Hawk In The 'Hood

By: Andrew Hines

Hawkeye is a great character to use for a solo title. In a team with Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, what's a guy with a bow and arrow really gonna do? This why he makes much more sense as a solo act. Despite the questionable costume choices over the decades, he's still a good character to follow. For a reformed criminal, he's got a decent moral compass, even if his attitude isn't always exemplary. He may not be a hero's hero, but he knows what he believes in and he sticks to it. His methods may not make him a boy scout like Captain America, but they get the job done without a whole lot of collateral damage. This seems to be a good start for a solo series, but I can definitely see more being done with it. He's a versatile character and the issue  does a good job of showing us that.

Despite his last name making him sound like The Calculator's sidekick, Matt Fraction has just captured my attention with this first issue of Hawkeye's solo series. Pitting Clint Barton against Russian mob wannabe's was a great way to show what he cares about. Not your run of the mill superhero story, it's very different. In this industry, a good kind of different is hard to come by, so my hat's off to Mr. Fraction. He's started the series off by making Hawkeye very real, breakable, resilient and truly heroic. Making an Avenger seem human is a tricky thing and he's done a splendid job. The story flows like water, showing off several sides of the card-carrying Avenger.

David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth have done a good job as the artist and colorist, respectively. Aja's work reminds me of Darwyn Cooke's Justice League: New Frontier without trying to be. It's simple and elegant, which is exactly what a story about Hawkeye should be. It shows just how awesome Hawkeye is on his own without distracting from the story. Hollingsworth's muted colors are a great fit with Aja's pencils and inks. Their work fits together as if each guy's style were tailor-made to work in sync with the other's. Aja's panels and visual story-telling fit with Fraction's story quite well and make it seem like a tiny graphic novel.

I didn't go into this thinking I'd enjoy it but it earns an A, which is pretty good for a first issue. I recommend it to any Avenger fans.

Martian Manhunter vs Stormwatch

By: Andrew Hines

In the year since Stormwatch became a part of the DCnU, We've been waiting to see just how much J'onn J'onnz has changed. It looks like we get our answer in this issue. Now throwing the often underrated Martian Manhunter into Stormwatch, he may have a better home than he ever did in the Justice League. We probably won't get too into the other characters since this one pretty much focuses on the green guy with a fear of flames. As comic characters go, Martian Manhunter was always underutilized. For a guy with all of the powers of superman and a much more commonplace weakness, writers could have done a lot more with him. A good and moral character with more powers than Superman in the 70s and he's essentially sidelined most of his career. That changes in issue 12.

Peter Milligan is a writer I don't know too well, which is why this title is all the more impressive. He's been writing it since issue 9, the third writer to take the reigns of this book. I like the dialogue and pacing, which is hard to do on a team book. He could have gone many different ways with this type of arc, but this feels like it's the only way it really could have worked. J'onn seems more aggressive here than he ever has before, which is a nice change. He was always known as the soul of the Justice League, though now he seems to be the embodiment of the group's last vestige of hope in humanity's potential. This was a well-written issue and I wish Milligan luck on the next few.

Will Conrad and Julio Ferreira split artistic duties on this issue, which seems to work out well. I actually preferred the first artist, Miguel Sepulveda, who illustrated the first six issues, but Conrad and Ferreira are pretty good in their own right. Guy Major does a great job as the colorist in this issue, giving us some awesome effects on  the printed page.

I give this an A-, due partly to the excessive inks on this page and partly because it just feels too much like a filler issue. We also get some great action scenes and a flashback of Midnighter's chin spike coming in handy. (You'll se what I did there after you read the issue.) I still recommend this to anyone who ever liked Martian Manhunter or was a fan of Stormwatch before the fall of WildStorm.

Grundy Cometh...

By: Andrew Hines

Many people of this generation are unaware of the Justice Society or JSA. This title has been  a good way of bringing their legacy back to life. The fourth installment of Earth 2 introduces a fourth member of the future Justice Society. We see new faces and get a bit of tease on possible backstory for several of the characters. The character intros have been pretty good up to this point and issue four is no exception. There are bumps in the road with every story and several issues of discontinuity between characters from the old DCU and the new, they do make for interesting character development. This series (and really, the DCnU in general,) shows that superhero costumes can be both stylish and functional. The last real tick in the "W" column is that Rob Liefeld hasn't gotten his meat skinners onto the Earth 2 characters just yet.

James Robinson has done a good job so far with Earth 2. He has given new depth and realism to characters who haven't had a whole lot of that in recent years. Basically starting from scratch, since several of the Justice Society are now in the main DCnU, such as Powergirl and Mister Terrific, he's been making it his own. There's not much you can ask a writer to do beyond that. This is essentially a hard reboot of the entirety of Earth 2 mythology in the DCU, but with bits that link it to the current Animal Man and Swamp Thing story lines. He has left the past behind and created something new and intriguing, which I find to be better than something old being resurrected. I mean, look how Jason Todd turned out when he came back. ....Exactly! 

The art by Nicola Scott and Eduardo Pansica is pretty good. Even the look They've given to Jay's suit and Kendra's new Hawkgirl uniform. This version of Grundy works pretty well and provides a sort of visual reference to the Blackest Night event. Again, there is a full team to back them up. The inking team consists of Trevor Scott and Sean Parsons, who've done a great job on this issue. The colorists are Alex Sinclair and Tony Avina who have done a good job on this one as well. The first page and last are the best examples of how good this artistic team really is.

This one deserves an A- based on the few bits where dialogue is slightly lacking or pacing is a little off. Good job overall. I highly recommend it.