Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week – beginning with two Award postings, followed closely by the past week’s Best.
You know, I’d almost written off the idea that I could be surprised by Hawkeye. After so much visual innovation, after a tonal approach that consistently shocked me with its smaller moments, after an issue that was literally a noir from the point of view of a dog that was probably the best single issue of 2014, after an issue all about the Beach Boys while one of the stars of the series pretends to be Jim Rockford, I opened Hawkeye #17 to discover an issue all about the Christmas cartoon that some of Clint’s neighbours were watching eleven issues ago, drawn by series letterer and cartoonist extraordinaire Chris Eliopoulos. And then a beam of light burst through the clouds and I ascended into the heavenly kingdom of my Father and his Son. I am now a ghost.
I can see why this issue might have rubbed some readers the wrong way, to an extent. The last issue we saw was #15, which ended (uh, spoiler alert) with the Brothers Barton taking some gangland justice in their various body parts. I honestly thought Clint was dead for half a second until the shock wore off. And this issue, while 100% adorable, delays the payoff on that cliffhanger by a bit. But at the same time, this is an issue that is shockingly all ages-appropriate about adorable animals fighting evil – something I am always, always in favour of – that acts as a metasummary of the characters and themes of the book to date. Taken in that context, a restatement of purpose fits in nicely after a big cliffhanger, and it reads as a deliberate, effective choice, albeit a potentially polarizing one. Let’s put it this way: if you’re willing to accept the twists and turns of one of comics’ most creative series, and trust Eliopoulos, Matt Fraction, Dave Aja and Jordie Bellaire to have a plan behind Menorable, the Chanukah Chat(tm), you end up with a really touching story of friendship and opening yourself up to vulnerability. Will Clint learn the same lessons as his canine counterpart? We can hope.
With such a visually distinct issue, a lot of the attention for its execution falls to the new artists. Eliopoulos and Bellaire. Both do a tremendous job matching a lot of the mood and tone of the series while turning the dial a bit farther in one direction. But for all the silliness and lightness of Hawkeye #17, the trappings of the Christmas Special format really heighten the effect of the negative emotions, too. When Clint’s world is full of grey buildings and the squinting, bandaged fog of depression that is his life in Brooklyn, it’s the lightness that often stands out. Here, that’s reversed; amid all the seasonal puns, adorable animals and associated brightness, there are these moments of Steve the Dog/Clint just screaming at his friends and actually biting one of them as she yelps out in pain. In that moment, Clint the Human’s crummier actions take on a new, rawer meaning when presented in Eliopoulos‘ Bill Watterson-influenced facial expressions. They’re the shocking actions of a wounded animal lashing out because it doesn’t know what else to do. All of a sudden, it’s even easier to understand why Kate had to get away from all that. It’s hard to be around someone who bites you just for being nice.
This is mature, complex storytelling, snuck in under the guise of a throwaway Christmas Special issue. By giving a bit of distance from a character we know and love, Fraction, Eliopoulos and Bellaire have recontextualized his behaviour and helped us understand it better, before giving us the happy ending we know can’t come as neatly in Clint’s own life. It’s funny and bittersweet, and another surprising moment of insight from Hawkguy.