If all you know about Hawkeye is that he’s a guy who shoots arrows in the Avengers movies, then you don’t know anything about Hawkeye. Lucky for you, then, there’s an excellent comic-book series that shows you just how awesomely complicated Clint Barton is. For example, he’s great with boats.
Hawkeye #16 — the last issue of a series that started in 2012 — came out last week, wrapping up one of the strongest single-character superhero runs in a long time. A creative team anchored by Matt Fraction, David Aja, Matt Hollingsworth and others made a character who’s been around for decades feel brand new. Part of that appeal of the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye comes from its small, tight focus, when compared to other superhero series. The recurring description set the tone from the very first issue:
Secret identities tend to be just another staging area for superhero drama to happen. Not in Hawkeye. Clint Barton’s personal life feels well and truly separated from his duties as an Avenger. He almost never wears his superhero get-up and deals with problems that have nothing to do with a villain wanting to take over the world.
The series’ main conflict comes from Clint’s ongoing brawls against the Tracksuit Draculas, a Russian mob collective that’s trying to buy out the building he and a bunch of working-class folks live in.
The Tracksuit thugs make for great antagonists, because they’re largely portrayed with broad strokes of cartoonish buffoonery, but there’s always an undercurrent of sadistic menace present, too. For all the broken English, you can’t just laugh them off.
Hawkeye isn’t just about Clint Barton. The other heroic lead is Kate Bishop, who used the Hawkeye codename as a member of the Young Avengers when Clint was presumed dead. The two characters present a nice contrast to each other: Clint’s a carnie who grew up poor and started his costumed career as a bad guy; Kate’s a rich daddy’s girl who funded her team after strapping on the purple quiver. Their bickering, affectionate, same-but-different relationship formed the emotional core of the book.
Much of the fun of 2012 Hawkeye comes from the way that Fraction and company repeated phrases, established rhythm and experimented with visuals to play with structure. Most of the stories in the series’ first half started in the middle of that issue’s drama, with first-person narration that said, “OK, this looks bad.” The storytelling often jumps back and forth from past to present but still remains readable.
Bad as things got, Clint and Kate were usually able to wrap up the goings-on with aplomb. But that eventually changed. One of the riskiest hallmarks of Hawkeye comes around the halfway mark, when it starts feeling harder to root for Clint as a protagonist. For a guy billed as “the greatest sharpshooter known to man,” he’s a man with a ton of emotional blind spots. His freewheeling approach to life leaves a lot of collateral damage in his wake, and refusing to deal with that eventually pushes Clint and Kate apart.
Hawkeye boasted a strong sense of aesthetics. Some of comic’ best stylists have contributed to its pages, like Francesco Francavilla, Annie Wu and Javier Pulido. The book’s muted colour palette provided continuity for all those different styles and underscored the down-to-earth approach taken towards its lead character. The occasional use of dense and/or intricate panel layouts was a visual signifier of the tricky moral tangles Clint and Kate would find themselves in. And the dog. The dog saw some shit, too.
The action that happens in Hawkeye matches the rough-and-tumble tone — which feels like it owes a bit to classic 1970s shows like The Rockford Files — of its approach to the title character. It may occasionally feel choreographed but it rarely feels pretty. You can feel the gravel and scratches and when throwdowns happen.
Hawkeye was a comic book about the punches we absorb while moving through life, and the importance of dealing with the baggage we accrue while doing so. Clint Barton is as screwed up as he is gifted. The series that showed us what that combination looks like was a great example of the successes of creator-driven work in the superhero genre.
Comments
20 responses to “Bro, Read The Great Hawkeye Series That Just Ended. Bro. Seriously.”
Been reading this for a while and bloody love it! The Avengers was a pretty cool movie but this Hawkguy is the one I think of when people say Hawkeye. Plus Kate Bishop is also totally rad.
Hawkeye.
Yeah. Hawkguy.
Pizza dog?
Lucky? Ehh, we’ll think of something else.
Is this the series that has the Deadpool cameo when Kate meets him for the first time & thinks he’s dressed up like Freddie Kruger?
Sorta, that’s the 4 issue spin off Hawkeye Vs Deadpool, Crosses this with Deadpool’s just finished Brian Posehn written series
The more you know…
Nah, that’s Hawkeye vs Deadpool, though, it was pretty awesome as well.
Got it. Another series added to the watch list then!
With the Rocket Launcher!
Glad they finally got around to finishing it, new issues were starting to become so rare that I forgot it was still unfinished every time a new issue dropped.
I was hesitant to try the series out when it started, but it quickly became one of my favourite books.
Slightly off topic, but is the deapool/hawkeye cross over worth reading? Is there a tpb for it yet?
Hawkeye vs Deadpool was a lot of fun, definitely worth reading if you’re interested in either character.
This is sooooo so so good. Probably my favourite short-run series ever. The dialogue was so excellent and fluid and Katie Kate was a badass, way more tough than Clint, and he was sweet and oh god, Pizza Dog.
We got to meet Matt Fraction a couple years ago and gushed over the book and he signed them for us 😀
Katie in LA with all of the Long Goodbye references is pretty much nerd catnip for me.
I KNOW. Oh lord, when I started reading it, I was like, “Holy shit, Raymond Chandler is alive and well and hippppp”.
Also how much did Harold look like Eric Bogosian from Law & Order – http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3310484224/nm0091899?ref_=nm_phs_md_1
Elliot Gould alllll the way http://www.thefreshfilms.com/actors/images/gould_elliott.jpg
Their love child ;D
Didn’t Hawkeye #23 just get released last week, and *that* was the end of the Matt Fraction run?
Article says #16
Bah I’m still sad that Spiderman’s stint as an X-man Professor was cut short after 6 issues =(
For the record, it’s Hawkeye #22, not #16. Definitely a must read for anyone who likes comics like, at all, though.
I am going to miss this! So much love for the series and it’s characters. Also it accomplished a fantastic car chase in a medium of still pictures!