Hawkeye #1 Review: A Perfect Bullseye!

If you are looking for the Hawkeye that wowed fans in the Avengers movie, you won’t find him here.

What you will find, however, is Matt Fraction’s realistic and gritty interpretation of a man named Clinton Barton. The purple archer doesn’t have the luxury of fighting crime with superpowers, and a bow and arrow is not the answer to every situation. While it is a scary sight for anyone on the receiving end, it’s not going to convince a slum lord gangster to stop unfairly raising rent on poor families.

These injustices are too small for someone like the Hulk to deal with but just right for Mr. Barton.

Fraction does a fantastic job of painting him as the everyman’s hero of Queens, New York. David Aja’s art felt like something I would see drawn on a subway wall, and Matt Hollingsworth’s coloring gave the story a Bohemian motif to match the grittiness of the story.

As the kids say these days, this issue has tons of street credit.

A side note: Does anyone know why one of the variants has Spider-Man surrounded by the many incarnations of Doctor Octopus? It’s a cool cover, and I purchased it, but I can’t seem to discover the reason for its creation. Please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks!

Grade: A-