"Hawkeye: The Reunion"

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Hawkeye: The Reunion” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Clinton “Clint” Barton/Hawkeye is the world’s greatest marksman. He has been a carnival archer, a villain, an Avenger, the vigilante Ronin, and a husband. Barbara “Bobbi” Morse/Mockingbird has been a spy, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., an Avenger, believed dead for years, and a wife. The two met and fell instantly in love and married nine days later. Both were active members of the Avengers for years, and even left to lead the West Coast Avengers. But their marriage hit a snag, and right as they were talking divorce, a shapeshifting alien replaced Bobbi called a Skrull that died impersonating her and she was held captive on the Skrull Homeworld for years. Clint was killed when the original Avengers disbanded. Years later, Clint returned to life as Ronin and Bobbi returned to Earth.

            Clint and Bobbi’s relationship did not begin again based on trust. In her time back on Earth, Bobbi had founded the World Counterterrorism Agency. Clint followed her on one of her missions to a hospital that turned out to be a front for the terrorist organization A.I.M., who Bobbi found out were planning to set off a bomb at a scientist ceremony in Spain. Bobbi refused to allow the Avengers to get involved with her plans to stop the bomb, but she did allow Clint to tag along on the mission. Bobbi still tried to keep Clint at arm’s length on the mission, not fully sure if she could trust him. She confirmed to him that their divorce was finalized and that she had filed the divorce papers before she was kidnapped by the Skrulls and that she and Clint were no longer legally married. Clint and Bobbi were able to work their way into the ceremony with false identities and invites. While searching for the bomb, Bobbi fainted, having flashbacks to her time on the Skrull Homeworld. Clint and Bobbi discovered a bomb and discovered that Bobbi was set up by A.I.M. Scientist Supreme Doctor Monica Rappaccini and that the bomb was planted specifically to lure Bobbi in particular right into Monica’s trap. Monica attempted to kill Clint but failed. Clint and Bobbi then had to find a way to defeat Monica, stop the bomb, and save the scientists. Following this, Clint and Bobbi decided to start dating again, and Clint officially joined the W.C.A.

            Clint then decided to go back to his Hawkeye identity.

            Clint and Bobbi’s old enemy William Cross/Crossfire returned to target the pair. A transport truck carrying artifacts belonging to the Slade family was hit. Jaime Slade was the daughter of Hamilton Slade and a descendent of Lincoln Slade, both of whom were known as the Phantom Rider. Lincoln Slade had tortured Bobbi in the past. Jaime picked up an urn that was cracked and the spirit of the Phantom Rider was transferred into her. Fearing for Bobbi’s sanity, Clint searched for Bobbi’s family and found her mother and brother were still alive but had been told Bobbi was dead. The reunion was not as happy as Clint thought it would be. Jaime/Phantom Rider sought revenge against Bobbi and Clint and formed a partnership with Crossfire. Their first strike was against Bobbi’s mother, who, with great luck, survived the attack. Bobbi, Clint, and W.C.A. member Dominic Fortune went after Jaime and Crossfire but were led into a trap that Dominic barely survived. Clint and Bobbi reached out to the other current Phantom Rider, Jaime’s father Hamilton Slade, who told them he could exorcise the spirit of Lincoln’s Phantom Rider out of his daughter. The ritual almost succeeded until Crossfire took Hamilton out of the picture, but Clint and Bobbi were able to overpower both Crossfire and Jaime. Following the battle, Clint and Bobbi broke up and Clint’s time with the W.C.A. was supposed to have been ended, until Steve Rogers/Captain America, informed Clint Bobbi’s life was in danger.

            A new Ronin had emerged and started killing spies around the world. A treaty over disputed territory between Russia and Japan was on the horizon, and this new Ronin was a threat to destabilize this potential peace. The Ronin’s kills got personal to Bobbi when he killed a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent she was friends with. Clint, Bobbi, and Dominic went to Russia, where they ran into Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow. Ronin had hit the Red Room, the facility where Natasha received her training. Clint was accused by the Supreme Soviets for all the murders due to his past identity as Ronin and targeted for arrest. Bobbi, Dominic, and Natasha were able to help Clint defeat the Supreme Soviets and escape arrest. While doing recon, Clint and Natasha encountered the Madame, who gave away to Natasha the identity of the new Ronin. Clint, Bobbi, Dominic, and Natasha, along with some unexpected help from the Supreme Soviets, then had to battle to Ronin and his clan the Dark Ocean to ensure that the peace treaty between Russia and Japan happened.

            While in a battle between the Avengers and the Lethal Legion, Clint missed a shot. Upon returning to Avengers Tower, he was examined by Doctor Donald Blake, who informed Clint he was going blind. Tony Stark/Iron Man produced some technology that would help Clint’s vision while he still had his sight but would not prevent the blindness from happening. Buck Chisholm/Trick Shot arrived at Avengers Tower to warn him he was in danger from another archer and his “Benefactor” before he passed away. The Benefactor was longtime Avengers villain Baron Zemo, and the archer was Clint’s long thought deceased brother Barney Barton, who was brainwashed and now wanted his brother dead. Clint struck out on his own without the Avengers to take down Zemo and his brother before he lost his sight.

