Hawkeye #16 – Review

By: Matt Fraction (story), Annie Wu (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors)

The Story: Will Kate get to the bottom of her latest case?  God only knows…

The Review: Because I am nothing if not obsessive-compulsive when it comes to pretty much anything, I had something of a panic attack when I picked up this issue and saw #16 on the cover.  Fortunately, one frantic Bing search* later revealed that it was Marvel that had switched things around for reasons I didn’t bother to investigate.**  Anyway, the last Kate-centric issue of Hawkeye was so good, it’s not as if you’d mind seeing her again this soon.

This time around, Kate tackles the delightfully messy celebrity culture of her new hometown.  For Kate, the complicated melodramas of Will Bryson (a trademark-skirting stand-in for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys) and his brother Grey are an anathema for her usual stridence.  Indeed, she sinks herself into the Brysons’ lives believing there’s “a case” behind the conflict, only to discover it was simply the byproduct of “being nuts and stoned all the time and richer than God[.]”  Such is the way of a P.I., to discover the human frailty behind the crime.