Hawkeye (2012) #1-11

Hawkeye #1-11

Originally released in 2012

Written by Matt Fraction

Art by David Aja (#1-3, 6, 8-9, 11), Javier Pulido (#4-5), Steve Lieber (#7), Jesse Hamm (#7), Annie Wu (#8), Francesco Francavilla (#10)

Okay... This looks bad.

Not the series itself, though; just Clint's situation in roughly every issue.  I've read it before, I thought it was great back then, and I'm revisiting it after I-don't-know-how-long.  The series focuses on Hawkeye (Clint Barton; ex-carnie turned Avenger) and Hawkeye (Kate Bishop; daughter of a wealthy family turned Young Avenger) as they take on the Tracksuit Mafia, a group of Russian bros who punctuate seemingly every sentence with "bro", bro.

The series has several artists throughout it, as listed above, but David Aja's art style sticks out the most.  I'm hardly an art critic, so I'm not sure how to properly describe it, but it feels almost minimalist at times while doing a good job at focusing on the little details when needed. (there's an entire page showing how unnecessarily complicated Clint's TV set-up is for no particularly reason beyond "because he can include it")

Matt Fraction's writing does a great job with adding humour and showing that, even when Clint's not an active Avenger, he's still going through ridiculous (albeit more grounded) situations.  He's not exactly fighting off robots or time travelers with a bow and arrow, but his battles with various mobsters and criminals are still entertaining.

I feel like some long-time Avengers fans might not be too fond of Clint's portrayal here, because he's not portrayed as being particularly competent.  He's skilled at archery, sure, but everyone keeps mistaking him for Iron Fist, he gets robbed in Madripoor, he's divorced, he gets beaten up and kidnapped on a regular basis, and his apartment is in shambles. Still, I'm not sure how much the Avengers comics delved into his personal life, and he's consistently portrayed as being a good person despite his awful luck outside of the Avengers.

One thing I noticed about the series is that the order can be all over the place at times.  For example, issue six sets up a big battle in December between Clint and the Tracksuit Mafia after Clint bought his apartment building to keep it out of the hands of the Russian thugs, but the next issue jumps back to October, where Clint and Kate are dealing with the effects of a hurricane, and the story hasn't gotten back to that big battle from issue 6 yet.

While I know the series will get back to this conflict eventually, all of this jumping around the timeline can make it a little confusing for someone's first read-through.  In addition to Clint's apartment woes, he also earns the further ire of the Russians when he tries to protect a femme fatale who goes by Penny, who is trying to get into a safe where the combination can only be attempted three times before its contents are destroyed.

Kate gets less focus than Clint, at least in these early stories, though that might be because she's got her life together (for the most part), unlike Clint.  Issues 10 and 11 indicate that she'll get her own plotline, though early on in the series, she tends to react incredulously to Clint's shenanigans.  The series also introduces the greatest hero of them all - Lucky the Pizza Dog!

I'm exaggerating, though Lucky (a dog that Clint rescued from the Tracksuit Mafia - Clint fed the dog pizza, and the dog saved him when the mobsters shot at him) is the viewpoint character of issue 11.  There's not much dialogue that can be understood, so David Aja's art does most of the storytelling.

This feels like a series that's better read in quick succession, though it's 22 issues long, which is a lot to read in one day for the purposes of this blog.  What could have easily been a cynical cash grab (Hawkeye gets a solo comic the same year that the first Avengers movie comes out, where he's one of the founding members of that version of the team) turned out to be an extremely entertaining comic.