So, with the announcement of Phase 4 by Marvel at Comic Con, I do a quick rundown on 10 Minute Marvel yesterday, I thought I should start going back to some of the comics. In particular, I have the first two trade paperbacks (tpb) from Matt Fractions run of Hawkeye and Neil Gaiman’s Eternals.

I started with Hawkeye, because it’s been longer, and I’ve only gotten through one of the books, thus first impressions. But I really enjoyed reading most of it again. Just to quickly touch on the one part that I didn’t like, there is a Kate Bishop story from the Young Avengers that felt different enough that it wasn’t that great. The actual stories from the Hawkeye series were very good.

So, why am I reading the Hawkeye comic by Matt Fraction? In the graphic for the MCU Phase 4 found in an earlier article, shows the Hawkeye logo. That logo is extremely close to the logo for Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye logo. To me, that implies we’re likely going to get something that borrows from Fractions run. There are also rumors of Young Avengers, which likely would have Kate Bishop as one of their members, so it would make sense that Clint Barton would be training her and showing her the ropes.

But on to the comic, it’s an interesting story, or I should stay story. There are a number of vignettes, versus a single arching story in the first tpb. And in these, we get to see how rough it is being Hawkeye. He takes on, and defeats, bad guys, but it’s never an easy process. Mainly, because, even when he is going up against normal bad guys, he is just a normal guy himself, and if he’s up against people with super powers, while he is extremely skilled and comes out on top, he’s still a normal guy. These vignettes also just show some of his normal life. All this time, he’s training or hanging out with Kate Bishop, though she’s very capable at this time, and you kind of have two Hawkeyes.

I like that it’s not a big over arching story because you do really start to feel like you’re seeing something different than your standard comics. You get to see a character struggle, make difficult decisions, but decisions that aren’t going to end the world, necessarily. And so often in comics you just have these big moments in it, but you lose some of the character depth, in this run of Hawkeye, you definitely get his depth. The artwork, by David Aja, also lends to this feel as it isn’t as polished and cartoonishly styled as some comic books can be. That’s not to say it is extremely realistic, but it’s a bit more, and mainly it’s just a bit rougher and more muted that lends itself to Clint Barton and Kate Bishop getting beat up. I think, in the one Young Avengers story, in the tpb, that’s something that’s missing. It’s a decent Kate Bishop story, but it has that high gloss and bold look that is common for comic books, so it feels very different than the rest of the book, and even in the more serious moments, it doesn’t carry the same weight, because of the difference in look.

So, is this going to work on the Disney+ streaming show? I think that it could, mainly because, this is a very fed up Clint Barton. He doesn’t have a family, but in Hawkeye, I could easily see him being fed up with being called into missions, and training his replacement so that he doesn’t have to be beat up anymore. And I think that it would lend itself well to vignettes if they didn’t want to do a single over arching story. And it would allow Jeremy Renner’s Clint Barton to step off screen for a little while, while still having a Hawkeye/unpowered character on a team of superheroes. Just the different feel is what is going to make it interesting, the narrower scope, if they try and take some of the grittier or leaning into that unpowered feel on a grand story, I don’t think it will work nearly as well.

What are your thoughts on this run if you’ve read it? I personally recommend it, as I think it does some interesting character development, that would work well with the character development we’ve already had in the MCU. And as for the comic, I’m looking forward to reading the second one that I have. I vaguely remember enjoying that one as well, but it’s been a long time since I’ve read them.

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