Hawkeye #22 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

It's here.  The last issue.  It's over.

On some level, this series was everything great about modern comics.  Fraction and Aja no longer felt constrained by the traditional forms of storytelling that dominate the industry, and they were able to use this freedom to experiment and innovate.  That innovation is present throughout this final issue, with Fraction having the Clown swear by saying "[curse in Polish]" and Aja providing designs that show how the gun mechanism that the Clown has hidden up his sleeve (literally) works.  It's clear that comics are going to look and sound this way in the future, and you have to give enormous credit to Fraction and Aja for that.

But, this series wasn't perfect, and I'm not talking about the delays.  If you read the reviews that most people give it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it is.  But, it isn't, at least for me.  Sana waxes poetic in the letters page about the fact that this series was successful in part because Clint is relatable:  he's a regular guy with great aim.  But, he's not.  Not really.  After all, he, Barney, and Pizza Dog all once again survive gun shots that should've left them dead.  It's at least the second (if not the third) time in this series that each of them has survived such an attack and, as a result, it felt incredibly anti-climatic.  (It might've had a little more impact if it had appeared before the new series debuted, since we already knew at least Hawkeye and Pizza Dog survived.)  Fraction just kept going to this well too often in this series to make it feel credible.  In fact, it was the opposite of innovative; it started feeling like Aunt May getting kidnapped, where you expected every issue to end with someone "dead."  On some level, it's easier to believe that Ian survived Zemo's attack in "All-New Captain America" #2 because he is actually super-human.  Here, I'm left to wonder why I'm so afraid of Ferris wheels, since in Fraction's world Hawkeye could probably fall from one and be OK.

But, it's not just that Fraction bent the rules too much when it came to portraying a "regular guy."  I could live with that, since it's not like I expect such realism in my comics.  I'm also left with no clear idea of how the story that has fueled this series for the last two years gets resolved.  When Kate confronts one of the bros in Clint's apartment, he dares her to shoot him, because he can easily be replaced by one of the other Tracksuit Draculas.  But, we never learn why he and the other Draculas are so committed.  It's not like he's some sort of cult member; he's part of an organized-crime group trying to pull off a real-estate swindle (one that I still don't completely understand).  After 22 issues, I really feel like I should have a better understanding of their motivations, particularly why they're willing to sacrifice their lives for their employer.  It goes to another point that I've made, about why Clint is willing to jeopardize the lives of his neighbors to protect the building when he had enough money to simply buy a new one.

Fraction also leaves a number of other loose ends.  Mockingbird forges Clint's signature on some forms (with him standing next to her), but we never learn what sort of forms they are.  Is he signing over the building to the Avengers?  We also have a group of super-villains, including Kate's father, decree that the Hawkeyes will die, but I'm not sure if Lemire has any intention of picking up that story.  They're just out there, like Fraction couldn't accept the fact that he was ending the series and wanted to give us a hint of where he would've gone with it.

In other words, I don't really understand any of it.  Clint got shot a bunch of times, Kate went to Los Angeles where she talked to a dead guy that wound up not being dead, and together they managed to prevent some sort of mafia from buying his building.  That's it, really.  Some people seem to have found more in it than I did, and I'm glad for them.  For me?  Even Pizza Dog wasn't enough to save it for me.

*** (three of five stars)

Hawkeye #21 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Man, I used to love this series so much.  It was about the stuff that Hawkeye did when he wasn't an Avenger, and it was amazing.  Now?  Now, I don't know what it is.

At this point -- after a dozen or so non-sequitur issues with gaps of months between issues -- I'm not really sure what story Fraction is telling.  Sana has the sort of disclaimer that she has to include in the letters page, about the best things taking time, but it's weak at best.  It's hard to care about this issue because it just feels like Fraction and Aja didn't care about it.  Did they just get sucked into one or two "Law & Order:  SVU" marathons too many?  I'm guessing that we'll never get an answer to that question.

