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.