‘Hawkeye Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon’ review
By Brittney MacDonald, Life & Style Editor
3/5
Narrative-wise, Hawkeye: My Life as a Weapon is a revelation. This book is funny, compelling, and thoroughly engaging. I loved the characters and the entire mood of the graphic novel, which is somewhere between dark comedy and unexpected drama. The only thing that threw me off was the art style, which I think is too simplistic for the complexity of the plot.
Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, is a hero for hire who is soon recruited by SHIELD to retrieve a package for the organization. Unfortunately for him, the job is a little more difficult than SHIELD made it out to be. Combine Barton’s big mouth with a whole bucketful of assassins and thugs and you have a recipe for disaster.
But if you think one Hawkeye is good, then what about two? Despite all the espionage and running from gangsters, Barton still finds time to team up with former Young Avenger, Kate Bishop, otherwise known as Hawkeye version 2.0 (the female one).
As I said, I can’t fault the narrative. I found it thoroughly entertaining, and there aren’t many holes or issues I can point out. So a big kudos goes out to writer Matt Fraction for his amazingly well-thought-out and hilarious plot. Too bad that level of awesomeness didn’t find its way to the art as well.
I would not be exaggerating by saying that I hate the art in this book. The duo responsible is David Aja and Javier Pulido, whose combined effort comes off looking like something from an airline safety pamphlet. The anatomy is blocky, even with the female characters, and there is no shading to speak of. Not impressive at all!
Put simply, even with all the issues with the art, I would still recommend this book for any superhero fans out there.
