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§ Nice art: David Aja’s variant cover for Miracleman: The Silver Age #3 § Image Publisher Eric Stephenson did the interview rounds this week for the return of Nowhere Men and the one at AV Club has perhaps the most inside Image info, like this on how pitches are accepted: AVC: When you’re pitched a […]

The Scarlet Witch is going All New and All Different next month with a new series written by James Robinson with art for the first issue, anyway by Vanessa Del Rey and a cover by David Aja…so it’s a-list all the way. Future artists on the book include Marco Rudy, Steve Dillon, Javier Pulido, Marguerite […]

Marvel recently announced that writer James Robinson would be tackling an upcoming solo series starring the Scarlet Witch spinning out of her on-screen debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Initially…the comic did not have an interior artist,  however, news came yesterday from Newsarama that Hit: 1957 artist Vanessa R. Del Rey will be pencilling the first […]

Art by Jillian Tamaki. Story by Mariko Tamaki, from This One Summer

Yesterday’s retailer poll results, as revealed at Sktchd, made for fascinating reading, but at least one statistic—only 4.8% of retailers order a book based on the artist—got familiar questions being raised about why artists seem to get the short end of the stick so much in today’s comics industry. Declan Shalvey, currently of Injection, written by Warren Ellis, kicked some things off with a tweet and you can check his twitter feed for more conversation on the topic.

This is where unequal credit gets artists #ArtCred (via @sktchdcomic) pic.twitter.com/G6GddC6379

— Declan Shalvey (@declanshalvey) July 21, 2015

The decline of the artist has been getting a lot of play on the twitterverse of late, with Steve Morris also showing a watchful eye for it, even checking interviews to make sure they credit the artist.

Which to be fair, many times they do not.

Art by Ivan Reis.

The entire “decline of the artist” phenomena has been discussed many times, sometimes at this very blog, and even by Sktchd’s Harper in the past. As I’ve said before, the decline of prestige for comics artists seems especially counterintuitive in an era which is so visually driven by Tumblr, Pinterest and the like. And given the past dominance of artists from Neal Adams on, it seems even odder. The beauty of the comics image has never been more prominent. But the makers of those images aren’t always given the credit they deserve. I have a few more thoughts, which I’ve expressed before but let me throw ’em out there again.

Art by David Aja.

There’s a LOT of emphasis on cartoonists these days, the Rainas and Piskors who offer a tightly focused worldview and esthetic. And aside from the VERY rare Tamaki/Tamaki, Morrison/Quitely, Lee/Kirby teams, collaborative comics rarely offer that. I think if you were to ask graphic novel readers they might value the artist more, but might prefer the “creator” category.

Also, as we’ve all been saying, the Big Two, especially have been dead set on promoting the Editor-driven era of comics, and even the finest artists have been cogs in an ever grinding machine. Marvel had a few breakouts along the way, mostly on Hawkeye and Daredevil, but DC’s relentless parade of Jim Lee clones during the New 52 era reduced the role of the artist to interchangeable drone. And as fine an artist as Ivan Reis is, he’s no mold-breaking stylist.

The good news is, the Nü DCYou seems to have thrown house style out the window and allowed more idiosyncratic things to creep in. The bad news is Marvel’s new universe is starting to look as blandly homogenized as the New 52. Always a pendulum, this must be.

What do YOU think? Some wondered if casual readers would reflect the same ratios as retailers. With David Harper’s permission, I’ve recreated his questiosn in an open, public poll which will stay open for two days so hop to it! And as a final plug. Sktchd has a followup podcast with Patrick Brower, owner of Challengers in Chicago which I’m sure is worth a listen.

<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/8992024/”>What’s the most important reason for you to buy a comic?</a>
<a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/8992024/”>What’s the most important reason for you to buy a comic?</a>

Holy cow! It’s taken some time to finally see the conclusion to Matt Fraction and David Aja‘s wonderful Hawkeye run. Even Marvel moved on, releasing Jeff Lemire and Ramon Perez‘s relaunched series before we even reached this final issue.