            Okay, so let’s get to my opinion. First off, Hawkeye is one of my favorite Avengers. He has no actual superpowers, yet he is a valuable member of a team with a guy with a suit of high-tech armor, a literal god, a super soldier, and a superstrong rage monster. I find that to be so impressive. HOWEVER! This book just didn’t do it for me. It felt a little disjointed. The reason for this being the case is that this book did not contain any ongoing series, it was just a collection of limited series and pieces from one-shots, and I feel like that hurt the focus a bit. I feel like I was promised Hawkeye and that’s not exactly what I got. It might be one of those cases where I expected something and didn’t get what I expected. I’ve said this before a few months ago with “Hulk: Who is the Red Hulk?” if any of you recall that. I expected one thing and that’s not what I got and that was disappointing. I’ve also reviewed another Hawkeye Epic Collection “The Avenging Archer” before over a year ago and this disjointedness happened in that as well, but I must say this book wasn’t as bad as “The Avenging Archer.” This did have a little more, shall we say, cohesiveness than that. Still, this was disappointing. And I just didn’t find the stories themselves to be all that interesting, either. They were all subpar or less in my honest opinion. That said, the art was decent. I found that at least to be enjoyable. But the book just wasn’t what I was hoping for overall.

            Next, we’re going to talk about the accessibility level of this book. So, for those of you who don’t know what I mean by accessibility, I mean just how easy it is to get into this book for a new reader. So, if you’ve never heard of Hawkeye from Marvel before, I wouldn’t say it’s too hard to get into this book. This is marked as Vol. 1 and it does not directly pick up from any previous stories, cross over into any other stories, or continue into any other stories. So, if you’re reading this review and find this book to sound interesting, I wouldn’t think you’d find it too difficult to understand. I feel like it’s self-explanatory. If you’re a fan of Hawkeye from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his story here is a bit different, I will say, he doesn’t have kids, his wife was not Laura, but the character’s essence is still there, you just must realize he doesn’t have a wife and kids in this universe, and you should be able to grasp it well enough. If you’re a previous Marvel reader, meaning you read in the past before the original release dates from this book, 2009-2011, but stopped and are looking to get back in, I’d say you could still be able to pick it up again easily enough, or if you’re a current reader from after those dates looking to backtrack, I think it's something that you should have no problem understanding. In other words, this book is accessible.

            Okay, now for the section we’ve all been waiting for: my numeric score! Just how good of a book did I think this was? Obviously, you can tell this isn’t going to be the greatest. So, of course, this is a graphic novel, so we must take everything in this book into consideration; the art and the story. As I said, the stories were subpar or less, and I felt like it was highly disjointed. That’s going to deduct a lot of points there. The art was decent, so that’s going to give some points there, but it won’t save it too much for me. I really hate giving low scores, but I really don’t feel like I can just feel happy giving every book I read a high score, either, but this book just MUST get a low score, I’m sorry. So, all considered, everything thrown into the blender and mixed and the score comes out, it’s a… four! I really hate doing this to you Clint, but this book just missed its mark for me.

            Now we’re going to talk about if I recommend this book and to whom I recommend it. So, let’s start with this: do I recommend this book? HECK NO! I just can’t in good faith tell anyone to go read this book. I’m a huge Hawkeye fan and I was HIGHLY disappointed by this book, so I just can’t say you should read this, too. That said, I can’t tell you what to do, that’s up to you. If you read this review and are interested in reading this book now, you can totally read it if you want, I can’t tell you not to. Hey, you can read it and leave some kind of communication for me to let me know how you felt about it! I’d love to hear from you, that would be great! No one has ever reached out to me on this blog, and I would totally love to hear someone’s opinions of the same things I read! Please feel free to be the first! If you liked it, I want to know! If you didn’t like it, I want to know! Whatever! But I don’t recommend you read it.

            So, let’s start wrapping up here, I’ve been droning on for quite some time now. So, I’ll say a few more things before I log off. First off, I write a lot of book reviews, I’ve done dozens of Marvel Epic Collection reviews, and you can expect another Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection review within the next couple of weeks. I post very frequently, I buy every new Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and review them, so expect the reviews when they come out. There are actually a few I haven’t reviewed that I plan to go back to eventually, I just didn’t review them because I didn’t have a laptop at the time I read them, but I will probably review them eventually when I reread them, because I usually reread previous volumes when new ones come out, so backlogged books will probably come up. Second, I write other content, including short stories, free-verse poetry, articles, editorials, and essays, so you can check those out, too. I’ve done a bunch of B’ings in the past, if you want to waste time on something pointless, and there’s a chance I might do more. I’ve been sitting on a short story idea for months now, I hope I’ll eventually be able to sit down and write it, I’m just a busy guy, I have a job, I do activities, I just don’t always have the time to just sit down and write, and when I do, it’s usually reviews. But hopefully that short story gets done soon, it’s going to be entertaining. And with all that said, I’ll leave you to go back to doing whatever you were doing before you decided to spend a little bit of time with me. Thanks for reading, if you’re here, you are THE BEST! I appreciate you! I’ll be back soon, and so, until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!