Hawkeye #9 & 10, by Matt Fraction (writer), David Aja (artist, #9), Francesco Francavilla (artist, #10), Matt Hollingsworth (colorist, #9), Chris Eliopoulos & Clayton Cowles (letterers, Cowles for #10 only) - So, Kate's shirt. Is that an ego thing, since she is Hawkeye, or an expression of affection for Barton? Or that she loves being a Hawkeye, that the very concept of it stirs deep feelings in her?There's a lot of hopping around, temporally, in these issues. We start back at Cherry dropping in on Clint at the Mansion, so that did happen, though it still doesn't explain why everyone has playing cards on their foreheads. From there, we see how each of the other ladies in Clint's life handle this. Natasha, Bobbi, and Jessica, went to Kate, to try and find Clint. Because none of them know where he lives. Kate does tell, but at least tries to call Clint and warn him. But by the time she arrives (and pummels some bros), Jessica's there. That leads to an ugly and awkward conversation, though Clint is lucky Jess only slapped him. She does have spider-strength, after all. Jessica also advises Kate to get far away from Clint, and Clint basically tells her the same, so Kate heads to a party.
Meanwhile, Natasha is tracking down Cherry (I keep wanting to call her Ginger), but she doesn't completely lay out what Clint's up against, only drops vague hints he's pissed some people off. And Bobbi drops by to check on Clint, beats up those same two bros (I'd pity them if they weren't morons), and gets Clint to sign their divorce papers. Clint is too battered and exhausted to care much, but gets some decent advice from Grills that night. I don't think it'll make much difference (Clint burnt that particular bridge, but good), but what the hell. Then Grills gets shot.
Booooo.
Issue 10 is Kate at the party, meeting some cool older guy and trying to impress him with talk about New York City. Kazi, as he says he's known, isn't terribly impressed with it, but does seem impressed with her. Throughout their night, we see Kazi's life up to that point, which is terrible. War-torn, lost everything he cares about, killing for money with the same greasepaint design on his face as he was wearing when his brother(?) was killed by a bomb or artillery shell. Frankly, if Hawkeye were going to be menaced by a tragic opera type figure, I'd rather have seen the Commedia Dell'Morte from that Power Man and Iron Fist mini-series Fred van Lente wrote, but I doubt the Russians would have turned to them. Kazi leaves the party, reaches Clint's place, watches Clint snap at Kate, watches Kate give it right back with both barrels, then he shoots Grills. Again. For the first time. Whatever.
Boooooooo.
Killing Grills aside, how were they? I preferred issue 9, with all the ladies running about, taking care of business. Natasha is confident Clint is fine, so she investigates Cherry. Jessica is (understandably) hurt, so she heads straight for him. It leaves me curious what Bobbi was up to after leaving Kate's? There wasn't a long gap between Jessica arriving and Bobbi (Clint says he'd been asleep 45 minutes, so figure an hour), but I do wonder. Did she need that time to go get the paperwork, or did she recognize Jessica needed to see him first, and decided to wait? As for issue 10, eh, half of it is people exchanging small talk at a party. And as someone who could cheerfully go the rest of his life never hearing how special New York is, I didn't really appreciate Kate's spiel about how special New York is (the fact cities tend to be full of people makes me regard cities as necessary evils, at best).
Offhand, does anyone know if that was a specific play Kasi and Janek were performing in the flashback? Or was it just two kids making something up to entertain people? I'd suspect the latter, but the way Janek kept changing how he said "I love you" each time struck me as deliberate.
Enough about writing, let's talk art. I mean, this is David Aja and Francesco Francavilla here. I prefer how Francavilla draws Kazi with the greasepaint. Maybe that's Francavilla's coloring style. He uses all these strong, solid colors, a lot of orange when Kazi's in costume, so to speak, but also strong blacks, and it makes the white really leap out. It grabs the eye, forces you to regard the expressionless face. He also uses it well as a pivot, or way to move the eye around. The page where Kazi is in the middle, and all around are the people who are being shot, stationed within panels of fractured glass. He's the centerpiece, they're simply props in his personal hell. On the last page, it's Kazi's face that guides the eye directly to the smoking gun.
There's also page 10, right after "Kazi shoots everyone on a crowded street", with he and Kate are chatting. It's a 12-panel grid, starts us at a distance, watching them both, but quickly moves in so only one character can appear in panel at a time. And it keeps moving closer. On the second line, we can still see most of Kate or Kazi's face, but by the end of line 3, it's strictly their mouths in view. Kate's given a, magenta/very light purple hue, whereas Kazi's mostly blue, some yellow backlighting. It's interesting because the way the perspective is moving closer suggests they're getting closer, but their colors remain largely distinct. Even when his hands touch hers in the 11th panel (is it the 11th hour, last chance to make a move?), it's strictly blues, none of her purple/lavender. Then the perspective jumps away again for the last panel, only now they're backlit, so they're mostly shadows. I don't know what all that means, but it's cool.
I also like that the panels for their time together are these very orderly, neat ones, thin line marking the boundary, almost perfectly white gutters between them. While Kazi's flashbacks have these rougher boundaries, thick black lines, a sometimes dingy gray for the gutters. Different worlds. I'm also curious why, on page 13, when kazi kills a man for the Russians, Francavilla drew the panel of the blood splatter first, then the panel of the gun going off. The "BANG BANG" effect overlaps both, though mostly the first. and in fact obscures a lot of the first panel. Maybe because the victim is incidental, another prop in Kazi's world.
Hmm, that was a lot about Francavilla, but probably not nearly enough. Don't want Aja to feel left out - we all know my reviews are what he lives for, right? - so let's take a minute to appreciate the "PFT PFT" panel on the last page. Yes, it's Grills getting shot, and that sucks, but it's a striking image, the gun outlines in the first PFT, Grills in the second. Hollingsworth going with red for the effects helps too, since so much of the page besides that is either grey (bricks, the skies), or the brown of Grills' coat. Aw Grills, why'd you have to go and grill while listening to Clint's woes?
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