This comic has a Spotify playlist.
I am going to get to the myriad ways that this is the coolest comic to grace the shelves in a long time, but first I want to talk about it’s Spotify playlist.
The opening track of it is Dizzy Gillespie’s “Fire Dance”. As soon as you start to listen, you are greeted with images of busted gum shoes going toe to toe with two bit mooks and twitchy snitches, just because it’s right. You see jive cats and fly girls. You see long sedans and wide collars. The playlist is filled with tunes just like this; Herbie Handcock, Miles Davis, and other giants of the 70′s cop drama wah-wah abound.
This playlist is everything you need to know about Clint Barton’s world.
As the gorgeously simple and playfully curt title page tells you THIS is what he does when he’s not an Avenger and what Clint does trades the high flying super heroics of a team book for a stylish street level human drama that is better than a good number of television pilots I’ve ever seen. Fraction and Aja are firing on all cylinders here and you can tell that they haven’t missed a step since there last pairing during their incredible Immortal Iron Fist run.
I won’t lie to you, guys, this ISN’T going to be an objective review. I had been excited about this book since it’s announcement and what I got was a COMPLETE and utter joy.
This comic teases you with the Classic Hawkeye shot in the opening and playfully subverts what you think the comic will give you, while still maintaining that Clint Barton is the coolest mamma jamma walking the streets of New York in the Marvel U. Here we see WHY this guy can stand with the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and what that can cost someone like him. We see every scrape, cut, and bruise and that just makes you so much more invested in Clint as a character.
Fraction is at the top of his game writing Clint as the hard time superhero that always stops to enjoy the little things. He’s Jim Rockford with a compound bow. He’s Popeye Doyle with deadlier hands. The scene of him getting back into the heart of the city after getting out of the hospital is pure bliss. Gone is the slick master assassin we see bounding around with Cap. Here we are presented a Clint Barton who is worried about eating from day to day. A man willing to put his life in danger for his neighbors (and animals). A man so downright AWESOME he can break a car window just by snapping a quarter at them.
David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth have outdone themselves with Hawkeye. The line, the colorings, the texture; EVERYTHING works. There are moments in this comic that translate the story so beautifully, you almost can see them move. Hollingsworth’s coloring might be the X Factor of this comic; Aja’s art is stellar and moody as always, but Matt Hollingsworth’s subtle colorings in the transitions of time and in characters are down right jaw dropping. This is master class in comics craft.
This comic was written in the fabled Marvel Method, and Aja and Hollingsworth ran away gleefully with this comic. I don’t want to get too much into the plot of the comic because there is no POSSIBLE way I can retell the story as well as Fraction, Aja, and Hollingsworth.
What they have constructed is basically the pilot episode of an incredible 70′s drama series about an Avenger. It’s cool, it’s beautiful, and it’s going to be on EVERYONE’S pull list soon.
Everything Is Pizza Dog and Nothing Hurts,
-J. Partridge III
Justin Partridge has written 37 articles on this blog.
