeye 1-12, Generations: Hawkeye 1

I picked up the Kate Bishop solo title for mega cheap.  Very happy I did, I’ll be picking up the last four issues when it comes out in trade.  Kelly Thompson does a very fine job of carrying over Kate’s snarky voice from Fraction’s run.  And now Kate gets beaten up just as much as her mentor, which makes so much sense.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

What’s good advice for bros is good advice for us all.

Fraction/Aja Hawkeye

I’ve renamed the “Everything I Love About Comics” rating to “Pure Joy.”  Because someday I’m going to get to Sandman or Swamp Thing, which is going to be Best Comics Ever, which is  technically also everything I love about comics, but in a different way from these Hawkeye comics. These are so fun I could burst, and I don’t think Morpheus would approve of being characterized as joyful.  

Issue 9 forced me to reconsider my rating convention, because it also radiates Pure Joy.  Two times in as many days. As Aaron Sorkin would say, “In some cultures, we’d be married.

Going back to yesterday, and the things that made issue 3 so wonderful:

Lucky, the Pizza Dog.  Aja draws him perfectly, so his presence immediately bumps things up a notch.  

Good boy.

The inventory of Hawkeye’s arrows, and Kate’s mockery of their gimmickry.

The Bro mafia.  I never would have thought that the excessive use of “bro” could do so much to perfectly define a group of characters.

Fraction jumps around chonologically more than Tarantino.  He does it well here (and over the course of his entire run.)

This:

Kate snark:

Hawkeye’s joy:

How the cars lean forward in the first panel as they’re speeding along.  With this issue, Aja draws one of the best car chases ever.

How Fraction gets around swearing and foreign languages:

Perfect use of Chekov’s gun:

Green Arrow does something similar with the boxing glove arrow in JLA 9.

And of course he gets the girl at the end.  In typical Clint fashion, it’s going to come back to bite him in the ass (boomerang!).  But he deserves the win today.

It all fits together into an absolutely perfect blend of art, humor, action, and storytelling.  It makes me so happy.

I’ll do issue 9 tomorrow.  

Fraction/Aja Hawkeye

Hawkeye 1-7

I’m reading Hawkeye now because I finished Marvel Box 4 yesterday.  But because of all the comics that I cut, there’s a good amount of room left in the box.  I can’t move stuff over from Box 5, because The Nam is next, and I don’t have 80 issues worth of space, and the OCD part of me doesn’t want to split a title between boxes.  So I looked at my shelf comics to see if I had anything that would fit, and Hawkeye fit the bill. I haven’t gone back to it since I first bought it, and while I liked it, I didn’t remember it as good enough to keep on the shelf.  

Big ass mistake.  These comics are really really good.  Issue three may be as near to perfect fun as a comic can get, requiring the newly-formed “Everything I love about comics” rating.  Don’t see how I can keep this off the shelf, which doesn’t solve my not-full box problem. Sigh.

Anyways, back to the comic.  I bought this on the strength of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s prior collaboration on Iron Fist, which was sensational.  Plus, I love the Archer archetype, whether it’s the two Hawkeyes, Oliver Queen, Connor Hawke, Jessica Biel in Blade 3, Legolas, Merida, the list goes on.  

I’ve decided that Matt Fraction could totally write a kick-ass Jessica Jones.  Fraction’s Clint Barton and Bendis’ Jessica Jones are two peas in a pod, I’d love to see Fraction’s take on the owner of Alias Investigations.  I didn’t think anyone could follow Bendis, but Fraction nails the down-on-their-luck nothing-goes-their-way everyperson, the screwup with good intentions and a million character flaws.  Six of the first seven issues of this run start with Clint narrating some version of “This looks bad.” And it’s usually worse than bad.

I’ll probably talk more about issue 3 tomorrow.  Considering how much I loved it, it’d be a shame not to.  But the rest of today will rave about David Aja. His art is deceivingly simple, but the thought behind the composition of each panel is clearly evident.

