Issue #1: All-New Hawkeye
Title: All-New Hawkeye #1
Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Ramon Perez
The Buzz: None really? After the epic last run of Hawkeye, the new team got 5 issues to play with before Battleworld/Secret Wars shook everything up – the story was fine, with many elements in common with its predecessor, though it had a weird ending. Now it gets a second relaunch for the year…
All You Need To Know: Kate and Clint are fighting because of a previous mission where they had to rescue some scared test subject kids, who turned out to be super dangerous. Clint came to terms with giving up the kids before Kate was and she’s pissed off about it…
Story: Ugh, you know what, I think I’m done. I love Team Hawkeye completely, but this so called #1 just continues the same argument they were having before Secret Wars, and it’s getting painful now. I wanted to like this title, didn’t want it to go downhill after the previous creative team left, but it’s like they picked up on three panels from the Fraction-Aja-Wu epic and decided that Clint and Kate’s characters are all about that one time they had a massive blow up, and not all the other cool teamwork and shared sense of humour stuff. Basically in this, Clint and Kate fight about the last mission, which was months ago and in a “different” comic, indispersed with a future storyline where cranky old Kate and Old Man Barton haven’t been talking for fifteen years, which means this is the longest fight in the Marvel Universe and also apparently she’s dating Noh-Varr in the future. I can’t escape the feeling that this writer hates Kate Bishop, or wants her to hate herself.
Art: The shift in palette between time lines is clever enough, but I’m finding the character work unattractive and samey. This comic makes me sad.
But What Did I Miss?: So there’s this great Hawkeye comic which went for 22 issues, written by Matt Fraction with art by David Aja and Annie Wu? In all seriousness, as with (I suspect) many post Secret Wars titles, this is not an Issue #1, it’s Issue #6 of a series that really should have been something special by now, and is instead kind of sad and humourless.
Would Read Issue 2?: Not right now. Too depressed. Maybe later on Marvel Unlimited, to give it one more chance for redemption.
Read it if you Like: hating Hawkeye.
