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Marvel Pick Of The Week – July 30, 2014

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PICK OF THE WEEK!

Hawkeye 19 by Matt Fraction and David Aja

Loving Hawkeye (the man and the book) is a lot like playing a slot machine. The first 6 issues were astounding, changing the way Marvel developed solo titles. Now, most single-hero books feel more like great television pilots, and the genre as a whole has become better for bringing in a television sensibility. After that, though, the payout became less secure. Issues came out late, or out of order, and even when the issues were on time, the narrative turned laps around a shooting at Hawkeye’s apartment building. For the last few months, this title has been abusive to the reader, giving an unpredictable issue payout. Do we get a book this month? Is it going to be about Clint Barton? Is it going to be the aggressively tone-deaf Kate Bishop story? Cliffhangers have lost their utility since we doubt we’ll even remember by the time we read the next chapter of this particular story. A few issues ago, the book ended with Clint and his brother appearing dead in pools of blood, and the next two issues were a Christmas special (published in March) and an unrelated Kate Bishop “adventure.” I started hating myself for staying with this slot machine. An early payout does not justify spending so much money on subsequent lousy spins. Today was Hawkeye’s last chance to stay in my pull list.

Jackpot.

Hawkeye has returned to the original voice of the first trade collection with this issue. The Barton brothers have survived the shooting (don’t ask how, they just have), and now Clint is deaf and  Barney is in a wheelchair (don’t ask how, they just are). Fraction takes this challenge he has set for himself and manages to script a story comparing this to Clint’s early days as a boy with partial deafness and an abusive father, letting him first sink into how powerless he feels before rising into a stirring climax. Aja peppers his already inventive panel sequences with panels of American Sign Language. I don’t sign, but I recognize a few letters, enough to snicker when Barney signs “WTF” in exasperation. The balance between a unique experiment with the limits of the comic medium and an entry moving forward in a serialized narrative rivals that of the Eisner-winning single issue about the Pizza Dog last year. I am ready to stay with this book until the end now, and not just because Fraction has announced the end of his run.

Honorable Mentions:

Cyclops 3 for coherently summarizing the sprawling Vulcan story into just the parts that enrich the powerful daddy issues this book has done so well… and for the panels of Corsair with his shirt off. I am not even embarrassed to write that.

All New Ghost Rider 5 for relatively tame mutilation necessary to the context of a horror story, as opposed to the ghastly mire of some of DC’s output at the end of the Old 52. This book is so much more fun than I had expected, brought by Tradd Moore’s unmistakable kinetic style over Felipe Smith’s haunting fusion of the Ghost Rider with Faust. “Ghost Rider in Fast and Furious” is too simple for the book this pair serve us every month.

Secret Avengers 6 for taking an already good issue and raising it to the next level by hiding a secret group of Advanced Idea Mechanics in a building labeled “AIMee Mann Fan Central.” The Magnolia soundtrack was my jam in undergrad. My sad, sad jam.

Avengers World 10 for taking three parallel stories that had wandered too far and herding them together under some classic Nick Spencer dark humor, an interview with the head of AIM on a news channel where, yes, he sells weapons of mass destruction, but he’s against manmade climate change, so he gets plenty of American applause. This character is the Avengers equivalent of Morning Glories‘s darkly daffy dorm head, and I loved it.

Iron Man Special 1 for giving us the first appearance of Neut since my guilty pleasure, “Avengers: The Crossing” storyline. I loved how flashy and empty that time in comics was – not enough to want it back, but in the same way I love the camp of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?

Ultimate FF 5 for becoming readable for the first time one issue before cancellation, like the flight into health terminal patients get on their last day. Usually, making animal-related puns out of all the Marvel characters’ codenames would not do it for me, but seeing Captain Americat point to his helmet and hiss, “You think this letter on my head stands for DOG?” Bliss. This does not retroactively make the series any more than a good attempt at doing something original, but it reassures me that if anyone could have made this work, it was Joshua Hale Fialkov.

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