ALL-NEW HAWKEYE #1

Capsule Review

Tries very hard to follow the look, feel, and color palette of the award-winning Hawkeye run of Matt Fraction and David Aja, but that run … is a very tough act to follow. Judged on its own merits, creator Jeff Lemire and Ramón Pérez deserve points for kicking off an ambitious story, jumping back and forth between the present day and the future, to examine the now-and-later consequences of yet another one of Hawkeye’s relationships going sour. But the premise might be just a bit too ambitious, especially for the first issue of a reboot, given that the inciting incident that’s breaking Hawkeye and his partner Kate apart resides in yet another, past story. The result is a tale that feels like it happened in the past, or maybe in the future, with very little happening in the present, aside from Hawkeye being behind the beat and getting chewed out for never changing and never saying the right thing — something we are told, but don’t really see, in the present-day narrative of this story. The characters are appealing and the emotional stakes are ratcheted up just fine, but it doesn’t quite jell.

Approachability For New Readers

Not great. It’s like coming in on the last act of a divorce while not even knowing the married couple yet.

Read #2?

Nah. I’ll re-read my Fraction/Aja Hawkeye collection, instead.

Sales Rank

(#20 November)

Read more about the Avengers at Longbox Graveyard

• Avengers — Kree/Skrull War
• Longbox Shortbox
• The Bride of Ultron
• Avengers Gallery

Read more capsule reviews of Marvel’s All-New All-Different rolling reboot.