Hawkeye: Freefall #1 (January 1): Woof.
The thing about Hawkeye comics is that they only work if he's fuckable, and Schmidt delivers here. A good Hawkeye comic means that I have to re-read the panels after he first appears shirtless (or naked, lately) because I wasn't paying attention to the plot. My thought process after this moment was something like, "Hmm, shirtless Hawkeye, his waist is so tiny, his pecs are so large, Linda Carter, oh, Wonder Woman, that's cute, wait, he's dating the Night Nurse?"
But, he also has to be charming, and Rosenberg also delivers. From arguing with the Hood over whether or not he sucker-punched him (he totally did) to making Sam buy him a new omelette after Red Bird pooped on it, he's the Clint whom I know and love.
But, Clint isn't just charming because he's witty in his own lug-headed way. He's also a charming because he's a mess, and, boy, he's a mess here. He thinks that he can take on the Hood who has to remind Clint that he's actually a demon, he's clearly fucking up his relationship with Linda when he interrupts sexy time to talk about the Hood, he accidentally admits that he pays Turk to give him intel (undermining his insistence that he's community figure whom people trust), he's jealous that Bucky was right and the new Ronin is in better shape than him: in other words, he's everything that I expect Clint to be.
Moreover, the plot ain't bad either. Rosenberg does something that I've never really seen anyone do before in a street-level comic. When Clint attends what he expects to be the Hood's arraignment, he confronts just how corrupt the justice system is. The judge is imperious when he sends one of the Hood's henchman to jail but neglects to mention that the Hood himself went free thanks to Kingpin's intervention.
Later, when the aforementioned Ronin appears, Bucky and Sam think that Clint has gone rogue. He hasn't, but it's hard to get a bead on his motives. When we first see Ronin, he's taking out an armored vehicle carrying a "package." But, when we next see him, he's hitting a Hood site. Amassing powerful items? Maybe. While we wait for an answer, I'll be reading this issue again just to enjoy Clint's return. I can't think of a higher compliment than that.
X-Men #4 (January 1): This issue is truly spectacular. Apocalypse, Magneto, and Professor X accept an invitation to Davos to dine with a group of influential humans. Magneto explains that he's seen the light: in the past, he'd try to dominate humanity through force. Now, he realizes that he needs to play humanity's game and dominate them through "your quiet weapons of finance and your silent wars of influence." He lays out how mutantkind will use the money that it makes through its innovations to buy everything: banks, media, politicians, schools. The humans are afraid not because they're worried that the mutants are going to attack them; they're afraid because they know that the mutants will beat them at their own game. Meanwhile, one of the humans has hired a squad to kill Apocalypse, Magneto, and Professor X, which shows how little they understand. Cyclops and Gorgon make short work of the squad, but it allows for Magneto to send the humans a message: don't try us.
Guardians of the Galaxy #1 (January 22): Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm a huge fan of this issue.
I accept that it's inherently chaotic since the Guardians' attempt to invade New Olympus doesn't work out so well, and all Hell breaks loose (almost literally). But, Ewing is relying on us having pretty detailed knowledge about the Cosmic Marvel line to understand the plot completely. Even though I follow those titles pretty closely, I still spent a significant amount of time trying to remember each character's status quo. For example, Rich mentions losing his younger brother, and I had to do so some serious Googling to remember that Robbie is a Talon...and I even read "Infinity Countdown: Darkhawk!" At any rate, hopefully we'll soon focus on the stories at hand and not the past.
I am intrigued where Ewing goes with the idea that pretty much everyone here (except Marvel Boy, Moondragon, and Phylla-Vel) is suffering from serious post-tramautic stress. I mean, Rich can barely describe the mission at hand after explaining to Peter how he died...again...in "Annihilation: Scourge." He says that he's in recovery, which I assume means that he isn't drinking anymore. But, it's also clear that he's basically on his own trying to keep order in a galaxy that's quickly descending into chaos, as his review of the current political situations in the Shi'ar Imperium, Skrull Empire, and Utopian Kree shows. I can't see him holding up well under that strain.
Marauders #6 (January 22): This issue starts to address whether or not Kate exists outside the Resurrection Protocols. It's interesting but not as interesting as Duggan thinks that it is. I mean, I thought the whole point of the Resurrection Protocols is that we didn't have to read this type of story anymore. I mean, sure, it makes sense that Shaw manipulated all the events here to ensure Kate is by herself so he can kill her. But, she'll survive, he'll get in trouble, blah, blah, blah.
I'm much more interested in Homines Verendi. Although I loathed these characters in "Wolverine and the X-Men" and I still hope someone forcibly ages them so that we can take them seriously, they are putting together a pretty serious resistance to Krakoa's drive for hegemony. They've gotten Donald Pierce appointed the Madripoorean ambassador to the United Nations, they've injected Yellowjacket into Pyro so that they can have a monopoly on gathering intelligence inside Krakoa, and they've apparently got boatloads of power-dampening Stormtrooper armor. In other words, they're trouble.
Most importantly, Duggan isn't playing the human resistance as the usual chumps. When Kate snarks that Zhao - now Madripoorean - was a Chinese (ahem, Tawianese) citizen last month, Zhoa comments, "last month your country didn't exist." We don't usually see the "bad guys" land such rhetorical punches, as the heroes are generally presented as always correct. Moreover, Hate-Monger and X-Cutioner were legitimately scary here as they battled the mutants.
