{"id":24118,"date":"2021-05-22T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=24118"},"modified":"2021-05-21T19:16:41","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T19:16:41","slug":"avengers-hawkeye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2021\/05\/22\/avengers-hawkeye\/","title":{"rendered":"Avengers: Hawkeye"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Mark Gruenwald<\/strong>, Brett Breeding<\/strong> & Danny Bulanadi<\/strong>, with Stan Lee<\/strong> & Don Heck<\/strong>; Mike Friedrich<\/strong>, George Evans <\/strong>& Frank Springer<\/strong>, Steven Grant<\/strong>, John Byrne<\/strong> & Dan<\/strong> Greene<\/strong>, Jimmy Janes<\/strong> & Bruce Patterson<\/strong> & various (Marvel)
\nISBN: 978-0-7851-3723-8 (TPB)<\/p>\n

Clint Barton<\/em> is probably the world’s greatest archer: swift, ingenious, unerringly accurate and augmented by a fantastic selection of multi-purpose high-tech arrows. Other masked bow persons are available\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Following an early brush with the law and as a reluctant Iron Man<\/strong> villain beginning in 1964, he reformed to join the Mighty Avengers<\/strong> where he served with honour and distinction, despite always feeling overshadowed by his more glamorous, super-powered comrades.<\/p>\n

Long a mainstay of Marvel continuity and probably Marvel’s most popular B-list hero, the Battling Bowman has risen to great prominence in recent years, boosted no doubt by his filmic incarnation.<\/p>\n

This brash and bombastic collection – available in paperback and digital formats – re-presents breakthrough miniseries Hawkeye <\/strong>#1-4 and debut from Tales of Suspense<\/strong> #57 (September 1964) plus the first costumed appearance of occasional wife and frequent paramour Bobbi \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mockingbird\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Morse<\/em> from Marvel Super Action <\/strong>#1 (January 1976) and a more-or-less solo outing for each from Avengers<\/strong> #189 (November 1979), and Marvel Team-Up<\/strong> #95 (July 1980) respectively.<\/p>\n

Written and drawn by the hugely underrated and much-missed Mark Gruenwald, ably assisted by inkers Brett Breeding & Danny Bulanadi and running from September to December 1983, Hawkeye<\/strong> was one of Marvel’s earliest miniseries and remains one of the very best adventures of Marvel’s Ace Archer.<\/p>\n

Much like the character himself, this project was seriously underestimated when first released: most industry pundits and the more voluble fans expected very little from a second-string hero drawn by a professional writer. Guess again, suckers!<\/p>\n

In opening chapter ‘Listen to the Mockingbird’,<\/em> he is moonlighting as security chief for electronics corporation Cross Technological Enterprises when he captures a renegade S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, who reveals that his bosses are all crooks, secretly involved in shady mind-control experiments.<\/p>\n

After some initial doubt, Barton teams with a svelte and sexy super-agent in ‘Point Blank’<\/em> to foil the plot, gaining in the process a new costume and instant rogues’ gallery of archfoes such as Silence<\/em>, Oddball<\/em> and Bombshell<\/em> in third chapter ‘Beating the Odds’<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As the constant hunt and struggle wears on, Barton succumbs to – but is not defeated by – a physical handicap and wins a wife (not necessarily the same thing) in explosive conclusion ‘Till Death us do Part\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6’<\/em> wherein the sinister mastermind behind it all is finally revealed and summarily dealt with.<\/p>\n

In those faraway days both Gruenwald and Marvel Top Gun Jim Shooter maintained that a miniseries had to deal with significant events in a character’s life, and this bright and breezy, no-nonsense, compelling and immensely enjoyable yarn certainly kicked out the deadwood and re-launched Hawkeye’s career. In short order from here the bowman went on to create and lead his own team: The West Coast Avengers<\/strong>, gain his own regular series in Solo Avengers<\/strong> and Avengers Spotlight <\/strong>and his own series, consequently becoming one of the most vibrant and popular characters of the period and today as well as a modern-day action movie icon\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Hard on the heels of the epic comes ‘Hawkeye, the Marksman!’<\/em> (by Stan Lee & Don Heck from Tales of Suspense<\/strong> #57) wherein villainous spy the Black Widow<\/strong> resurfaces to beguile an ambitious and frustrated neophyte costumed vigilante hero into attacking her archenemy. Despite a clear power-imbalance, the former carnival archer comes awfully close to beating the Golden Avenger \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Augmented by a Howard Chaykin frontispiece from black-&-white magazine Marvel Super Action<\/strong> #1 (January 1976), former Ka-Zar<\/strong> romantic interest Dr. Barbera Morse<\/em> is reinvented by Mike Friedrich, George Evans & Frank Springer ‘Red-Eyed Jack is Wild!’<\/em>. Using unwieldy nomme de guerre Huntress<\/em>, Morse devotes herself to cleaning up corruption inside S.H.I.E.L.D., no matter what the cost\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Avengers <\/strong>#189 then reveals how Hawkeye got his job at CTE as ‘Wings and Arrows!’<\/em> (by Steven Grant, John Byrne & Dan Green) pits the new security chief against alien avian interloper Deathbird<\/em>, before Huntress becomes Mockingbird for MTU<\/strong> #95. Crafted by Grant, Jimmy Janes & Bruce Patterson ‘\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6And No Birds Sing!’<\/em> ends the long-extant S.H.I.E.L.D. corruption storyline as Morse and Spider-Man<\/strong> join forces to expose the true cancer at the heart of America’s top spy agency\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Packed with terrific tales of old-fashioned romance, skulduggery and derring-do, this book is a no-nonsense example of the straightforward action-adventure yarns that cemented Marvel’s reputation and success. But oh, the tension, the tension\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2015 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mark Gruenwald, Brett Breeding & Danny Bulanadi, with Stan Lee & Don Heck; Mike Friedrich, George Evans & Frank Springer, Steven Grant, John Byrne & Dan Greene, Jimmy Janes & Bruce Patterson & various (Marvel) ISBN: 978-0-7851-3723-8 (TPB) Clint Barton is probably the world’s greatest archer: swift, ingenious, unerringly accurate and augmented by a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Avengers: Hawkeye”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[94,247,79,219,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avengers","category-hawkeye","category-marvel-superheroes","category-s-h-i-e-l-d","category-spider-man"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-6h0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24120,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24118\/revisions\/24120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}