Unfortunately, we don't get answers to many questions in this issue.  We never got an answer to how Clint and Barney survived the last time that they were seemingly killed, so it's hard to know if we're supposed to believe that Barney is dead (again) at the end of the issue.  I had to re-read my blog posts to remember that the track-suit mafia wants the building to build a real-estate development, and I found myself wondering why Clint just doesn't use his money to buy a new building for everyone, since it would endanger their lives a lot less.  We never learned how Barney came to be in a loving relationship with Clint's neighbor, so we don't understand why Clint is inspired to try to make it work with Jessica again.  (We also don't learn why Jessica would be willing to try again.  I would've just taken her commenting how he's good in bed and she misses that.)  I still really don't know who the Clown is and I don't understand why his mother has been living in the building unnoticed by anyone.  In other words, I don't understand a lot, and I don't understand this issue.

The worst part is that I know that everyone is going to love this issue.  After I post this review, I'm going to go to Comic Book Round-Up and see that everyone else has given it ten stars, calling it "amazing" and "brilliant."  I will again wonder, as I have the last few issues, if I'm missing something.  I'll wonder why everyone else seems to have no problem either understanding the plot or not caring that they don't understand it.  I'll wonder if I should just read all 21 issues again, in order, to see if it finally makes sense.  But, then I wonder if my time just isn't better served watching a "Law & Order:  SVU" marathon, and I move onto the next comic.

** (two of five stars)

Hawkeye #20 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Matt Fraction did something I didn't think possible:  he made me hate Kate Bishop and hope something horrible happens to her so that I never have to read another comic with her again.  I'm pretty sure that he wasn't intending that to be my reaction, but there you have it.

I know people are really in love with this story, but I just can't.  I'll even acknowledge that Fraction manages to reveal that we were reading a more coherent plot than I gave him credit for putting into place.  But, something about Kate's adventures in L.A. have just seemed beyond the pale when it came to believability.  She seemed to regress in terms of maturity.  Her supporting cast of characters miraculously love her despite the fact that she ruins their business and homes.  The cops inexplicably allow her to operate as an unlicensed private detective.  It was all just too much.

I just can't believe where I am with this series.

(zero of five stars)

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)

Hawkeye #18 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I just feel like Fraction isn't even trying to make sense any more.  Why would Cat Guy (Harold Harold Harold) not be allowed to leave Los Angeles?  Is it because he learned the truth about the "rejuvenation" scheme (or whatever it was) that the Nefarias were running?  Why would keeping him in L.A. keep him from telling people?  Why would Madame Masque extend that prohibition to Kate?  Wouldn't they just kill them?  Why did HHH go from ginger to brunette?  Wasn't he a ghost?  Who wants Clint dead?  Do I even care anymore?

** (two of five stars)

Hawkeye #17 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, I love whacky issues as much as the next guy, but rewinding 11 issues to give us a metaphorical story that reminds Clint that he needs to ask for help (a lesson, based on the aforementioned 11 issues, that he seems to promptly forget) when we left him dead last issue seems a little much, no?  (That said, I loved Pizza Dog cuddling with him, obviously.)

** (two of five stars)

Hawkeye #15, appearing after Hawekye #16 because the book is SPECIAL (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

All right, here's where I think we are.  It seems like the Clown killed Grills not because he was in love with Kate and thought that Clint was, too, but because he wanted to scare Clint into selling the building, given that his building is the last one in a three-block radius that isn't owned by a company planning on building a luxury development in the area.  I'm not entirely sure why the nice lady in the building is cooperating with the Clown and the bros, but I'm guessing now that she's getting paid to help.  (It's sort of like that Ben Stiller movie, "Duplex.")  I'm also not sure how the Clown went from whoever he was in that issue that explored his origins to a crooked accountant, but here we are, I guess.  Also, Clint apparently owns the building.  Oh, plus, it appears that Barney and Clint are dead.  Honestly?  I'm just not sure what we're doing here anymore.