It’s not for me to guess why it’s taken so long to get to this point, but this particular issue was originally solicited for February and saw multiple delays. Even Aja, at one point, wasn’t sure when the book would be coming out when he recently tweeted:

For those asking about Hawkeye #22, I suppose will be out sometime during May but I don’t know. Will tell if I’m said a final date. Thanks.

— David Aja (@davaja) April 15, 2015

But, according to Entertainment Weekly, we’re finally getting there next month and they’ve got the unlettered preview of the upcoming Issue 22. Time for Pizza Dog to come to the rescue, one more time. I’m very glad to see this multiple Eisner nominated run will get to close on its own terms with the team that started it all.

HAWKEYE #22

(W) Matt Fraction (A/CA) David Aja

• Hawkeyes vs. Tracksuits. Final Round!

Rated T+

Item Code: AUG140839 In Shops: 7/15/2015 SRP: $4.99

Release Date: July 15

By Kyle Pinion

I love Matt Fraction, David Aja and Annie Wu’s Hawkeye. It’s by far my favorite monthly (which I realize is a stretch to still call it that at this point) comic coming from the Big Two. Its mixture of high impact super-heroics, indie sensibilities, film influences, and raw emotion have paved its own niche in the crowded world of cape comics. With its rampant critical success and sales that aren’t anything to sneeze at, Hawkeye (along with Mark Waid’s wonderful Daredevil) sent Marvel into a more idiosyncratic direction that spawned a number of titles that could be noted as “auteur-driven”.

One of the more unique trends I’d seen regarding the series was how it had served as a form of gateway comic for a number of new readers. In my travels at various convention settings, I’ve learned that a lot of these (often-times younger) readers aren’t quite sure where to head next in their comics reading, or whence to dig further into the various references and influences of Fraction, Aja, and Wu that have informed or been worked into the title.

With that said, here’s my take on a “Hawkguy” shopping guide..

Where to go if you’re looking for more Clint and Kate

Secret Avengers and Young Avengers – The obvious place to jump off point if you’re a fan of a series that dictates itself as “What Hawkeye does when he’s not being an Avenger…” is to read about what he’s up to when he is. With Ales Kot’s and Michael Walsh’s work on Secret Avengers and Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Young Avengers, you can do just that for both Clint and Kate respectively. While other Avengers books, including the previous Nick Spencer-written run on Secret Avengers, also feature Hawkeye at times, Kot and Walsh’s Secret Avengers comes the closest to Fraction’s work in overall tone and feels somewhat of a piece with the sort of “knowing” vibe found in the series. It’s also absolutely bonkers and worthy of attention on its own merits. Young Avengers is, conversely, like all Gillen-McKelvie collaborations, a tonal pop record of a comic. It gives you another look at Kate, with a great focus on her romantic entanglement with Marvel Boy, while also featuring an incredibly diverse cast. Also, both books are colored by the incredible Matt Wilson, Bonus!

Films and Television that inspired the series

Hawkeye is, as previously mentioned, inspired by visual media, with both subtle tonal similarities, and much more overt homages. Here are a few worth noting…

The Long Goodbye – Remember Harold from Kate’s adventure in LA? The cat food buying freelance writer that Kate would encounter in the grocery store and would inspire her to become a “hero for hire”? While the character was created for Tomb of Dracula by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan, Matt Fraction and Annie Wu basically transformed him into a pastiche of the hero of Robert Altman’s hazy LA noir classic The Long Goodbye. Recently released on Blu-ray this week, treat yourself to one of the best films of a film-making master.

Rio Bravo – What this John Wayne Western classic, that also stars Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, actually has to do with the finale of Hawkeye is still to be determined. But, the solicit of Hawkeye #21, the first of the upcoming two-part finale, explicitly references it. While it still remains to be seen how much the tale of a small-town sherriff and his unlikely band of allies keeping a murderer behind bars from the attempts of a brother trying to set him free will actually play into the finale…we’ll play it safe and say its a big influence.