Just as Magneto warned humanity not to push Krakoa in "X-Men" #4, Homines Verendi is reminding mutantkind that they don't just get to take over the world. Mutantkind is now an organized threat, and humanity is responding to that threat the same way that mutantkind did every time humanity came after mutants. I'm glad to see this realpolitik analysis on the situation underpinning Duggan's story, because it prevents us to falling into eye-rolling moralizing.
Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Bobby/Lockheed cuddles. 🥰
Captain America #18 (January 29): I'll be honest that I don't totally follow what happened here. I mean, I get the basics: a cop tips off Cap that Scourge is located in an upstate cabin taking on some cops, and Cap and the Daughters of Liberty go to the cabin to take out Scourge. Scourge winds up killing himself, prompting Kingpin to reemerge so he can announce the news. But, I don't get how these events are connected. Kingpin makes it seem like he faked his own death to draw out Scourge, but as far as I can tell it didn't happen that way. I mean, we don't know how or why the cops found Scourge, but it doesn't seem related to Kingpin's supposed death. Moreover, Scourge kills himself, but we never find out his identity. We just seem to learn that John Walker is the one setting up people to become Scourge, as he does here with Larrimore's sister (or wife?). Does that mean that John was behind the murder of the Kingpin's cops? As I said, it isn't particularly clear, at least not yet.
Hawkeye: Freefall #2 (January 29): So, Hawkeye has a Giant Man-sized penis, right? I mean, yes, also, he's Ronin. But, he has a Giant Man-sized penis, right?
New Mutants #6 (January 29): Holy shit, this issue is fucking intense. In a rarity for superhero comics, Brisson not only has everything go really, really badly, but he also pins it squarely on the team's poor decisions.
To begin, Manon and Maxime use one of the guards to kill the other guard. The gunshot calls the other thugs' attention, leading to one of them shooting Beak. Then, in their rush to save Beak, the team forgets about Beak's parents. The head thug, Túmulo, murders Beak's mother in front of Beak's father and then drags Beak's father to the lawn, demanding that the team abandon his truck (which they were going to use to get Beak to the hospital). Angel refuses, since either Túmulo will murder Beak's father (which he does) or Beak will die if they don't get him to a hospital in the truck. After killing Beak's father, Túmulo warms that the other members of the gang will keep coming until they get what they want. He then kills himself, presumably because he knows that his boss would've done so anyway.
This entire sequence is terrifying. I had my doubts about the mutants withdrawing from the world. But, Brisson reminds us that it was Dox, a Breitbart-like website, that brought about this situation. Before Túmulo kills her father-in-law, Angel tells him that he won: they thought that they could live without the pointing and staring in rural Nebraska, but they were wrong and they'll go to Krakoa where their children can be safe. I said in issue #4 that Angel's terror over her children hit home with me as a parent, and I would come to the same conclusion that she does here. In fact, it makes you wish that we all had a Krakoa. Angel's despair and terror will stay with me for a long time.
But, Brisson doesn't stop there. Thinking they were doing the right thing, Manon and Maxime change the Bohusk family's memories so that they think that Beak's parents died in their sleep years ago. Armor is outraged and makes the kids promise not to change people's memories. But, she lets what they did stand, despite ominously warning that these actions have a way of "coming back on us." It raises a question that I've had across the titles, particularly in "Marauders" where no one has solved Kitty's inability to enter Krakoa: is no one in charge? Kitty's situation is one thing, but Dox runs a story on the "nightmare" in the "mutant-infested county" and Túmulo's dying words invoke a threat that Costa Perdita's government (clearly a narco-state) will exact vengeance for mutants killing their citizens. I don't think Armor should really be the final decision-maker here. Is that why we have the Council?
X-Men #5 (January 29): If you've read this blog for a while, you know that my main complaint about Hickman on other titles is that he conflates confusing for interesting. He goes down this road farther than he has previously on the X-titles, and I'm hoping that it's just a blip and not a premonition.
Like issues #2 and #3, this issue picks up a new threat facing mutantkind: the Children of the Vault. Given the familiarity the X-Men have with them as they explain the upcoming mission to Darwin, Synch, and Wolverine (X-23), I re-read issue #1 in an attempt to remember if I had clearly forgotten something. After that didn't work and I hit up the Google, I learned that the Children of the Vault first appeared during an era in the mid-2000s when I wasn't reading comics. Although it explains said familiarity, I feel like Hickman could've done a little more to explain the Children's background. If we could get an interstitial page about how Synch's disorientation over his resurrection resulted in Krakoa changing the Resurrection Protocols, we could've gotten one about the Children.
(That said, the Synch page is fascinating. They resurrected Synch early in case he had to help one of the Five. It wound up they didn't need him to do so, but his despair over seeing his friends and teammates having experienced life in the time he was gone meant that they also resurrected Skin early to help him. The success of that meant that Krakoa started resurrecting people with similar experiences to mitigate the discomfort.)
Turning to the plot itself, the Council sends Darwin, Synch, and Wolverine into the Vault because they can survive the temporal shear at entry. They're immediately confronted with Vault security, so we'll see how that goes. The main challenge is that they can't be resurrected if they're inside the Vault, so the stakes are high. Also, time moves more quickly in the Vault, so the three months that they've been gone translates into something like 500 years. I wonder how Synch'll handle that...
Also Read: Marauders #5 (January 1); Amazing Spider-Man #37 (January 8) and #38 (January 22); New Mutants #5 (January 8)
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