** (two of five stars)

Hawkeye #16 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I love Kate Bishop.  I do.  She's really the heart and soul of the Young Avengers and she's good for Clint.  But, I'm not actually convinced that Fraction writes her as well as he writes Clint and I really wish that we could just return to our regularly scheduled programming.  I enjoy trippy stories as much as the next person, but Fraction just seems to be throwing too much at us here:  Kate has gone from the competent de facto leader of a superhero team to a flighty trustafarian on hard times, we've got a ghost mentor that she meets only in the supermarket, and I'm not really sure how much value her neighbors add other than a shot of diversity and assists in exposition.  If Fraction was writing it as a separate series, I could decide to cut bait on my own.  But, the problem is that I'm actually here for Clint, so I'm more or less forced to read the Kate issues, which isn't exactly a recipe for an enjoyable comics experience.  I mean, if I'm not even going to get Pizza Dog, what's the point?

** (two of five stars)

(I'm not even going to talk about the ridiculousness of them skipping an issue...)

Hawkeye #14 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue is...weird.

First, Fraction portrays Kate almost entirely differently than she normally is.  Sure, I enjoy when we play up Kate's spoiled side.  But, Fraction goes too far, making her seem both clueless and naive when she's hardly either.  On the former, she completely fails to notice that the Weed Lord's henchmen are all bellhops, the preferred costume of Madame Masque's henchmen.  (In fact, the Weed Lord just having henchman is probably a pretty good sign that we're dealing with something more complicated than orchid theft.)  On the latter, she seems to think that she can just act as a law-enforcement official without any sort of experience or license.  (I mean, she doesn't even realize that the Weed Lord is selling weed legally.  He's only arrested after she essentially entraps him into committing a hit-and-run attack on her.)  Also, she may be going insane, given that she's hallucinating some sort of private-detective mentor.

I may be able to forgive all that, but Fraction's plot also has some holes, namely the fact that Kate just happens upon one of Madame Masque's henchmen on her first "case."  I mean, he just so happens to steal an orchid that her neighbors need for their wedding for Madame Masque's bath?  Really?  I'd like to think that it was on purpose, but the Weed Lord makes it pretty clear to Madame Masque that it was accidental.  After all, if he knew to steal an orchid that Kate's neighbors needed, then he knew who Kate's neighbors were, thus, he knew where she was.  As such, he wouldn't need to draw out Kate in the first placel; he would've already known where she was.  As I said, it was all just weird.

** (two of five stars)

Hawkeye #13 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, I like comics where I have to put in effort.  I do.  They annoy me at times, but it doesn't mean that I don't see the endeavor as worth it.  As I predicted last issue, Fraction fills in the gaps here, making me retroactively appreciate the last three issues.  Well, I actually appreciated last issue, to be honest.  So, I guess that I now retroactively appreciate issues #10-#11.

On some level, we actually don't really know more than we did last issue.  We still have no idea why the Clown killed Grills.  He seemed to have killed him, based on the information that we had in issue #10, because he was in love with Kate and thought that Clint was also in love with Kate (as opposed to Jessica).  But, in this issue, it seems to have more to do with the bros, as it sort of did last issue as well.

But, this issue fills the emotional gaps, if not the plot ones.  We see Kate make a passionate speech to Clint on the way to Grills' funeral, telling him that they're a team and that they both know that they're the people that they want to be when they're acting like one.  However, Clint sleeps through it, setting up Kate's departure with Lucky later in this issue; we originally saw it happen at the end of issue #11 and again in issue #12.  We also see the full conversation between the cops and Clint about Grills' death; previously, we had only seen it through Lucky's eyes (without dialogue, natch) in issue #11.  We see Clint tell Grills' dad that he was killed, because he didn't want him to hear about it on the phone, satisfying my request in issue #11 that we eventually see Clint's emotional response to Grills' death.  Finally, we see Clint discover the shoe that presumably fell when Pizza Dog attacked the bro (in issue #11) and we realize that Barney was in the bathroom while Kate fought with Clint (in issue #11 and #12).