Hot Fuzz – In interviews, Annie Wu has specifically cited Edgar Wright as a major inspiration for her work, particularly in her tendency to have disembodied hands pop up into close-ups to deliver notes or a phone. A slighter inspiration for sure, but well worth viewing for those unfamiliar with his work. Given the subject matter at hand, Hot Fuzz, one of Wright’s more under-appreciated films and one based more on a (very!) heightened version of reality than the sci-fi or horror outings that surround it, is probably the way to go.

Enter the Dragon – So much of Hawkeye, especially in its earlier issues, is indebted to 70’s action films. Really, you could find any suitable choice to fill in this slot, from the Steve McQueen starring Bullitt or the Gene Hackman fronted masterpiece The French Connection; but given that Fraction was recently interviewed by NPR about his love of Enter the Dragon, the titular Bruce Lee tour de force, we’ll go with that. You can’t go wrong with the Hackman vehicle either!

The Rockford Files - Even in the promotion of the first issue, Fraction was drawing parallels between Clint Barton and Jim Rockford, the hero of the unusual for its day 70’s detective series The Rockford Files. When you break it down, the similarities are definitely there: a private detective taking on cases of the lost and the dispossessed while living in a trailer off the coast of Malibu, with his life in some state of financial disarray, resorting to humor over violence. While his original James Bond-esque take on the character appears in the two-part Javier Pulido drawn “The Tape” story-line, James Garner’s atypical gumshoe informed a great majority of Fraction’s scripts surrounding it.

Comics at the root of Hawkeye

The comic book inspirations that drive Matt Fraction and David Aja are wide-ranging and could fill up an entire post by itself, but for a wide overview its impossible to overstate the influence of Los Bros Hernandez, Warren Ellis and Howard Chaykin on Fraction, while David Aja is clearly indebted to the work of illustrative wizard David Mazzucchelli. I’ve cited three key works from the first three creators that Fraction himself has signaled out that are must reads, and for Mazzucchelli, while his superhero career was sadly all too short, his revolutionary take on Daredevil with Frank Miller is fitting given that we’re talking about another Marvel character.

Maggie the Mechanic – The first chapter in Jaime Hernandez’s decades-spanning LOCAS story in the legendary Love & Rockets. While both Hernandez brothers were/are equally influential in Fraction’s formative story-telling growth, its the punk rock aesthetic and energy of Jaime that rings closer to the tone of Hawkeye. This is a journey worth taking from the beginning.

Daredevil: Born Again – For my money, maybe the best thing to ever host the Marvel logo. Buy it, if you haven’t already.

Planetary – What The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is to Victorian Literature, Planetary is to Pulp and Comic Books. Everything critics were praising in Ellis’ short run on Moon Knight had its start here. Ellis has worked many comic book wonders, but Planetary is his best, at least for those with a predilection towards superheros and their archetypes.

American Flagg – When it comes to the 80’s works that revolutionized comics everyone talks about Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Maus. Yet had American Flagg ever stayed in print regularly, there’s no doubt that Howard Chaykin’s opus would be in that conversation as well. Sleek, sexy, whip-smart, and colored like an EGA computer game, American Flagg‘s first 12 issues are must reads for anyone wanting to get a masterclass in great comics.

If anyone has a great suggestion for influences on Annie Wu’s art, please toss them at me in the comments! My knowledge only goes so far.

Music to play in the background while you’re reading all those new comics

Pet Sounds – Not only because its an unimpeachably great album, but a Brian Wilson-esque character plays a big role in another one of Annie Wu’s LA based issues. More than 50 years later and this is still the sound of Southern California to my ears.

Or you could check out the various songs and pieces that David Aja listed in the back of a number of the earliest issues of the series, of which someone was kind enough to post up a good deal of on Youtube. I’ll never turn down free Miles Davis.

