Hawkeye #19 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

First things first, we need to talk about this series' shipping issues.  Early in the run, when Fraction and Aja were wowing us with their unexpectedly innovative take on Hawkeye, a delay of a week or two was no problem.  I think we even skipped a month at one point, but it was worth it to ensure that the quality of the series stayed as high as it had been.

However, then, the delays no longer seemed connected to maintaining the series' quality since the quality itself dipped.  Kate went to California where she became a clueless Nancy Drew lost in a movie that Timothy Leary would've made if he made movies, and Fraction used such a fractured narrative technique to tell Clint's on-going story that it was hard to tell where we were from issue to issue.  When Marvel published issue #16 before issue #15, we seemed to have officially moved into the absurd.

Then, nothing...for four months.  I was expecting this issue to carry some sort of explanation, but, instead, we just dive back into Clint's story.  In retrospect, I'm OK with that, because, really, I don't need to know how the sausage was made.  But, it still left me opening this issue wondering why I'm even bothering any more, since so much of the good will that I had for this series in the beginning is gone.

I mention all these issues because I realized after reading this issue that I would've loved it if it had been issue #10, but I'm more or less meh on it now.  Fraction is still using a fractured narrative technique, and it's still difficult to tell not only the order in which the events are taking place but the time frame as well.  For example, Barney appears to have been living with Clint for a while, given that his neighbors' children refer to him as "Uncle Barney."  However, he's technically only been with us for four issues, and those issues seemed to have happened over only a matter of days.  It makes it hard to believe the relationships as they're presented here.  Moreover, it's unclear if Clint and Barney's attack on the bros at the end of the issue happened before or after his rousing speech to the neighbors and/or his call for help to the Avengers.

These points may seem nitpicky, but they matter.  If Clint and Barney attacked the bros before asking for the tentants' and the Avengers' help, this moment isn't exactly as redemptive as Fraction wants us to believe.  We're supposed to see it as Clint finally asking for help, acknowledging that he can trust in the relationships that he's built in his life.  But, if acted on his own before asking for help, then it implies that he only wants people in his life if they don't impinge on him doing exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it.  It doesn't exactly inspire confidence that Clint is a changed man.  In this way, the narrative technique undermines the moment.  Maybe Fraction wanted it to be unclear, but it seems odd that he'd leave a question mark over the moment to which this entire series seems to have been building from the start.  The delay of several months only exacerbates the problem.

Fraction has implied on social media that issue #22 is the last issue of this issue.  I'll stay for that, since this series gave me such joy at the start.  But, after the delays and the experimentation getting in the way of the story, I can't say that I'm going to be sorry to see it go.

*** (three of five stars)