Hawkeye

I’m a weird target for the Marvel TV shows. I don’t watch the movies. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the movies since Disney/Marvel started making movies with the characters they hadn’t sold to Fox (X-Men, Fantastic Four) or Sony (Spider-Man). Well, I’ve seen Deadpool, but that one is off by itself. Back in the early 2000s I saw the X-Men and Spider-Man movies and I came to the conclusion that movies were the absolute worst way to tell these stories. In modern comic book storytelling a story arc is usually 5-6 issues and a story may be made of many arcs. I was just ahead of my time because Netflix and Amazon didn’t exist yet. HBO wasn’t making epic stories like Game of Thrones. ...

Everyone who is talking about comics has already written about what a great run Fraction’s Hawkeye is. Here at Comic POW! it was Dan’s best Marvel comic of 2012 and Kari explored the amazing art. But what is it about Hawkeye that’s so resonant right now? Yeah, Matt Fraction’s unique sense of humor helps (there’s a Sex Criminals commentary coming as soon as I find the time to write it). Yeah, Aja’s art is exemplary. But I think it’s much more than that.

When I’m reading a story – in comics or otherwise – I do my best to notice and evaluate all of the elements that the creator or creators have included. It’s easy for me to do in novels; years of English classes from grade school through grad school taught me how to discern the messages that authors included below the surface of the text. I sharpened my skills by learning to do similar interpretations of television and movies… and then I discovered comics. ...

Dan and I take some time to discuss our top picks from the 2012’s Comics of the Year. http://youtu.be/Uifp0tTlYxA Top Marvel Book: right at the beginning Top DC Books: 7:20 Top Creator-Owned Book 12:40 sec Top Marvel Arc 19:14 Top DC Arc 23:46 Top Creator-Owned Arc 27:49 Best Old Comic 31:35 Biggest Surprise 40:14