If you can’t get enough Fraction in your life

Though, if you’re into Hawkeye, you may just want to chase down more Fraction books, and who can blame you? Chances are, you’ve probably already heard about or read Sex Criminals, his very popular Image Comic with artist Chip Zdarsky. It’s great of course, as is his team-up with Howard Chaykin, the 50’s television mystery Satellite Sam (which, like Hawkeye, is going to have its own peek into New York and LA) but I might also recommend the following specifically…

The Immortal Iron Fist – Fraction and Aja’s other team-up on a blonde Marvel hero. This is where the Enter the Dragon inspiration really comes to the fore, especially in the masterful tournament storyline “The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven”. Its also a series that was for a time, co-written by Ed Brubaker.

Casanova – Though my pick for favorite Fraction book is the multi-dimensional spy saga Casanova. One part Pynchon, one part Morrison’s The Invisibles, and a whole lot of great Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba art. This is a writer completely unfiltered and is the kind of series I find myself reading at least once a year, where I discover something new every time. Image has just started to release brand new hardcovers as well, so there’s never been a better time to introduce yourself to Casanova Quinn.

Fun Hawkeye swag

Hawkeye Messenger bag – From the fine folks at WeLoveFine, I got this at San Diego Comic Con this year and I love it.

Pizza Dog shirt – Also for you Pizza Dog lovers, there’s now a shirt!

Looking into the future

And lastly, you may know that Jeff Lemire and Ramon K. Perez will be taking the reins from Fraction and Aja starting in March of next year. You might be curious about what they’re bringing to the table. Rest assured, the works below, including Lemire’s first take on an archer character in his New 52 Green Arrow run, his rural Canadian hockey saga Essex County and Perez’s essaying of Jim Henson’s A Tale of Sand script should leave you feeling pretty excited about the future of your favorite purple clad hero.

Green Arrow: The Kill Machine

Essex County

Jim Henson’s A Tale of Sand

Happy Shopping!

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Hey bro. Bro! You reading Hawkguy bro? Missin’ out bro.

So I’m not exactly a new Marvel reader. I’ve read decades of old titles and kept up with Daredevil til a few years back. I’m a returning reader perhaps. But until recently, I didn’t buy any Marvel single issues, and the trades had started to be far too confusing even for this pro bookseller.

Now I’m reading four titles on the regular, and somehow keep picking up the occasional other to try while sneaking covetous looks at the various X-Men titles. A couple of things had always put me off previously: the double shipping on some titles; the sheer number of similarly titled comics; and, I guess, the strange behaviour of an editor online. But with DC cancelling all my favourite books, and thanks to some amazing cover art, Marvel intrigued me.

Most of all though, it was Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye. I saw some pages on a review or preview somewhere, and those covers, and went out and immediately got the issues I needed to catch up. Because brilliant storytelling + phenomenal art + great characterisation + amusing plots = omg, want.

It’s been a consistently fantastic comic ever since, and although Aja isn’t on every issue it somehow makes his ones all the more special (and the others, by the by, are still fab). Like #8 which also has the genius contributions of Annie Wu in the form of romance comic covers inserted throughout the story. These are not only super cute but inform the storyline while being part of the plot in a completely different way too. And did I mention cute?

We get the return of the mysterious red-haired woman in another of Clint’s misadventures on his downtime from the life of an Avenger, and the first pages make a passing nod to his life outside of this title with the various women in his life not terribly impressed by his shenanigans. This link up to the other titles Hawkeye features in isn’t the norm, but even here it’s pretty easy to read without any other knowledge. I have some passing ideas of what is going on in the other titles from reading reviews and write-ups, but as a non-reader it wasn’t an issue.

And that’s kinda the extra win in the formula of awesomeness that is this comic: continuity is not important. Sure it fits in the right slots within the larger Marvel universe, but picking this book of the shelf requires no prior knowledge whatsoever. Never read a Marvel comic before? Try this one. And there is a huge number of people out there who a) haven’t read a Marvel comic before and b) like Clint Barton from that Avengers film that pretty much rocked. Can you imagine if every great character had a book you could just pick up and have it be a bloody good, hella enjoyable read with absolutely no pre-requisites? Black Widow? Wolverine? Spider-Man?!

