Hawkeye #19 – Review

By: Matt Fraction (story), David Aja (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Clint learns that he doesn’t need to hear to listen.

The Review: Another year, another Eisner for the creative team behind Hawkeye. I confess I have no idea how these things are doled out, how anyone gets nominated or voted or ultimately chosen. But aside from the rather monotonous series of wins for Saga, the Eisners seem to be a legitimate honor for those who receive one. For Fraction-Aja, the award in question was Best Single Issue for #11, a.k.a., the dog issue.

I wasn’t terribly surprised by the win. Despite #11‘s flaws from an ongoing narrative point of view, it was definitely a groundbreaker, pushing Fraction-Aja to new creative heights in finding ways to convey information through a visual medium. For the same reasons, I have a feeling this issue will be a contender for the same award next year. The formula is simple: Fraction devises a novel plot development that’s also a major obstacle for comic book storytelling, and Aja ingeniously works around it. The result is something you can safely say you’ve never seen in a comic before.

Hawkeye #15 – Review

By: Matt Fraction (story), David Aja (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Get morning coffee.  Check.  Do crossword.  Check.  Defeat hitman…?

The Review: Much as I’ve enjoyed this series, I’ve always felt one of its biggest failings was the lack of an overarching plot.  Fraction definitely seems like he knows where he’s going, but his narrative has been distractible and meandering, making sudden jumps in time and perspective, giving you information in such a fractured way that it took months for us to learn what would ordinarily take a few issues.

And for what?  Mostly for Fraction to experiment with his storytelling and kill time with witty, random asides.  Indeed, the Kate-centric issues have been about almost nothing else.  Fruitful and entertaining as many of these experiments and asides have been, you would have preferred a speedier resolution to this whole deal with the Bro Gang, or Tracksuits, or Titushki, or whatever they actually call themselves.

Hawkeye #13 – Review

By: Matt Fraction (story), David Aja (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Rest in peace, Grills.  You were a grill great guy.

The Review: If Hawkeye has a flaw—which may seem like blasphemy to some people, I understand—it probably lies with Fraction’s errant storytelling.  The last arc, if you can call it that, has made major time jumps from issue to issue, often leaving one plot thread unresolved as it moves on to the next.  We’ve gotten some strong individual issues out of that, but there’s an absence of cohesiveness which makes serial investment in the title worth it.

You’ve never doubted for a moment that Fraction would tie things together eventually, however, and this issue does exactly like that, quite literally filling in all the gaps between Grills’ death, Kate’s departure, and Barney’s arrival.  Amazingly enough, despite the jumble of different scenes Fraction has to cover, he manages to maintain a logical and efficient narrative flow.  Since the earlier issues already got most of the substance out of the way, the story can move freely from beat to beat without slowing down for some necessary exposition or action.  The man has a plan, after all.

Hawkeye #12 – Review

By: Matt Fraction (story), Francesco Francavilla (art)

The Story: The Bro gang discovers that sometimes it’s easier just to give a guy some spare change.

The Review: I tend to think of the evil sibling as a pretty goony thing, as far as plot devices go.  It’s a cheap way to add some tension to the story, but it rarely feels convincing.  In the real world, you may squabble with your brothers and sisters a lot, but actively swearing vengeance upon each other is pretty excessive.  More often than not, the vengeful sibling comes across as irrational or stupid, making it easy for you to hope they disappear back into the woodwork.

Last time I heard of Barney Barton, he had just joined the Thunderbolts (though operating, confusingly enough, under the Dark Avengers title), masquerading as his brother.  Not long after, I dropped the series, leaving me completely ignorant of his ultimate fate.  So it’s with no little surprise that I see him here, homeless and disheveled, calling up Clint in a phone booth as if all the drama with their sudden-death battle and his run as a supervillain never happened: “Hey, guess what?  Chickenbutt.”

Dark Avengers #175 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Declan Shalvey (art), Frank Martin Jr. (colors)

The Story: I can’t believe it’s not the Avengers!

The Review: Title changes do absolutely nothing for me, good or bad, unless they come with creative changes—or unless the new title is just plain heinous.  Dark Avengers may strike you as no less silly than Justice League Dark, but it’s no more silly either (and actually, it’s quite a bit less).  And since we have the exact same creative team as when the series was still Thunderbolts, what do I care if they change their name to Dark Avengers or The Kinda Evil, Kinda Not Squad?

Yes, that last one is a joke, but it does get to the essence of the team, no?  Only originally, it referred to the general, moral character of the members.  With the exception of Luke Cage, Songbird, and Mach-V (the fully reformed), the rest of the T-bolts all come with a funky mix of criminal tendencies and heroic aspirations.  This issue introduces a new set of ‘Bolts—and they are still called as such, so you have to question the point of renaming the book at all—and it turns out most of them are just plain villains.