Beautiful, clear storytelling.

A simple, brilliant flip of the camera to show both sides of the room.  Took me a second to catch it.

Like the sidescrollers of the 90s

Such a fun game.

A hero standing up for his little slice of world.

As fill-in artists go, Javier Pulido ain't shabby.

I have so much more to say.  I’ll continue tomorrow because I really need to go to bed.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Really good.  (Everything I Love About Comics for issue 3. Updated to Pure Joy)

Hawkeye and Mockingbird, Doomsday Clock

Doomsday Clock 4

It’s new Rorschach’s origin story.  Turns out he’s the son of Rorschach’s psychiatrist from the original series.  Went a little crazy from the monster bomb, spent his time in an asylum getting trained by Mothman.  And now that Reggie’s in Arkham, Reggie : Disguised Bruce Wayne :: Walter Kovacs : Reggie’s dad in an intentional bit of symmetry.  

Byron Lewis as Mothman is the real draw of this issue.  There’s tragedy in his dignified madness, and the extra reading material at the end reinforces how he deserved far better than he got.  He’s Ted Knight in James Robinson’s Starman, but without the salvation granted to him by his friends and family after his institutionalization.

Gary Frank’s art remains perfect for this title.  

Hawkeye and Mockingbird 1-6

Speaking of Gary Frank, David Lopez looks a lot like early Frank, before he added all the cross hatching to his work.

David Lopez faces.

Early Gary Frank faces.

A lot more lines on Frank's faces now.  

This comic is another example of the premise outstripping the execution.  Hawkeye and Mockingbird running around the globe as Mr and Mrs Smith sounds like the best idea, but Jim McCann does himself no favors by tying in Bobbi’s complex history with the Phantom Rider.  He should have dismissed it the same way he did the Secret Invasion arc, with a “ long story, don’t ask.”

The plot with Bobbi’s family is pretty decent, a situation where both Clint and Bobbi have defensible points of view.  I also understand both characters’ reasons for breaking up at the end of the trade, but the “you’re a killer, and I can’t condone or do that” doesn’t make sense considering this couple’s history and understanding of each other.  I agree with Bobbi’s assertion that for some people, “We love each other, but that doesn’t mean we should be together.” But it really doesn’t apply to her and Hawkeye.

The title was canceled after 6 issues, but I wouldn’t have kept buying even if it had continued.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck

Dark Reign: Hawkeye, New Avengers: Reunion

Dark Reign: Hawkeye 1-5

I like the concept of this miniseries more than the execution.  Bullseye goes on a solo adventure during his tenure on the Dark Avengers.  He kills things, he questions his sanity, he kills his father, the end. Nothing wrong with it, nothing stand out about it either.  Tom Raney’s okay, and that’s about it. Thoroughly middle of the pack, and there’s nothing inducing me to keep it.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck

New Avengers: The Reunion 1-4

I love the pairing of Hawkeye and Mockingbird, but somewhere through the second issue, I wondered if this story would read any differently if you swapped them out for Green Arrow and Black Canary.  Wise cracking archers, serious martial artists. Deeply in love, not the best at relationships. If it weren’t for the Marvel-specific references, it’s possible.

I love Jo Chen's covers.  

I’m not the biggest fan of Clint in this series.  I get that he never wanted to divorce Bobbi, but he comes across a little too strong for my tastes.  He doesn’t give her any of the space that she asks for, and fails to recognize that the non-Skrull Bobbi truly wanted a divorce.  Though to his credit, Clint has matured a great deal since Bobbi last saw him. And they do make an excellent power couple. Their fight scenes together are great, and I just love their costumes.  (Credit to David Lopez for some solid, clean art.)

I liked this enough back then to keep buying their subsequent team-up comic, which I’ll get to tomorrow.  We’ll see if Hawkeye can back off a little.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine