Hawkeye #17
To go along with the crazy, snowy weather it looks like the world’s been having, the Hawkeye team sends us a little holiday cheer to keep us from getting to grumpy as we wait for the warmth to come.
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artists: Chris Eliopulos, David Aja, Jordie Bellaire
Cover: David Aja
Publisher: Marvel
Around holiday time, Clint had hunkered down with a family in his apartment building, and watched a quality cartoon with them. This is that cartoon.
Admittedly upon beginning to read the issue, I had no idea what was going on, and I kind of thought they were making fun of the Peanuts cartoons with a little Marvel twist to it. A couple more flips of the pages, and that wasn’t quite it, but I still didn’t really know what was going on. I understood the basic concept that this was the cartoon that Clint was watching, but I couldn’t catch its relevancy to what I was reading. It probably took a lot longer than I ‘d like to admit before I truly realized the story they were telling here but maybe that’s just me and I’m a little slow on the uptake.
Essentially what it is, is a cute little story involving dogs that have a remarkable resemblance to Clint’s own life. A group of superanimals named the Winter Friends have this lame tagalong with no powers named Steve (the name threw me off course at first too, but that’s my own fault). Steve also happens to have his own group of ragtag friends (a lot of them are lady dogs, fancy that), that go against a group of wolves (dingoes?) in tracksuits, that say, “dog” a lot. And very much in the fashion of children’s cartooning, it’s a basic life moral that reveals itself at the end of the story, but to make it all relevant, it’s a lesson that our very own Clint Barton is trying to learn throughout his own adventures in his grown up (and not cartoonish) life.
What I love is that Marvel seems to give Fraction and his creative team a lot of creative freedom to tell the story that they want to tell and it’s given us some great issues like the pizza dog issue, but there’s also a time and a place, and a relevancy to all this. Yes it’s an incredibly cute story and the art is fun to look at, at yes it relates back to Clint overall but at this point, I’m ready just to really focus on Clint and what he’s doing with himself or on what Kate’s doing, and whether she’ll be coming back to join Clint or not eventually. Both Kate and Clint have wound out enough of a story, that that’s the story I want to be focusing on right now. It’s also a holiday story, and while the joke is that it’s befitting for the snow we have now, it feels out of place and holds less of an impact that it would have were it to have been published months ago. It’s nice to read about Kate in L.A. because it’s so sunny, and some of us are a little desperate for some good sun right about now, and not thinking back on the holidays.
Overall the story was cute and entertaining, along with the art—the three dogs that bear quite the resemblance to Clint’s exes are a personal favourite. But ultimately it’s the issue’s timing that works against it, with the momentum of that type of storytelling not quite matching up entirely to what readers might be feeling. I’d say save the issue for a snow storming day when you’re curled in front of a fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate, and in need of a story that’ll warm your heart just a little too.
Or who knows, maybe this cartoon’s been haunting Clint in his dreams and will make itself extremely relevant next issue. I guess we’ll see.
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artists: Chris Eliopulos, David Aja, Jordie Bellaire
Cover: David Aja
Publisher: Marvel
Around holiday time, Clint had hunkered down with a family in his apartment building, and watched a quality cartoon with them. This is that cartoon.
Admittedly upon beginning to read the issue, I had no idea what was going on, and I kind of thought they were making fun of the Peanuts cartoons with a little Marvel twist to it. A couple more flips of the pages, and that wasn’t quite it, but I still didn’t really know what was going on. I understood the basic concept that this was the cartoon that Clint was watching, but I couldn’t catch its relevancy to what I was reading. It probably took a lot longer than I ‘d like to admit before I truly realized the story they were telling here but maybe that’s just me and I’m a little slow on the uptake.
Essentially what it is, is a cute little story involving dogs that have a remarkable resemblance to Clint’s own life. A group of superanimals named the Winter Friends have this lame tagalong with no powers named Steve (the name threw me off course at first too, but that’s my own fault). Steve also happens to have his own group of ragtag friends (a lot of them are lady dogs, fancy that), that go against a group of wolves (dingoes?) in tracksuits, that say, “dog” a lot. And very much in the fashion of children’s cartooning, it’s a basic life moral that reveals itself at the end of the story, but to make it all relevant, it’s a lesson that our very own Clint Barton is trying to learn throughout his own adventures in his grown up (and not cartoonish) life.
What I love is that Marvel seems to give Fraction and his creative team a lot of creative freedom to tell the story that they want to tell and it’s given us some great issues like the pizza dog issue, but there’s also a time and a place, and a relevancy to all this. Yes it’s an incredibly cute story and the art is fun to look at, at yes it relates back to Clint overall but at this point, I’m ready just to really focus on Clint and what he’s doing with himself or on what Kate’s doing, and whether she’ll be coming back to join Clint or not eventually. Both Kate and Clint have wound out enough of a story, that that’s the story I want to be focusing on right now. It’s also a holiday story, and while the joke is that it’s befitting for the snow we have now, it feels out of place and holds less of an impact that it would have were it to have been published months ago. It’s nice to read about Kate in L.A. because it’s so sunny, and some of us are a little desperate for some good sun right about now, and not thinking back on the holidays.
Overall the story was cute and entertaining, along with the art—the three dogs that bear quite the resemblance to Clint’s exes are a personal favourite. But ultimately it’s the issue’s timing that works against it, with the momentum of that type of storytelling not quite matching up entirely to what readers might be feeling. I’d say save the issue for a snow storming day when you’re curled in front of a fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate, and in need of a story that’ll warm your heart just a little too.
Or who knows, maybe this cartoon’s been haunting Clint in his dreams and will make itself extremely relevant next issue. I guess we’ll see.
A Look Inside
