Hawkeye 15, Fantastic Four 1

Hawkeye 15
Fraction (w) and Aja (a) and Hollingsworth (c)

The Barton boys are trying to piece together what the tracksuit draculas are up to with the help from Team Clint's Exes. Mockingbird drops by to tell Clint that she's followed the records of the strip club he busted up through several shell companies and eventually to its own, Ivan Banionis, the man Clint had deported before buying the building. She also has figured out that he and his companies own every building for three blocks except Hawkeye's, making him a big ol' target for them. Next up is Black Widow, who has dug up 18 murders in the tri-state area that seem to be a result of the tracksuits and their hitman, who Natasha warns Clint is practically a ghost, someone who can sign his work as loudly as he wants because no one knows anything about him. Meanwhile, a backroom meeting commences as the shady people above the tracksuits discuss the plans for the land, a three block by three block premiere luxury shopping center that would replace the medium and low income housing currently in the area. The only hold-up is Clint's building which the Clown, out of disguise (or into it, I suppose), says is still legally owned with the city by Ivan Banionis and that Clint's name appears as "interim superintendent and owner," a title the Clown doesn't think is terribly legal. He meets with the tracksuits next to tell them that Clint's stay there isn't exactly legal, which means that he can't call the cops on them so they don't really have to worry about the little games they've been playing; instead, they can go for a full attack. Clint and Barney beat up a bunch of the tracksuits in a van on the street but are rushed back inside when they hear Simone screaming. They run to her apartment and take out a few more tracksuits before Spider-Woman meets up with them in their apartment to tell Clint that he can't just "buy" the building, that things aren't that easy. Barney asks how the tracksuits got in and Clint realizes it must have been the roof and that they could still be inside. Clint runs downstairs and checks outside but the van is gone. As he comes back in, the Clown stabs him in the head with his own arrow and shoots an oncoming Barney in the gut before leaving both Barton boys on the ground.

Here's the thing about HAWKEYE that's been so rewarding for readers: that summary. Not, like, I did a really good job with it or anything like that (I'm fishing for compliments here, dear reader, take a hint, okay?), but the fact that it's so packed with things that happened. Every part of the issue was important and I STILL didn't cover everything in the book. Despite how jam-packed it is, the comic reads really well. It moves quickly, it keeps you exactly the right amount off-balance to keep you reading and entertained but not overly confused or lost, it has compelling characters with compelling relationships, and it's ultimately about the failures of Hawkeye more than the successes. Granted, it's a slightly different feel when Kate is our star because, simply put, Kate succeeds more. Hawkeye is a hero with the Avengers, he's someone who always shows up, usually does his part (which is sometimes actually helpful), and goes home. At home, though, he's a different person, trying to do his best with just about no sense of the actual world. This book was created by someone who understood Clint's life, who saw the bigger picture of Clint Barton. He was an orphan, he became a circus act, and he moved into a life of crime before being plucked from it and becoming an Avenger, which he's been ever since. That didn't leave a lot of time for studying or for understanding the way the real world worked, which is why Clint is where he is now. It's all summed up in an exchange with Jess where he says that he's just trying to do the right thing, that what the tracksuits were doing wasn't right and he wanted to fix it. When she tells him it's not that easy, he mutters "yeah, but it should be." Perfect Clint, perfect book, another good issue. AND GUYS, this analysis didn't even mention the fact that the Barton boys are seriously injured by issue's end.

Fantastic Four 1
J. Robinson (w) and Kirk and Kesel (a) and Aburtov (c)

The Fantastic Four are back, donning new red costumes and out to save the city again. The issue is framed by a letter from Sue to her kids which is very much the style of "how did things go wrong?" sort of storytelling, where we know something has happened to break this family up but we have to build our way there. She says that Reed is now a broken man, a shell of himself who she sometimes hates for everything that's happened, that Ben is in jail after Reed's testimony, and that Johnny is a wild card, a loose cannon, etc. BUT HOW? Well it apparently starts with them fighting Fin Fang Foom in downtown New York, which causes Reed to ask why he suddenly seems out of control, no longer the plotting and planning foe of theirs that he's used to. They defeat him pretty quickly and go their separate ways, with Reed and Sue watching over the house and the FF, missing Valeria who went to stay in Latveria after some anger at her parents, Ben going to see on-again-off-again girlfriend Alicia Masters, and Johnny going to see his rock-star manager. All seems to be back on track for the F4 until, late at night, some monsters burst out of Reed's lab and into New York.

James Robinson has been in comics for a couple of decades now but I'm only just getting around to hearing about him. He's spent much of his time over at DC with long stints with characters like Superman and Starman but, as you may have guessed, I don't have a whole lot of history with DC. Pretty much, I know Batman and even that is at a far lesser level than I know about the more minor Marvel characters. Robinson's written things for Marvel before but I can't safely say that I've read it (he did a few issues of HEROES REBORN: CAPTAIN AMERICA and I'd hazard a guess to say I've read them, as I've read some HEROES REBORN and I love Captain America, but I can't recall anything about them so here we are). Now he's the writer of the ongoing ALL-NEW INVADERS and FANTASTIC FOUR. This long intro to James Robinson is essentially just my way of talking for a while before I have to say that I'm getting a similar vibe out of both of these books and that vibe is the same sort of vibe, albeit less egregious, I get from Robinson's fellow countryman Paul Cornell, he of WOLVERINE. I have less patience with Cornell after the last WOLVERINE series because it just flat-out bored me, which Robinson has not yet done with either of these two books. However, there is a robotic kind of feeling to the writing that kind of shows there are characters here but makes it feel like, even this early into both series, we're not going to get anything new from these characters. New stories, new situations, sure, but the characters themselves seem like such boilerplate versions of the characters we already know. That said, we are EXTREMELY early into both FANTASTIC FOUR and ALL-NEW INVADERS so I'd be delighted and unsurprised if they turned me around (I'd also be surprised if I ever got to the point with these books that I have with WOLVERINE) and this may be nothing more than an incorrect gut feeling but it's worth noting that it's certainly what my gut is telling me right now.