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Let’s start with the splash page: Clint Barton and Bobbi Morse just saw the Batman movie. Neat.
Anybody recognize any of the crowd people as comic book creators? I don’t, but it seems like they might be.
In this story, Steve Gerber returns to Marvel and does a few radical things right off the bat. First, this book was an anthology style book that had multiple, self-contained stories in each issue, usually led by a Hawkeye story that often had some kind of issue-to-issue continuity. In issue #30, it’s a full-length Hawkeye story—for the first time since the book launched.
Also a subject of controversy: Focusing on Hawkeye. In fact, Marvel had recently run a poll on its letters page about whether Hawkeye should continue to be the star. The vote was “no.”
So what did Steve Gerber do?
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He shot him.
These issues are pretty bloody—a high body count—as Hawkeye and Mockingbird take on a gang of well-armed thugs who have no reservations about shooting civilians.
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After he gets shot, Tony Stark designs a new costume for Hawkeye that has armor plating, infrared targeting sensors, etc. Which kind of defeats the whole idea of Hawkeye, which is that he’s just a dude with a bow and some trick arrows, and yet he gets to fight Thanos and Korvac and all that. Still, it makes sense. If I was the least powerful Avenger and just got shot by a gangbanger, I’d want a power-up too. The only real question is why he didn’t keep it after he got his ability to walk back.
Oh yeah, spoiler alert: Clint will walk again.
Of course the heroes win in the end.
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Issue #31, Gerber’s second issue in this story, returns to the standard Avengers Spotlight format by adding a USAgent story (covered separately), but Gerber actually has that story briefly touch the main Hawkeye story—adding a sense of integration between the two halves of the book. Nice touch.
As far as Hawkeye/Avengers Spotlight stories go, this is the best of the bunch. Not that that means it’s a great story—it’s just better than the others.
Note: Issue #35 is a spotlight on Gilgamesh, covered separately.