Why Hide An Eye In Shadow?

That post I mentioned prepping for yesterday? Let's get to it. I don't know why this caught my eye, but it did, so best to accept it and go forward. 

Taskmaster appears in 32 panels in Avengers Academy #9. Some portion of his face appears in 23 of those panels. There are only two where both of his eyes are visible. This includes panels where he's looking at Finesse (and us) or just the reader, but one eye is still in shadow. The last panel he appears in, for example. As he tells Finesse to take care of herself, his left eye is shadowed over. He even sports that look in the file photo that comes up when Finesse asks Quicksilver to help her track Taskmaster down. 

It's not the hood he's wearing, because the shadows don't cover any other part of his face. I also don't think it's some common technique McKone uses, because it doesn't appear with any other character in the issue, or in the prior issue, even though that one had The Hood in it, who also wears a hood (obviously). It's more his brow ridge overhangs his eye so much it's kept in shade. Or his eyes are set so far back in his head, it's as though they're at the bottom of a pit where the light can't reach. If only one eye is visible, it's typically the right, though in the panel where he's choking Finesse with a rope and discussing the American Avenger it's the left that's visible. 

I thought maybe it was supposed to be something Taskmaster was doing intentionally, trying to keep one eye obscured from the person he's fighting, in case they try to read his moves that way. Considering how Finesse's power works, that wouldn't seem to be of any use. Plus, we aren't always observing things from her perspective, so in those situations, just because we can see one of his eyes, doesn't mean she can. And maybe she can see them when the reader can't. Looking at the panels where both his eyes are visible. One comes partway through the fight (page 14, panel 1), after she's decked him. Taskmaster is disappointed because she's using moves from some fight between Daredevil and Bullseye that was on TV. He's holding his shield and looking right at her (and us). 

The second one (page 16, panel 3) comes after she throws his own sword at him, and pins him to some machinery with it. In that case, he's looking at his sword as it just misses his shoulder, but goes through his cape. Prior to the first panel, Finesse had been doing fairly well. Taskmaster hadn't scored a clean hit, while she'd made contact a couple of times. She got his sword away from him so she could use it (though he knocked it away from her two panels later). Then Tasky criticizes her source material, and goes to work with what he picked up from newsreels. Finesse then turns the tables again, and starts rattling off all the heroes she's actually trained with as she chucks his own sword at him and follows that up with a boot to the face. Taskmaster calls an end to the fight two panels after the sword panel. 

Taskmaster seems to be goading her on, trying to convince her to unleash her full potential. He gives her grief about only using billy clubs, which prompts her to grab his sword and try and use it on him. After she's clocked him, he continues busting her chops for how limited her reference material (and by extension, her repertoire) is. He then promptly boots her in the face (hard enough to draw blood and knock her mask off), follows up with a punch to the jaw (also drawing blood), and then busts out the lariat. The whole time he's prattling on about the people he's studied, and how he's taken jobs with the government just to get his hands on more obscure footage. 

Finesse's rebuttal is to flip him over, and begin describing everyone she's actually fought with, I guess refuting the usefulness of his sources*. I think the eyes are about how Taskmaster's power works. He sees things (and hears, but that's not relevant here) and can remember them, if they're useful, anyway. I think the panel on page 14, he's looking at her and trying to find anything about her that'll stick, and that's really why her using Daredevil vs. Bullseye moves disappoints him. The panel on page 16, he's seeing that there's more to her than he thought, but it's still more of the same. That's why he calls the fight. He's seen everything he needs to. 

After that, it goes back to 1 or 0 eyes visible because his power isn't going be of any use here. He just has to hope she can stick in his memory some other way, and in that sense, with the severe limits his memory apparently has, he's half-blind compared to the rest of us. Or worse. 

* I don't think Taskmaster fought anywhere near full capability. There's no indication he was injured by any of her strikes. Also, while Finesse may have trained with all those heroes, Taskmaster's fought them, and more besides. With real stakes on the line.