Hawkeye vol. 3: L.A. Woman

Alright, you’ve got a series that has won universal acclaim, a couple Eisners, and has even managed to defy (to a certain extent) the industry trend of declining sales with each issue.  How do you follow something like that up?  If you guessed “Have the series suffer through some unexplainable delays while additional artists come on to help the core creative team before the whole thing wraps up,” then you’ve just described the current situation for the Matt Fraction/David Aja run on “Hawkeye.”  As far as I’m concerned, the first volume was really good while the second was a little less so.  This third one takes a break from Clint Barton altogether to follow “Lady Hawkguy” Kate Bishop as she heads out to L.A. to get away from his self-destructiveness.  Taken on its own terms, and not as a detour from the adventures of Hawkguy, this volume is an enjoyably irreverent romp through the weird streets of the City of Angels.

Upon arriving in L.A., things promptly go straight to hell for Kate.  While she had planned on this being a low-stress holiday to recharge her batteries away from the guy who kept draining them, it’s not turning out that way.  That’s because one Whitney Frost, A.K.A. Madame Masque, is out for revenge against after she was humiliated by the superhero back in Madripoor.  Revoking the girl’s credit cards and stealing her stuff are only the start of Madame’s plans, but Kate is just too slippery to stay under her thumb for long.  So, with little resources and even less cash to her name, Kate takes a job house-sitting and cat-watching for a lesbian couple while she sets up her own “hero for hire” business to survive in the city.

This nets her work which involves finding out what happened to the orchids a gay couple ordered for their wedding, why a reclusive musical legend’s work is being leaked to the internet, and why a former reporter can’t leave the city.  All of these stories aren’t anything special by themselves, but they shine in the execution.  Kate’s blithe, confident manner makes her a winning and very funny lead to follow over the course of these issues.  Seeing how the girl reasons out that she’s the “unknown unknown” in Madame Masque’s plan, distracts a couple of thugs by declaring that the Defenders make no sense, and stands her ground against her dad in the end are tremendously satisfying events.  Some of her actions may border on too cute — such as the faux-antagonistic relationship she manufactures with a grizzled cop — yet the tone is whimsical enough that things like this actually work pretty well in context.

Probably the most surprising thing we learn about Kate in these stories is that when left to her own devices she’s just as self-destructive as the man she moved across the country to get away from.  Kate keeps finding herself outnumbered in most situations, yet still charges in because that’s the right thing to do.  For her troubles, she winds up beaten, bruised, and even risks complete humiliation on a couple occasions.  Seeing an ostensible superhero — she’s a Young Avenger, which makes her kind of a real Avenger (sorta) — get her ass handed to herself so often would normally qualify as depressing in my book.  Fraction avoids this by having her actions ultimately be a force for good that allows things to work out in the end.  Still, I imagine that she and Clint will have a lot to talk about when she gets back to New York and he asks what happened to her face and where that tooth went.

While Fraction is on the ball in terms of the writing, artists Javier Pulido and Annie Wu do an excellent job of making sure that the fun in his script is manifested on the page.  Pulido handles the opening story, where Kate encounters Masque in L.A., and it’s every bit as stylish as you’d expect from the man.  While his clean linework is always great to take in, his captions with witty headshots of mini-Kate commenting on her situation are worked in really well to the panels themselves and feel like part of the art rather than just a fancy trick.

Wu handles the rest of the volume, and she works differently than Pulido.  She’s got a sketchier, more detailed style that’s more straightforward in how it tells the story.  What makes her work great is how good she is with the characters and their expressions.  Already well-defined, Kate becomes an incredibly vivid presence under Wu’s skill as she’s great at making this idiosyncratic character come off as a believable presence on the page.  If there’s one part which sums up the artist’s great work here, it’d be the two pages that open the final issue.  On one, we see a battered Kate posing for a mugshot with one panel of grinning defiance and another of worn resignation.  The other page is a twelve-panel series of conversations as Kate meets people with potential cases for her.  These pages tell you so much about the character just from the art alone that it’s hard not to walk away from this volume being impressed by Wu’s work.

Then again, if you’ve been reading this series for Fraction and Aja’s take on Hawkguy it’s possible that you may be just a little annoyed by these issues.  The tone is lighter and more frivolous and save for Madame Masque, it feels almost completely detached from the Marvel Universe as a whole.  I can see how this departure would irk some fans of the series, but the irreverence of the issues collected here won me over in the end.  Even if “Hawkeye’s” trainwreck of a schedule means that we’re not going to get the final volume until sometime next year, I think it’ll be worth sticking around for.  Plus, the focus will be back on Hawkguy and Aja will be back on art for most if it.  Which means that anyone who didn’t think much of this volume may want to check out the finale as well.