Hawkeye #11

"Pizza Is My Business"
written by Matt Fraction
art by David Aja
colors by Matt Hollingsworth

Lucky—formerly Arrow, known to himself as Pizza Dog—stars in his own noir in "Pizza Is My Business".  Beginning with the same fight between Barton and Bishop that concluded the previous issue and immediately preceded the death of Grills, which gets told again here, Lucky follows his own path through the apartment building.  And he meets his own femme fatale, who leads him to the rooftop scene of the crime.  Led by his acute olfactory senses and a unique canine perspective on the building's inhabitants, Lucky conducts his own investigation, standing guard for Clint while he and Kate attend Grills' funeral.  Like any good fatale, this one is an irresistible heartbreaker with dark loyalties.

Fraction and Aja, who is at least as complicit in this issue's success as its author, have crafted a convincing and charismatic protagonist without compromising Lucky's dog-ness.  His emotional substance, albeit in a dog's register, is heartfelt and satisfying.

The structure of the issue is stylish and exciting, inviting and rewarding close scrutiny.  It is most satisfying in its ability to work in larger plot information, much of it apparently unknown to the series' human characters, making Lucky an unlikely witness to furtive dangers close to Barton's home.  We discover the identity of a tenant in criminal cahoots with both the tracksuit mobsters and their sly hitman the Clown.  We meet, however briefly, Barton's older brother Barney outside the building.  We confirm, though we may have already suspected, that Clint drinks way too much coffee.

[August 2013]

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