Essentially, we realize how much Clint's life has taken a dive in the last three issues, how much Clint's supporting cast is in flux.  Kate has been replaced by Barney not only on the title page but in his life.  (Presumably, the events of the annual have happened and she's currently in space with the Young Avengers, based on Gillen's comments about coordinating with Fraction in a previous letters page.)  I loved Fraction mentioning Barney threatening to kill Clint in "Hawkeye:  Blindspot," since it confirms my sense that he's trying to bring together all the disparate portrayals of Barney into a definitive one.  ("I threatened to kill a backpack just a second ago...")  We also see Jessica make it clear that it's over between them for now, one more person no longer there for him when he needs it, once again his fault.  In the end, Fraction shows how he's left with his family in the building, making it all the clearer why Grills' death is a big deal in the first place.

As Kate said here, I am totally ready for the full-on assault on the bros and the Clown.  It's time.  Now that Fraction has brought Clint to the place where he is now, chronologically and emotionally, I want me some revenge.

**** (four of five stars)

Hawkeye #12 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

OK, I know that I said that I wanted us to focus on Clint again, but I was wrong.  The last few issues have been disappointing in part because they’ve been a little too experimental, making it difficult to see where Fraction is going with the larger plot.  (In fact, I'd have trouble at this point identifying the larger plot.  Something to do with the clown?  Isn't Clint supposedly working on some master plan?)  Although I certainly acknowledge that Fraction is likely to reveal how they’re all connected in an upcoming issue, retroactively making me appreciate them, it doesn’t mean that they’ve been fun to read in real time.

However, this issue is different.  Although a character study similar to ones dedicated to the clown and Pizza Dog, this issue is all about Clint, even if it technically starred Barney.  (Speaking of Pizza Dog, I do retroactively appreciate the panel from last issue where Pizza Dog associates Barney with Clint.  At the time, it was weird that he’d equate a bum with Clint, but now it all makes sense.  Again, I hope that everything else will make similar sense at some point.)

Barney has always been an enigma, a victim of way too many competing characterizations.  The description of his life on the title page – fake Avenger, carnie, crook, F.B.I. agent, victim, villain – is pretty much everything that you need to know.  Fraction gives us a significantly different Barney than the one we last encountered, in the “Hawkeye:  Blindshot” mini-series, where Barney donated his bone marrow but pledged to kill Clint the next time that they met.  Now, Barney’s a drunk taking money from bros and allowing them to wale on him.  He eventually appears on Clint’s doorstep to hugs, which doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’d do to someone who pledged to kill, even if he is your brother.

Honestly, though?  I’m willing to accept whichever Barney Fraction wants to give us.  Given that he’s more than earned his right at this point to give us a definitive accounting of Hawkeye, I’m willing to extend that right to Barney.  In fact, Barney is in desperate need of someone like Fraction to give us that definitive portrayal.  As such, let's see what crazy antics the Barton brothers can find, shall we?

Hawkeye #11 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I'm not sure what to think about this issue.  I mean, it's remarkably clever and well executed in an art sense.  Moreover, it's about Pizza Dog, who's pretty much my favorite character in comics right now.  But, it generally leaves me scratching my head, both from a plot and a story perspective.

First, it doesn't really do much in terms of the larger story that Fraction is telling.  It's still unclear why the clown killed Grills, whether it had to do with his obsession with Kate or with his association with the bros.  Given the fact that the old woman in the building is seen associating with said clown and said bros, maybe it's the latter?  But, to what purpose?  I'm generally assuming that it had more to do with Clint than it did with Grills, but why?  Are they trying to push Clint over the edge?  If so, it doesn't seem to be working.  Clint and Kate appear to go to Grills' funeral here, but Hawkeye seems too involved with his dispute with Kate and his troubles with the police to care that much.  (I'm still hoping that we'll get some sort of insight into how Grills' death affected Hawkeye in a later issue, but I might be hoping for too much.)  Fraction seems to want us to glean something about the ongoing mystery from this issue, but I'm not really sure what it is.

