Hawkeye #10

written by Matt Fraction
art by Francesco Francavilla

This issue of Hawkeye belongs the Clown.  Francavilla's art style couldn't diverge much more from Aja's, but it's dramatic noir tones, fractured visual storytelling, and pulp sensibilities—in contrast to Aja's sleek, tiled layout and pop art aspect, with Matt Hollingsworth's muted color palate—make it perfect for the character portrait of the carnival clown turned professional hitman Kazimierz Kazimierczak.  The final page, which reiterates precisely the same dialogue and story as the last of the previous issue, essentially allows the same moment to be told in each character's story.

If he weren't a contract killer who loves his job and is probably getting close to her for professional reasons, Kate Bishop's flirtation with Kazi would be wickedly hot.  He's amazingly articulate and soulful even in his slightly broken English.

"It is said that you are a New Yorker the moment you remember the way New York used to be.  We are all New Yorkers then.  This miraculous place lives to obliterate its history.  It is history as fashion.  Trend.  Moments.  Moments lost and...and overwritten.  You have to hunt the past in New York.  Not like--like Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Paris, Istanbul.  These places wear their pasts with honor over their hearts.  A woman.  Not a girl."  (Hawkeye: Little Hits: 96 [10: 7])

The conversation may be pretense, but the ideas are real.  Their quiet and gentle fondling sparks enough heat for the rest of Bishop's father's party to entirely fade away.  Even more impressive are Kate's bold, equally hot kiss to keep Kazi from stealing the cool mystery from their flirtation and her complete contentment to leave without a date or a phone number, just a first name.

Chronologically, Hawkeye #10 follows Kate on her "thing tonight" (Hawkeye: Little Hits: 86 [9: 19])—though it makes what look like Christmas trees at the party a little confusing, since it should still be Valentine's Day, right?—after she leaves Clint moping upstairs to his bedroom until it culminates in Gil's death, again.  As such, it at least partially clarifies Barton's tantalizing conversation on the rooftop with a soon-to-be-dead Gil.  The woman in question, the one for whom Barton will write a letter, is not "Friend-Girl" Jessica Drew (a.k.a. Spider-Woman) or Darlene Penelope Wright (a.k.a. Cherry), but Kate herself.  And while it suggests a romantic interest, since why else would Clint have so much difficulty finding the words, we readers are not privy to that part of the conversation in either telling.

[July 2013]

As collected in Hawkeye: Little Hits  (ISBN: 978-0785165637)