NB of the Week

Hawkeye #1 - Lucky Hawkeye
Lets throw this out there first and foremost: The fact that somebody has made Hawkeye into an amazing badass is the main reason I loved this book so much. It's flippin' Hawkeye, for Pete's sake. But this is the team that made me see just how cool Iron Fist could be so that certainly helps.
As the intro page says,
"Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, became the greatest sharp-shooter known to man. He then joined the Avengers. This is what he does when he's not being an Avenger. That's all you need to know."
Better words could not have introduced us to the life of Clint Barton, who still rents an apartment and still pays for a daily life and still gets hurt when knocked off the top of a building. He cracks and breaks and goes to the hospital. And when he finds that the Russian goons in track suits who run his apartment building are tripling everybody's rates, he doesn't stand for it. He puts together a bigt lump of money and tells them he's paying for everybody's rent and also buying the building. Track Suits don't like that because maybe they just want the building empty. This turns into a fight that sends a dog flying into traffic. Clint Barton definitely doesn't appreciate that. Not only does he still beat the crap outta Track Suits but he takes the dog to the vet, gets him fixed up and has a new best friend (and I gotta say, as somebody whose canine best friend lost an eye, having this dog also loose an eye kinda got me. It's the little things in life...). So now Clint owns the building where he and his neighbors grill on the roof and socialize, even if they don't always like each other, and we have an amazing start to what should be a great book about a character I never gave two craps about.
And that's what Matt Fraction is great at. Much as I liked the start of his Thor run, it's been falling rather wuickly. No signs of that here. Fraction is great with "real" characters. Iron Man is great. Iron Fist was phenomenal. And Hawkeye looks to continue the trend. I really like this issue and I'm already filling with high hopes that it'll only get better.