That’s also probably the reason why my other two current Marvel favourites are Captain Marvel and Young Avengers. Those have a bit more complexity in the character histories to work around but they’re still really accessible. And clever. And fun.

Because comics should be fun, really, they’re entertainment. And Hawkeye is bursting with energy and heart, real heart, from car chases to dog rescues to hurricane empathy to Dog Cops. Reading this comic gives me the same buzz as watching an episode of my favourite tv series, or having seen a really good new film. It’s daft and it’s original, and underneath all that it is truly brilliant in terms of panel composition, sequencing, storytelling and rhythm.

Upcoming plots include an issue told by pizza dog, and one incorporating sign language as Clint goes back to having hearing difficulties. As someone who spends half their times trying to entice the UK reading population into trying a comic, this stuff is gold dust.

If you’re not reading it bro, you’re missing out.

[What other mini Marvels am I missing out on? Suggest away - please!]

Hawkeye #8
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: David Aja, Annie Wu
Colourist: Matt Hollingsworth
Cover Artist: David Aja
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Editor: Sana Amanat, Stephen Wacker
Publisher: Marvel

If you like, try: Young Avengers, Saga

TweetFriday is art day! Friday is also the harbinger of the weekend, but who cares about that? Instead, take a look at all the pretty pictures I gathered for you from the shady, cob-webby corners of the Internet you dare not venture… (I can’t say more) FF by Mike Allred (you HAVE to click on this to [...]

By Steve Morris

Hawkeye’s appeal is, as Matt Fraction nails immediately in issue #1 of his new series starring the character, that he is the ‘normal’ Avenger. He doesn’t have any powers, only his skill with a bow and willingness to commit to a full gym schedule. However, for the past ten years his main characterisation has been ‘bit of a dick’, and that’s also something Fraction nails, for better or worse.

Hawkeye #1 is a strong issue both in terms of writing and (this will be a shock to no-one) David Aja’s art. Aja has long been one of the smartest and most creative artists in the industry, whose storytelling is without comparison. He excels here once more, with a series of scenes which could’ve looked utterly boring, but are instead visually intricate and fascinating. There are a lot of conversational scenes here, with Hawkeye barely in costume, and yet Aja manages to create diverse panels, laid out in a manner which enhances every scene.

The fight scenes are chaos when they need to be, and yet still filled with details – check the line he draws for Hawkeye’s deft flick of a playing card, which flies straight to the throat of a mafia goon from the fingers. It’s a tiny detail which builds on the rest of the panel, and yet draws all the attention. While Aja’s Clint Barton does look a little like Danny Rand with lighter-hair, his body-language and fighting style are noticeably different.

Also, he draws a lot of puppy-dogs. I know this will be a draw for many of you.

Fraction’s script reads like a Tarantino film, as it features a non-linear timeline and a small-scale look at crime in the Marvel Universe. This works for the most part, although some of the verbal tics – like a gangster who keeps punctuating his speech with ‘bro’ – are a little irritating. There’s also a lot of blanked-out swearing, which has always served to take me out of a story in the past. It just looks silly, and takes a lot of threat out of the villains who use it.

The rest of the dialogue is pretty decent, but the narration is the main driving force of the story, here. Cutting between scenes rapidly and with some great twists, Hawkeye’s narration punctuates the shifting time-line and strengthens the issue. We see Hawkeye act like a complete dick for almost the entire issue (in classic Hawkeye fashion) but his narration is blind to just how annoying he is. There’s a very interesting disconnect at play here – whether it will be explored in future issues is, however, up for debate.

Much like the previous Captain Marvel #1, this issue is very much a one-shot story which doesn’t give us much of an idea about the overall narrative Fraction wants to put in place, here. Marvel do seem to be concerned with establishing their characters by having them take part in a single, wrapped up story, which gives them some definition but doesn’t establish the ongoing threat. Here again we have Hawkeye dealing with some small-scale threats, but we see him more as Clint Barton than as an Avenger. Once the story wraps up, there’s no idea what we might have coming next, and readers looking for big superhero feats are going to be disappointed.

I don’t know if this structuri