I finally get why people love the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run now

I was always a big DC guy and skipped that Hawkeye series for years. Then last month I had a long layover in Denver and grabbed the first trade on a whim. The way they showed Clint's hearing loss through the art in issue 19 was genius, I never thought comics could do that so well. Has anyone else had that moment where a book clicked way later than it should have?

3 comments

3 Comments

sean_cooper5819d ago

Yeah the hearing loss thing is what finally sold me too. That issue hit different when you realize he's been missing stuff the whole run and you just didn't notice. Reminds me of when I finally picked up Gotham Central years after it came out and realized I wasted so much time not reading it.

joel_jones19d ago

Wait, did we read the same book? Sure, the hearing loss thing was a neat trick, but the whole run felt like style over substance to me. Fraction's writing was trying way too hard to be clever with all that "bro" dialog and pointless action scenes that went nowhere. Aja's art is amazing, I'll give you that, but I never bought Clint as anything more than a lucky idiot who stumbles through problems. The whole pizza dog thing got old fast and felt like they were just trying to be quirky for the sake of it. I think people hype it up because it looks different from other comics, not because it actually tells a good story about Clint.

wendy13119d ago

Lucky idiot who stumbles through problems? Man, I gotta stop you right there because that is not the Clint Barton I remember for all 20 issues or whatever it was. I mean, the guy literally falls off a roof and breaks his leg, then spends half the run in a cast trying to prove he's still got it. That's not stumbling, that's stubbornly refusing to give up even when the universe is telling him to take a nap. And sure, the "bro" dialog was a bit much sometimes, but Fraction was trying to show how Hawkeye talks to himself when nobody's watching, not writing a Shakespeare play. Pizza Dog is a dog eating pizza, I don't know what else people want from a comic about a guy in a purple costume who shoots arrows.