Bullseye: Francesco Francavilla To Pencil Hawkeye

This is about the best news from Marvel Comics in a while: artist Francesco Francavilla, who did such good, pulp-inspired work on 2011’s Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive (which came about a week too early to make my list of the best of 2012) and on this week’s Dark Horse The Black Beetle (which is really pretty good, and which we will be reviewing sometime in the next few days), will be taking over art duties on Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye for two issues.

“On Hawkeye, we’ve been blessed with not only one of the biggest writers in comics with Matt Fraction, but also some of the best artists like David Aja, Javier Pulido and now Francesco Francavilla,” said the book’s editor Stephen Wacker in a statement accompanying Marvel’s announcement of Francavilla’s addition to the team. “Though he’s only on the series for issues #10 and #12, Francesco is going to leave his mark on Clint with some of the most beautiful art you’ll see all year!”

Hawkeye is about the best match for Francavilla’s art style that I can currently think of at Marvel. The book has a healthy mix of street level crime and weird, S.H.I.E.L.D. superspy action that are pulpy and grimy, with enough big, overblown action, to really pop under Francavilla’s pencils. The dude gives solid, old-school action-adventure illustrations, and is probably my favorite artist discovery since we started Crisis On Infinite Midlives in 2011. Francavilla will be drawing Hawkeye #10 and #12, and you can check out his cover to issue 10 after the jump.