Second, I still enjoy this issue even if we didn't get a clearer sense of where the larger plot is going, but I also had trouble with the story itself in certain parts.  On several occasions, it felt like certain moments were happening outside chronological order, despite the issue clearly progressing in chronological order.  For example, Pizza Dog attacks the clown and the bros, who open fire on him, and he and one of the bros fall off the roof.  Then, suddenly, they're all in the old lady's apartment like nothing happened.  It seems unlikely that they would survive the fall and, even if they did, it seems even more unlikely that they'd just invite Pizza Dog into the old lady's apartment for bandages and snacky-cakes.  At first I thought that it meant that this scene happened before their fight, but then Lucky races downstairs to Hawkeye, who finds the bro's shoe, thereby establishing that it did, in fact, happen after the fight.  I'm all for experimental story-telling, but it helps if you're actually telling a story that makes sense.

I had high hopes for this issue, since, after all, Pizza Dog!  But, I have to say that I'm unfortunately disappointed.  I'm really looking forward to returning to Clint being the focus of the book again...

Hawkeye #10 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Huh.  If Grills was going to die, I wanted it to be for a better reason than a crazy assassin confusing Clint's comments about loving Spider-Woman to be about Kate.

I'm not really sure where Fraction is going to go here.  We're at the very least going to get Clint spiraling even further into depression over the guilt he feels about Grills.  We're also probably going to get some guilt on Kate's part for leading the assassin inadvertently to Clint's place.  It's also possible that it had less to do with the clown's association with Kate and more with him working for the bro-Mafia guys.  I guess we'll see.  Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite issue, but I'm willing to be patient.

Hawkeye #9 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

If this issue needed a different title than "Girls," it would be "Clint Barton and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."

For most of this series so far, Fraction has played up Clint's charming ability to screw up his life while trying to help other people for laughs.  Although we've certainly had some serious moments, this series has mostly revolved around Clint's ability to get himself involved in someone else's trouble and his inability to resolve the problem in a strategic way.  Instead, he usually storms buildings full of mobsters or gets himself captured by femme fatales.  He usually finds a way to win, but he leaves a lot of loose ends in the process.  In this issue, Fraction shows that Clint's charm doesn't always mean that the loose ends just fade into the background.

First, before we get onto the rest of the issue, I love how Fraction just has Clint be an asshole to Jessica.  (I'm just going to ignore the somewhat unbelievable way that Jessica discovered that Clint was cheating, when Penny just happened to plant one on him when she appeared at Avengers Mansion last issue.  I'm going to give Fraction that pass.)  He doesn't give any sort of complicated defense for Clint's actions.  We don't see some version of Peter's endless justifications to Mary Jane.  Nope, he just flat out cheated on Jessica.  I've possibly never seen a more emotionally honest scene between two characters ever written in comics.  Fraction really conveys Jessica's devastation not over Clint's cheating but over the idea that Clint wouldn't have even thought of it as cheating.  It's an extraordinary adult moment and Fraction uses Kate's presence in a really brilliant way to stress that, given her adolescent response to Jessica.  It's damn near perfect.  Moreover, Fraction establishes that Clint feels something down there in his soul when it comes to Jessica, but, being the emotionally stunted kind of guy that he is, he fails to convey that to Jessica.  Grills gives him the great idea that he should write Jessica a letter...shortly before someone kills him.

