Hawkguy Trouble: Hawkeye #9 Review

Hawkeye is one of the best superhero comic books that you can currently buy, and it is because it isn’t about superheroes. Oh sure: it has all the trappings of a standard superhero comic book: it stars an Avenger, it features The Black Widow and Spider-Woman, it has fistfights and a motorcycle chase and international crime and women of mystery, but those aren’t the things that Hawkeye, and in particular Hawkeye #9, is about. For all the action and the trappings, Hawkeye #9 is about a guy who has made some bad decisions  – some for good reasons and some not – and is dealing with the consequences of how those decisions have affected the women in his life, and by extension how those women’s reactions are affecting him.

So Hawkeye #9 is a story about some superheroes, but it is not a superhero story. It is, instead, a very human story that anyone with any regrets over how they have treated someone close to them, or anyone who has felt let down by someone close to them, can relate to. And it includes Russian mobsters getting the living shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion. Which means that this is an extraordinary issue of an extraordinary comic book, and one of the best books in the past several weeks.

Seriously: considering there’s another issue this week where Hawkeye fights Ultrons, it says a lot that Hawkeye’s most compelling conflict this week is with Spider-Woman over an old girlfriend. This is a good one, kids.