Hawkguy Trouble: Hawkeye #9 Review

Hawkeye is one of the best superhero comic books that you can currently buy, and it is because it isn’t about superheroes. Oh sure: it has all the trappings of a standard superhero comic book: it stars an Avenger, it features The Black Widow and Spider-Woman, it has fistfights and a motorcycle chase and international crime and women of mystery, but those aren’t the things that Hawkeye, and in particular Hawkeye #9, is about. For all the action and the trappings, Hawkeye #9 is about a guy who has made some bad decisions  – some for good reasons and some not – and is dealing with the consequences of how those decisions have affected the women in his life, and by extension how those women’s reactions are affecting him.

So Hawkeye #9 is a story about some superheroes, but it is not a superhero story. It is, instead, a very human story that anyone with any regrets over how they have treated someone close to them, or anyone who has felt let down by someone close to them, can relate to. And it includes Russian mobsters getting the living shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion. Which means that this is an extraordinary issue of an extraordinary comic book, and one of the best books in the past several weeks.

Seriously: considering there’s another issue this week where Hawkeye fights Ultrons, it says a lot that Hawkeye’s most compelling conflict this week is with Spider-Woman over an old girlfriend. This is a good one, kids.

Hawkeye is still dealing with the ramifications of his having helped old flame Penny – those ramifications being that the Russian Mafia has decided to kill him. So the women in Hawkeye’s life – Spider-Woman, Black Widow and Mockingbird – have started to work, both separately and together, to save Hawkeye from himself, whether he knows it or not. Black Widow tracks Penny down on her way out of town to discover who has it in for Clint. Mockingbird takes care of a van of Russians while Clint putters around in his kitchen… signing the divorce papers she brought him. Then those two team up wth Spider-Woman – Hawkeye’s current girlfriend – to get information from Kate – Hawkeye’s current semi-partner / sidekick – on how to find Clint… while Kate peels off to take care of yet more Russians. And all the while, the women learn a little more about Hawkeye than they really wanted to, while Hawkeye, well… a man’s gotta sleep, right?

So if a standard action superhero comic is what you’re looking for, this issue has plenty of it. We’ve got a pretty good foot chase between Widow and Penny, plus a couple of fun beatdowns of Tracksuit Russians – if I live to be a thousand, I will never get tired of watching mooks chatter “bro bro bro” while being beaten into unconsciousness. So from an action front, this book has enough to keep people engaged, lest one think that this issue is nothing but a emotional wankfest of people talking about their feelings.

But make no mistake: it is the emotional stuff that resonates in this issue. There are a variety of people with a variety of relationships with Clint at play here, and each one is interesting and relatable in its own way. And writer Matt Fraction structured the whole thing very well: we start out with Black Widow and Mockingbird – in sequences started with panels titling the sequences “The Work Wife” and “The Ex-Wife” – both of whom are operating to protect him without his knowing, his consent, or his asking. And yes, these are exciting, violent sequences, but the subtext I took from them was that these was that these were women who know Clint Barton, and who know that he will do things without thinking about the consequences, and that he needs a certain amount of handholding and steering from behind the scenes to keep him from stomping on his own dick. And as someone who likes to drink and occasionally go off half-cocked about some damn thing or another, I recognized that kind of woman, and seeing the almost automatic urge on the part of these women to protect Clint – while in Mockingbird’s case, literally divorcing him – was something that really hit home.

But Fraction also shows us the later stages of relationships: we’ve got Spider-Woman as the established girlfriend who is just beginning to understand that the guy she’s with is maybe too much of an unreliable flake to be a good long-term bet, and Kate as the potential new girlfriend who simply can’t see the faults that the people who really know him are either just learning to be horrified by. And what works for me about those two character is how Fraction puts their encounters back-to-back. Any adult male has been in the position where, in reasonably short order, an old girlfriend tells him exactly what’s wrong with him, and then interacts with a new girlfriend who doesn’t know any of those things… when he knows that the old girlfriend is dead right. So not only does Fraction show that kind of interaction, but he shows how it affects Clint in a compelling manner. After all, there’s nothing like being faced with your failings to drive you into a paroxysm of self-pity, and Fraction shows it all in a manner that any dude a couple years into dating age will know all too well.

David Aja’s art is unlike almost anyone else’s currently working in comics whose name isn’t David Mazzucchelli. His medium lines are extremely simple, yet on the realistic side as opposed to cartoony. This is very minimalistic comic art, that isn’t overly detailed, and yet doesn’t leave anything out – most panels have a drawn background with plenty of detail to establish the scene without going overboard. There is just enough detail here for everyone to look like real people with expressive faces, and not a sketch line more. It is good looking, simple comic book art, of a type you don’t see a lot these days.

Hawkeye #9 is not necessarily gonna light the engines of anyone looking for wall-to-wall, balls to the wall action, although there’s enough to satisfy anyone who doesn’t have an unreasonable bloodlust. But what it does have is a pile of real, human moments and interactions that will strike home with almost anyone old enough to date. It’s a stronger, more character-based story than most you’re likely to find in a comic store. It’s highly recommended.