We'll get to Grills in a minute.  But, I just wanted to stress how Fraction really lets the reader feel the reality of Clint's life in this issue.  It's not all fast cars and fast women.  In fact, it's rarely that.  It's usually Clint feeling like he's in over his head, scaring away vans full of regular people from his building because he's so panicked that it's a van full of Russian mobsters come to take out their revenge on his neighbors.  It's usually Clint not acting like a mutant superhero with some sort of healing ability, but a regular guy with a lot of fresh bruises and old scars, a point stressed by "Darlene" when she asks Black Widow if she knows what Clint does when he's not with the Avengers.  It's Clint not being strong enough to handle his emotional baggage and not hurt the women in his life, like Bobbi and Jessica.  It's...a lot.  In fact, Fraction really goes to Clint's origin story here, since you really do get the sense that the Avengers are the only thing that keeps Clint on the straight and narrow, from falling into a really morally ambiguous pit.  I feel like you really get that here, how sad Clint is, how overwhelmed Clint is.  It drives this whole issue and it's a marvel to see.

But, man, he's really going to go off the rails when he learns about Grills.  You could feel the moment coming and I felt it in the pit of stomach.  When it happens, it just makes a sad issue all the sadder.  Sorry, Grills.  You deserved a lot better.

Seriously, it was an outstanding issue of an amazing series.  I'm starting to feel the way I did about it that I did about Jim and Pam in "The Office," where I almost dread reading the next issue given how badly it can go for Clint.  I guess we'll see.

Hawkeye #8 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Seriously, if you aren't reading this comic, you're pretty much missing the best thing happening in comics, like, ever.  No, really.

OK, I could talk about a lot in this comic.  I could talk about Fraction and Aja and Wu using the comic-book covers to detail Penny's entire backstory just as effectively as if they had spent pages of expository narrative on it.  I could talk about the fact that Fraction really calls into question Clint's motives here as he helps a woman that he doesn't know commit a crime (even if it's a "virtuous" crime, if you will).  But, first, I really want to talk about Clint playing asshole with his ex-lover, ex-wife, and current "friend."

When Hawkeye first slept with Penny, it seemed to provoke the obvious question:  "What about Spider-Woman?"  But, it was early days in the series and it seemed possible that Fraction was shooting at something more or less outside continuity.  Maybe not exactly outside continuity, but it appeared that Fraction wasn't going to let the series suffer under the weight of trying to reconcile his stories with Clint's appearances elsewhere.

But, by answering the question "What about Spider-Woman?", Fraction makes this series all the stronger.  I mean, Clint plays asshole with his ex-lover, ex-wife, and current "friend."  The guy invented charm.  But, he invented a certain bad-luck sort of charm, the type of charm that means, sure, the women you dated still want to spend time with you, but they're also unfortunately going to be there when a former one-night stand appears at the door of Avengers Mansion announcing that she shot someone and asking you to help her commit another crime.

Fraction doesn't just stand on the hilarity of that moment (hilarious, though it is),  In the middle of the fighting and the "bros," Clint mentions that he's not necessarily ready for a relationship with Jessica.  It's a brief comment, but it's probably the first time we've seen Clint actually address his relationship with Jessica.  Bendis just kept throwing them together and, if I'm not mistaken, she hasn't appeared in this title yet.

Together with helping Penny commit a crime, Fraction actually portrays Clint as spiraling out of control.  He shows us how he's a guy who tries to do the right thing, but often does it in a way that might not exactly have been ideal.  So, when things inevitably go wrong, he tries to compensate, making matters worse.  In nine issues, he's possibly screwed up his relationship with Jessica, invoked the wrath of seemingly the entire underworld, gotten arrested helping a woman he barely knows commit a crime, and provoked a war with a local gang that puts his neighbors at risk.  But, he does it with such a great amount of charm that you forget that, somewhere under the nice hair and handsome smile, is a guy who maybe needs some help.  We'll see if he gets it.  (I'm assuming not.)

