Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction, David Aja
My rating: 4/5 cats
all right, all right, all right. anne is correct in all things and maybe hawkeye can be interesting, in the right hands.
so, anne was kind enough to bully me into reading a hawkeye book. i’m not a superhero person, and i’ve read very little in the way of superhero-based graphic novels. i read Watchmen and X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga because they were assigned for one of my library-school readers’ advisory classes, and i’ve read a bunch of batman books because – batman, but as far as the rest of the world of superheroes is concerned – i was completely at a loss. they’re not approachable to me; too many different artists and conflicting storylines/alternate timelines and the early ones seem dated and cheesy but i felt like you would NEED to read the early ones in order to have a foundation for the characters and to see how things evolved or to understand the references or to get the jokes and it was one of those things that seemed too much trouble to even begin getting into now, when i’m probably more than halfway through my lifespan.
and hawkeye – meh. i may not know much about superheroes in graphic novels, but i do watch all the superhero movies that come out because i’m a sucker for the action films kaboom kaboom pow pow. and while i didn’t actively dislike hawkeye the way i did captain america, he’s just kinda … there. there’s nothing particularly appealing about him, he’s just the guy with the arrows, and he doesn’t have pretty elfhair
and he’s not katniss
so it’s hard for me to be enthusiastic about archery when there’s a giant green thing stomping and smashing and there’s scarlett johansson and her attributes to look at instead.
but sometime it’s good to be bullied into things. because that’s kinda the point of this hawkeye book – he’s just a guy. just a regular old joe whose heroic deeds include paying a dog’s vet bills and preventing his neighbors from getting evicted. just a guy who can’t even keep his arrows organized and labeled, but still gets to intercourse pretty girls and fumble into car chases and kick the butts of ninjas and magicians and various other hoods along with girl-hawkeye, while making plenty of self-deprecating remarks and having some great banter along the way.
it’s a fun story, and i’m glad i read it despite my initial reservations of “i do not like this art” and “what is going on with this formatting and are these pages out of order because why does this dog story keep popping up into the middle of this other story and what is even happening?” but greg assured me things were as they should be, and even though i did not understand the last story at all and i think it relates to something outside of the boundaries of this book and is exactly the kind of thing i was worried about being confused by coming so late to the superhero world, i still enjoyed reading this for the laughs and the pizza dog and the general shrugged tone of the narrative.
so, yes.
greg sent me the next group of hawkeye adventures and i will read those soon, and thanks to anne for giving me virtual swirlies and beating me up by the internet flagpole and all that. i have promised to make her turtles from this book: Milk Bar Life: Recipes & Stories, and i will be making good on that promise probably next week – as soon as it cools off a little bit here and they won’t turn into liquid blobs in the mail.
just don’t make me read a captain america. even i have my limits.
turtles TK
