Hawkeye #16 - "Recording Tape"

[arbre_rieur]

"I realized I could do a book that would honor the [Hawkeye] stuff I loved when I was a kid, especially the Mark Gruenwald stuff, as silly as it might be now; but I could honor that character work, I could honor who that guy is. Who is the regular man that gets to be with the Avengers?" -- Matt Fraction

Comments

[mrstatham]

Can Fraction somehow split Hawkeye off into two titles, please? Clint disinterests me utterly, but I could read his Kate forever.

[arilou_skiff]

Heh. I wonder when making jokes about the Champions is going to stop being funny.

Probably never.

[agharta75]

This makes me smile.

[protogarrett]

I love this, but how did Kate get caught and beat up by two goons?

[shadowpsykie]

i don't have a problem with her getting beat up. Hell she's a non powered hero in a superpowered (and at times out muscled world). I've always disliked the idea that a hero (female or male) remains "pretty" after a fight (with perhaps some artistic damage.) If you are going into a fight, you are going into it with the idea you might, and probably will get hurt.

(now this does not mean i like watching people, least of all women, getting beat up and bloody. it just means i like it more when a hero isn't untouchable)


unless you are just wondering how we got from point A- point B? in which case ignore me all together... :)

[mrstatham]

This. I know Kate's capable of hanging with the YA and just went on a trip through the multiverse, but it'd be dull just to see her get through everything with zero consequence. There basically needs to be a sliding scale, like there is for Batman solo and then in his work with the JL, where he's capable of taking on stupid-level threats, but if often impeded by average thugs or one villain alone in his solo books.

[shadowpsykie]

heh the way i deal with that in my head is that, Batman never over underestimates a super, but tends to always underestimate a non super lol.

[ablackraptor]

That basically sums up how I see it; there's a big difference between fighting supers and monsters alongside a team of superpowered buddies, and fighting normal thugs up-close, especially since she was too close to use her bow in these recent instances. Hell, even in the earlier issues of Hawkeye, she could do reasonably fine against the Bros and other thugs, but usually when she had Clint to help fight (or serve as a distraction), or when she had the element of surprise. She rarely took on thugs by herself, and when she did she didn't usually last long, since she's basically a glass cannon.
Plus, given that she recently lost most/all of her money and is being targeted by a woman with unlimited resources which is likely messing with her confidence, I think its safe to say she's not bringing her A-game out with her right now, or at least that's what I figured.

[lieut_kettch]

Did she go pure mano-a-mano with the goons that beat her up? Some kind of close combat weapon would be helpful when up against bigger, stronger, opponents who outnumber you. Maybe she should have Bobbi teach her eskrima. Plus it would be a golden opportunity for Kate and Bobbi to swap Clint Barton stories.

[ablackraptor]

Mostly; she tried to use her bow as a club but they caught it before she could. On the plus side, IIRC, she did take one guy out by herself.
But, yeah, she could use some kind of melee weapon, and any excuse to bond with Bobbi would welcomed.

[silverhammerman]

Honestly this issue didn't do it for me, I like The Rockford Files a whole lot, but if I wanted a Rockford story I would just watch one, I'm reading Hawkeye for the superheroic twist to the idea. And even the Rockford Files had an amusing supporting cast, I'm not so in love with Kate Bishop that her inclusion is enough to sell me on a story that doesn't grab me at all.

As much as I like this series it's been treading water for a while now. Those first six issues or so are just fantastic, next level comics stuff, but this series has been losing momentum ever since the issue where they killed off Grills. The Pizza Dog issue was cute and artistically impressive, but following up the big shock death with 3 or 4 issues where that HUGE developement hasn't actually resolved in any way was just frustrating and really drained my enthusiasm.

I think the next issue is supposed to finally bring the whole Tracksuit Mafia story to a head, so maybe that'll restore my faith in this series.

[mrosa]

I think it's ironic that Fraction calls Gruenwald's Hawkeye silly, but then inserts silly scenes like a person asking a librarian to help her torrent stuff, and a very forced scene of her running away while two looks back to see the Champions. This whole series seems to be set in la-la-land, where everything is built on references and self-awareness.

[sadoeuphemist]

That's not ironic because he says he's deliberately calling back to Gruenwald.

[mrosa]

No, he says he's honouring the character work, not the silliness.

[sadoeuphemist]

How are the two separable? They're the same thing. Do you think he wrote a scene where a guy has a piano in a wading pool and somehow thought he wasn't being silly?

[mrosa]

I don't know you tell me, he's the one separating them.

[sadoeuphemist]

What do you mean, he's not separating them at all. "...the [Hawkeye] stuff I loved when I was a kid ... silly as it might be now; but I could honor that character work" The Hawkeye stuff he loves and the character work are the same thing. "I loved comics as a kid, as silly as they were, but I loved those old Hawkeye comics." Obviously I'm talking about the same thing both times, I'm just getting more specific.

I honestly don't understand how you're misreading that sentence so badly. I mean right after that in the interview he describes Hawkeye's character as " Fred from Scooby Doo all grown up"

[ablackraptor]

Just because he thinks they're silly doesn't mean he doesn't want to be silly himself, or think the silliness of the old stories was a negative thing. He never said silly was bad, especially since, going from interviews, and when I saw him last year at Thought Bubble, he WANTED to do a book that'd be a fun character piece, so the silliness here is intentional.

[mrosa]

Then why does he have to make allowances for it? When he claims Gruenwald's run seems silly now, he's doing that. Then he tries to cover it up with that 'but' about character work.

[ablackraptor]

I think you're reading too much into what was, essentially, a throw-away line in a small comment he made about the character. The comment, really, reads like he's saying he loved the character work when he read it as a kid, even though nowadays people who write it off as silly. He's not saying its bad, just that a modern audience probably wouldn't find it as engaging as he did.

[janegray]

...I'm confused.