Hawkeye #7 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

My parents, who live in Northeast Jersey, lost power for ten days after Superstorm Sandy.  The 80-some foot pine tree that stood in their front yard fell, taking out the power lines (and my mom's car) with it.  After a few days, when the temperature in the house dipped below 50 degrees, my sister and I finally convinced them to spend at least the nights at her house.  Their days were spent sitting on lawn chairs in the front yard waiting for government employees and insurance adjustors, and chatting with the various neighbors taking a stroll through the neighborhood because they, too, didn't have electricity and just needed something to do.

So, this issue.

I love that Matt Fraction realized that Clint Barton and Kate Bishop would be exactly the type of characters that would lend themselves to this sort of story.  In the world of the Avengers and the X-Men, you'd have to ask yourself why Thor or Storm didn't stop Superstorm Sandy.  Couldn't Tony Stark have found a way to shore up the levies?  Couldn't Iceman just have frozen the tide?  But, you don't wonder those questions reading "Hawkeye," because Clint and Kate aren't those guys.  They've just got some bows and arrows.  As Clint said, they're not going to do much against a storm.

So, instead, Fraction shows Clint helping Grills try to get his father to leave his house in Far Rockaway and Kate trying to get medicine for a friend's mom.  It's heroic in the everyday way that Fraction frequently emphasizes in this title.  Clint never touches a bow in this issue and Kate doesn't even manage to shoot hers.  In fact, Kate has to be saved by some locals.  (Jersey!)  But, they're there, because, as Wacker says in the letters page, "we're all in this together, 'waist deep in a big muddy.'"  It's the unofficial motto of this series and the fact that Fraction recognizes that this situation lent itself to calling an audible shows how well he really gets Clint and Kate.

Hawkeye #6 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

So, I was disappointed with last issue, because I felt like Fraction would up getting lost in the story that he was trying to tell.  Even after a few readings, a good numbers of the plot twists didn't particularly make sense to me and I noted that Fraction probably needed to tighten up his plotting if he was going to continue telling these sorts of espionage stories.  The good news is that Fraction returns to basics here and gives us the type of story that made me fall in love with this series.

Fraction does a great job contrasting how Hawkeye thinks everyone views him -- as non-essential personnel, essentially -- with how everyone actually sees him -- as a remarkably good guy.  Plus, Fractions shows us that he is a remarkably good guy.  He feels bad that he broke his neighbor's satellite dish, so he lets her and his kids watch Christmas movies at his place.  All he really wants to do is watch "Dog Cops" on his DVR and "Blade Runner" on his Laserdisc.  He has a sentimental attachment to his possessions, even if they're mostly broken.  As he's done throughout this series, Fraction carefully weaves together these moments, big and small, to give us a sense of the vulnerable Clint that we don't see in "Avengers," when he's forced to be arrogant Clint because he's just a guy with arrows standing shoulder-to-shoulder with gods.

But, this issue isn't just a character study.  The bro mafia has returned and I really like the vague, but real, threat that Fractions makes them be.  By making them just real guys with guns, Fraction actually makes them scarier than your average super-villain.  Maybe they'll go after Lucky.  Maybe they will blow up the building.  Aja does a great job conveying the fear that Clint feels as he decides to stay put, nervously laying down the gauntlet to the bro mafia that he'll protect his building and his people.  In fact, the whole point of this issue is Fraction showing us Clint finally starting to let himself set down roots.  Sure, he got Lucky in the first issue, but Lucky's pretty portable.  I mean, I assume wherever Clint was going to go has pizza, so Lucky would be good.  But, Kate reminds him that he's a good guy so he has to act like a good guy, to draw a line in the sand, to stand outside his building with nothing but his bow and arrow.  It's what you'd call a moment and it's one that tells you everything you need to know about Clint and this series.

(Did we know that Cherry was a gangster's wife?)

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.)

Hawkeye #4 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Matt Fraction is SO FUCKING GOOD!

