Hawkeye #9

"Girls"
written by Matt Fraction
art by David Aja
colors by Matt Hollingsworth

Hawkeye proves romance can be brutal.  Fraction's series is quirky, clever and periodically hilarious.  Here Fraction shows he can really cut.  Clint's antics out of his Avengers uniform have landed him on the very bad side of the Marvel criminal elite.  He's battered, weary and depressed.  If an army of Tracksuit Mafia out for your head weren't oppressive enough, Cherry's—hereafter known by her real name, Darlene Penelope Wright, thanks to the killer spy skills of Black Widow—unannounced and physically affectionate arrival at the Avengers Mansion stirs up the women in Barton's life.

Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow, is the first.  Given the title of "Work-Wife," she is refreshingly unconcerned about the romantic overtones to Barton's new dalliance.  She is overwhelmingly concerned only with identifying the woman and her motives, managing the consequences of the criminal (or probably criminal) actions of the couple, and minimizing the damage both to Barton himself and to his reputation as an Avenger.  She's all business, and despite her stunning looks and sincere concern, she's as far from a love interest as Fraction could write.  Instead, Darlene Penelope Wright reveals herself to be more emotionally invested than it might have seemed at the end of the previous issue.  She leaves the affair in a dust-cloud of frustration and with a number of mafia thugs and super villains on her tail, but her concern for her lover is easily as genuine as Romanoff's, even if her final message is itself a cryptic instruction as much as worry for his well-being.

Clint's romantic failures are, at least in his mind, all his fault.  No doubt, he's reluctant to commit.  Remember how long it took him to even unpack?  He's exceptionally guarded.  Kate seems to be the only superhero who knows where he lives in Brooklyn.  And he, like so many, is understandably attracted to mysterious and dangerous women.  She's amazing—driving a vintage muscle car, sending safe combinations by comic books, looking every bit like Faye Dunaway playing Red Riding Hood—but Cherry's a hazard to his physical and emotional health.  Bobbi Morse, his now ex-wife, who takes the initiative to finalize their divorce after seeing him kiss another woman, seems—here, at least—to be entirely unconcerned about distributing the blame.  Sometimes relationships don't work out, and when they don't, the fault is almost always mutual, if there is even fault at all.  These two share a bond and a rapport they'll probably keep as long as they know one another, but the divorce is right and amicable, even if it just highlights for Clint just another failure.

It's a cautionary tale against workplace romance.  As a non-regular Marvel reader, I have to admit I'm only partially informed about the details and status of Clint's relationship with fellow superhero Spider-Woman, Jessica Drew, and I'm invested even less.  Whatever Jessica understands about their relationship and whatever Clint has led her to believe—she thinks she's his girlfriend, he labels her his "friend-girl," whatever exactly that means—there's little prior evidence in Hawkeye that there's another (current) significant love interest in his Clint's life.  It makes her stunned reaction to the arrival of Cherry, her hurt at Clint's fling with the dangerous bombshell, and her mostly selfish, overly hurtful, and at least partially untrue lambasting difficult to sympathize with.  Clint's clearly in trouble.  Cherry knows it, because she brought on a lot (but not all) of it; Natasha, Bobbi, and Kate all recognize it.  Jessica is too blinded by her own heartbreak to care about anything else.  She even manipulates Kate into giving up Clint's address, presumably out of concern for him, but really only to bitch him out for all his romantic wrongdoings.  Then she shows up at his door and slaps him twice, an inexcusable physical assault that I'm relieved Barton calls her out on.  Women shouldn't get that privilege any more than men.  She may have cause to be angry at his infidelity, if indeed they were an actual couple and not another case of superhero bed-hopping, but she has no claim to berate him for his now-ended marriage to Bobbi or cast judgment on his value as a person.  It's low and petty, even if it's familiar and emotionally credible.

Clint Barton—whom I hesitate to call the "titular character"—gets most of Hawkeye's face time, but Kate Bishop is its brightest star.  In an issue structured on Clint's relationships with the most important women in his life, Kate defies category, because unlike the others, she is not actually defined by her relationship to Clint.  As she so boldly, defiantly, and accurately declares to a haughty and departing Jessica Drew, "Oh, yeah?  Well, I don't hang out with him.  He hangs out with me!" (Hawkeye: Little Hits: 85 [9: 18]).  I would call for her to get her own series except I kind of hope that Hawkeye will periodically be it.

Fraction has commonly manipulated Hawkeye's chronology without a great deal of explanation.  Certainly "Girls" is told at least partially out of sequence, since Jessica and Kate's confrontation with Clint must precede Bobbi's, a strategy that allows Fraction to present the characters in their increasing importance to Clint:  Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider-Woman, Kate, though according to their title cards, the final two could arguably be inverted.  However, it also casts interesting doubt on the chronological placement of its final rooftop scene.  In sequence, Barton would doubtless be going to write an apology letter to Drew, who had just blown up at him, but out of sequence it could just as easily be to Cherry, who left at the end of the previous issue after a similarly hostile disagreement.  But this mystery, however suggestive, is preempted by the sudden and, to me at least, unexpected shooting of Grills by a new face-painted villain, whose logo behind the issue's ubiquitous heart was also seen spray-painted on the garage door by the very street thugs Hawkeye previously chased away and who was subsequently seen in the background loitering around the building when Kate arrives.  Grills might have been a relatively minor character, but he occupied a very personal and close place in Barton's life.  He was, perhaps more than anyone but Kate and sometimes more than Kate, a confidant for Clint.  Perhaps because he's just a regular guy—one with good advice, strong personal loyalty, and apparently a new puppy that looks a lot like Lucky—his unceremonious death was a real blow.  Grills, you'll be missed.

[June 2013]

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