Hawkeye #5 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Huh.

OK, I was pretty sure that Hawkeye didn't kill that guy.  Though, Fraction certainly adds to the mystery of Clint when he has him admit to Kate that he has killed someone before.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only person wondering who he killed.  After all, if he killed said person before he and Mockingbird had the fight that ended their relationship (the first time) in "Avengers West Coast," I sort of feel like he has some explaining to do.  (Though, to be fair, I'm pretty sure that he was more outraged that she killed while an Avenger than that she killed, period.  So, if he killed someone before he became an Avenger -- a possibility given the fact that he was a criminal -- I guess he wins on a technicality.)  Anyway, the point is that it was pretty clear, to me at least, that he didn't kill that dude.

The real drama, of course, was the story behind the scene on the tape.  Here, we learn that it was all staged as part of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attempt to identify a mole.  S.H.I.E.L.D. made three tapes -- one each with Captain America, Hawkeye, and Wolverine -- and made them "surreptitiously available" to the moles; it just so happened that the actual mole happened to be the one with Hawkeye's tape.  I'm good with that part.

The part with which I'm, well, "less good" is that Fraction seems to have misrepresented the situation last issue to build the drama.  Re-reading that issue, Hawkeye is extremely concerned about the leaking of the tape.  Now, fair enough, he can still be concerned that his tape was the one that got leaked since, after all, he was now going to be the one on the hook to go retrieve it.  However, in re-reading the exchange, Clint isn't just concerned; he clearly believes that no possibility existed for the tape to be leaked.  He says, "I thought the whole thing was that that couldn't happen.  You guys promised, in fact."  As such, I'm not sure what the point of creating the decoy tapes was, if it wasn't for them to be leaked.  How did S.H.I.E.L.D. plan on using the tape?  Did it plan on enticing the mole to steal it but thought that it could stop the mole before s/he managed to get it on the black market?  I'm assuming that's the case, but Fraction doesn't say that.  As such, I'm left wondering why everyone was so insistent in issue #4 that the tape hadn't been intended to be leaked when the whole point of the tape in this issue seemed to be that it would be leaked.

This inconsistency -- at least as I understand it -- really threw off this whole issue for me.  Although I enjoyed Clint and Kate's interaction as always and I particularly enjoyed Kate making an enemy of Madame Masque, I felt like the bait-and-switch at the end (or, at least, my reading of it as one) left me frustrated.  Given how much I love this series, it was a bit of a disappointment.  But, onwards and upwards!

(UPDATE:  OK, I re-read these two issues, because I'm that obsessed, and I've come to the conclusion that S.H.I.E.L.D. did think that it could stop the mole from leaking the tape before s/he could do so.  In other words, Clint was panicked last issue, because he thought that the tape would never actually get leaked.  But, re-reading these issues raised another problem.  Last issue, I discussed the possibility that Clint knew that Kate was Madame Masque, since it didn't make a lot of sense that he would tell her about the credit card.  But, here, we learn that he didn't know.  As such, why would he tell her that he had the government's black American Express card?  I figured out the part about Madame Masque thinking that she'd save millions of dollars by killing Clint, since, after all, Clint had the full resources of the U.S. Government at his disposal and could run up the price.  But, now, the only reason that I could suggest for Clint telling Madame Masque about the card is that she'd want to use it and that might keep him alive a little longer.  Of course, I'm not exactly sure why it would.  Would he have to sign the receipt?  Anyway, I'm just going to go with that explanation.  As I said, I liked this arc, mainly for the shocker at the end of last issue, but Fraction probably needs to tighten up some stuff if he's going to tell these sorts of espionage stories.  I get that we're not going to know everything, but I'd at least like to know what the main characters are doing.)