Seriously.  I mean, SERIOUSLY.  SO FUCKING GOOD.  That last scene.  I mean, honestly, I pounded the bed with my fist and LOLed.  Perfect.  I totally didn't see it coming.  I mean, it's just SO perfect.  He doesn't let Kate participate, but she knows that he needs help, so she just makes it happen.  I don't even really need to know how.  I just believe that Kate Bishop would absolutely be able to discover that Hawkeye went to Madripoor to buy something at a super-secret auction and that she had to be there.  Did she know Madame Masque was going after him before she got to Madripoor or did she only realize that Madame Masque was a problem after she grabbed Hawkeye?  I don't know.  I don't even care.  Fraction has done so much in showing how capable Kate Bishop is that you just believe it either way.  It's like how you absolutely believe that Clint could somehow start driving a cab in Madripoor and wind up charming his way into a group of cab hacks who could lead him to the aforementioned super-secret auction.  You just buy it.  You just buy it because Matt Fraction has managed to convey the essence of both these characters to you in just three issues.  He's also managed to convey their commitment to one another, leaving Clint wondering why Kate mentioned having to deal with his baggage and showing exactly why she mentioned having to deal with his baggage on the last page.  Seriously, although I've said it three times already in this series, this issue could be the perfect comic-book.

Matt Fraction is SO FUCKING GOOD!

(After I calmed down a bit and read x-man75's review, I realized that I think he's absolutely right that Clint knew that Madame Masque was Kate.  First, he mentions his S.H.I.E.L.D. credit-card with no limit several times to "Madame Maque," to the point where he comments that he's sorry "to keep bringing this up."  In retrospect, it's pretty odd that he would make that sort of reveal to Madame Masque, since it's not like she would've needed to know that or knowing that would've helped his position.  In fact, it probably would've hurt his position.  He also mentions that they're both there for "the tape" and then tells her what the subject of the tape is, something that Madame Masque would've clearly known without him needing to tell her.  Finally, he's the one that mentions the "billions" of dollars that the auction winner could make from the tape, something that doesn't seem like a coincidence when, a few pages later, Kate wins the tape with a surprise bid of a billion dollars.  In fact, Kate seemed to have been fishing for a number during their conversation, since she mentions that killing Hawkeye could save her millions of dollars.  However, I don't see how killing Clint would've saved Madame Masque any money, since she would still be bidding against all the other bidders.  In fact, the only reason I could see why the real Madame Masque wouldn't kill Hawkeye is that her ability to ransom him with the tape might amplify the amount of money that she could make.  So, as X says, it's clear that Kate used her money to follow Hawkeye to Madripoor, was the English-speaking woman whose cab he stole, and then followed him to the casino where she either realized that Madame Masque was going to jump him or saw Madame Masque jump him.  Then, Clint realized that Kate was posing as Madame Masque and gave her the information that she needed to win the auction.  Awesome.)

Hawkeye #3 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This is the greatest comic ever written.  Period.  I could talk about getting to see Hawkeye's ass.  I could talk about the amazing gag of seeing the Hawkeye head covering Hawkeye's "head."  I could rave about the pitch-perfect comedic delivery .  I could discuss how impressed I am that Fraction has actually managed to create a voice for Hawkeye in just three issues and that his voice is so strong that I felt like I "heard" this issue more than I read it.  (I felt like Clint and Kate were in the room with me during their discussion in the car, particularly when he yelled, "Driiiive!!")  I could marvel at the characterization that makes you feel in your gut that Clint would absolutely not wait for duct tape, would absolutely offer to buy a car in cash off a hot girl, and then would absolutely sleep with her after completing the transaction.  I could talk about the beauty of the "return" of the boomerang arrow at the end.  But, it would be wrong.  By picking out the discrete moments of this issue that I enjoyed, I would undermine the beauty of the whole issue, where all these moments flow and fold into one another in a way that I can't possibly praise sufficiently.  It would be like such humming a few different bars of a symphony.  It would be wrong so I'm not going to do it.  Read the issue.  Issue of the year, decade, century, artform.  This is the greatest comic ever written.  Period.