There is something completely and unassailably cool about the Hawkeye series from David Aja and Matt Fraction. It’s undeniable.
Just look at Aja’s cover from Hawkeye #9.
This is Kate Bishop, wearing normal clothes, completely covered up and practical, yet looking smokin’ hot and ridiculously cool. Not the generic ‘anything remotely positive’ definition of cool, but the classic definition. Well, okay, the classic definition is ‘cold,’ but I mean the Fonzie definition. Something about Aja’s work just nails that vibe to the wall. Hawkeye is the coolest Marvel book going.
Ever since Clint Barton got mixed up with a mysterious and beautiful woman on the run, we’ve been wondering how exactly that was going to fly with his Avenger girlfriend Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman. In Hawkeye #9, all the exes come home to roost, and yes, I’m counting Jessica as one of them now. For some reason, last issue, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Jessica and Mockingbird were all playing Blind Man’s Bluff while dressed all ’60s-looking. We’ll call that Aja’s stylistic choice, and we do not question Aja’s stylistic choices. Mystery woman, who is fully named in this issue as Darlene Penelope Wright, thanks to Natasha Romanoff being good at her job, walked into Avengers Mansion and shoved her tongue down Clint’s throat, and that got everybody looking at him crooked. Widow goes on the offensive to start figuring out what Darlene’s deal is, Bobbi Morse makes her divorce from Clint official, and Jessica pries Clint’s address out of his sidekick, the aforementioned Kate Bishop, and heads there to slap him around for the Darlene thing and dump him.
Curiously, Jessica also blames Clint for bailing on his marriage to Bobbi the moment it got difficult, which confused me. True, I didn’t read all that much of the Bendis-vengers, but I seemed to remember Bobbi being the prickly one shoving Clint away once she came back from Skrull-land. I’m quite sure I missed something, but until Jessica said that, I’d assumed this is what Bobbi wanted. Then again, maybe Fraction is just looking for more crap to heap on Hawkeye’s conscience. Lest you worry about the loss of the classic Clint/Bobbi relationship, though, the moment the divorce is final, Bobbi goes out and kicks the snot out of the vanload of track-suit mobsters who have been stalking her ex-man. They still have a bond.
Kate’s also got one with him, as she’s beating up track-suiters, too – although she’s a bit more directly involved with their beef, too, being a sidekick that uses the same codename as her mentor (and who insists she’s not a sidekick – “I don’t hang out with him! He hangs out with me!”). She even tries to protect him from girlfriend-wrath, but she’s too late. There’s also a chance that she’s developing some kind of thing for Clint, although she would never, ever admit it and will likely suppress it so hard that it’ll never become an issue.
By the end of the issue, Clint is resolved to actually write a letter to Jessica to try and explain things, just in time to miss a guy looking like a cross between A Clockwork Orange and Doctor Who showing up to start killing the innocent schmoes in his building. I’m sure there’s a more specific visual reference that Aja’s making with this guy, but this is where my lack of knowledge of British television fails me.
Anyway, this book has it all. Drama, pathos, yuks, bad romance, bad guys who always say ‘bro.’ What are you doing if you’re not reading Hawkeye? Missing out, that’s what.
