Hawkeye #1 Review

This month sees Hawkeye’s solo return, but is it worth while?

Hawkeye #1

Stepping forward into a new ongoing, we follow the Avenging Bowman into the streets of New York City as we’re shown a tale of Hawkeye… not being Hawkeye. Wait, what?

Right off the bat, I’ve got to say I was really surprised that we never saw Clint suit up as Hawkeye even one time in the whole issue, aside from the first two pages where we see him falling. Hell, we never even saw him use a bow (again, outside these first two pages while he fell). Instead we were treated to a story about his home, the slumlord who was trying to push everyone out by raising their rent, and a dog. Don’t get me wrong, it was a very well written and enjoyable [seemingly] one-shot story, but really? This doesn’t really feel like a good #1 issue of an ongoing that wants to hook new readers, and that leaves me quite disappointed. God forbid no one picks up issue #2 because of this and Hawkeye finds himself canceled again (he’s had two ongoings in the past that never made it to issue #10).

Its a weird feeling for me, to be honest. On the one hand, I loved the story Matt Fraction gave us, it was fun and serious without being overbearing or playful. I mean, the writing was really good, and I really did enjoy myself reading it. It just doesn’t feel like a #1 issue, and it really doesn’t seem like its something that will be very good at snatching up new readers, and that’s a problem.

The story aside, the artwork here is a mixed bag. On the one hand, I find myself really liking David Aja’s work here. Its solid, a little simple, but really well presented. Yet on the other hand, Matt Hollingsworth’s colors are very disappointing and quite distracting. It took me until about half way through the issue to figure out why they looked so off, and its because there is absolutely no depth given to it. The only shades or shadows we see throughout the issue are the work of Aja, whilst the colors are solid all the way through. It gives it a very dated feel, and reminds one of older comics, before the days of digital coloring, but it is clearly a digital color job, and that just makes it all feel quite awkward to me.

That aside though, I still feel like I haven’t properly stated how much I liked this story. It was completely character focused and was really well done, again, I just don’t feel like it was a wise direction for a first issue of a new series, and this feels really weird for me to say. I’ve always been one for more character and less action, especially in this day and age, but somehow I find myself thinking there wasn’t enough Hawkeye in this issue. In the end, it is definitely something I could see myself recommending to new readers, I just think I would make a note of telling them that there is next to no actual Hawkeye action therein, just so that they aren’t left feeling as I do, but still.

All in all, its a good book that I’m excited is here, and am really looking forward to more of. So, for me at least, it did its job well enough.

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Tags: David Aja Hawkeye Matt Fraction Slider