All New Hawkeye #3
Jeff Lemire, Ramon Perez, Ian Herring
Marvel $3.99
I believe it’s safe to say that I can stop worrying about the future of Clint Barton and Kate Bishop. Both figuratively and literally, thanks to how this comic plays out.
All New Hawkeye #3 wraps up the creative team of Jeff Lemire, Ramon Perez and Ian Herring’s 2nd arc, which sounds weird, but try to remember exactly how relaunch-happy Marvel is these days. It’s a great issue that shows how important the Clint and Kate are to each other, even though they’re not on speaking terms with each other for most of the issue. It also wraps up the future Hawkeye story, which was fun alternate future thing filled with a ton of cool ideas and designs.
At first glance, you could accuse Lemire at rehashing a lot of what Matt Fraction had done: ie, broke up and reunite Kate and Clint. It’s a fair complaint, but in Lemire’s defense, he handles it differently, and resolves it quicker. He also shows how much Kate needs Clint, 
which is nice, even though he flat out stats that Clint needs Kate to be a proper Hawkeye. Which is true, as we probably wouldn’t have had nearly 30 issues of Hawkeye comics over the last 4 years if it wasn’t for the inclusion of Kate Bishop. It’s good to see Lemire finally getting more comfortable with the Clint and Kate dynamic, and finally establishing his own take on their relationship. He also does some wonderful things with Clint’s brother Barney, who makes a welcomed return to these pages. It’s a wonderful series of pages, which really works for me more than the Barney/Clint stiff from volume 0. Part of me wants more Barney and Clint bro times from Lemire, but given the character’s current status quo, I’d also be okay with him being left alone with his happy ending for him for the time being.
Ramon Perez has always been great on this book, and I’m impressed that he also manages to improve in some small way with every issue. In issue 3 for example, he draws more sound effects into his panels, and their pretty great. “Bro Hug” was a sound effect that sounds like something that would have shown up in Adventure Time, and its presence is 
welcomed. It’s such a minor thing, but the tiny words give the art an element of comedy that I appreciate. Aside from sound effect, I love his character designs for the future cast of characters, and how Perez composes some of his pages, especially the Miss America Chavez and Kate Bishop page in which the panels act as mirror images.. All of this, in addition to the fact that he switches up his art style 3 different times in this issue, make him one of the most under appreciated artists at Marvel. Any issue of ANH that take primary in the present is better for it, and issue 3 is proof of that, thanks to Ramon Perez’s visuals, enhanced by Ian Herring’s brilliant choice of colors.
All New Hawkeye #3 puts my fears to rest and helps make this book one of my favorites again. I’m glad the team got their stuff together for this arc, and I’m now genuinely excited for this book in a way I haven’t been for months.
The thing is, in Fraction’s run, things happened in every issue. There was character development, plot advancement, and the nice alternating Kate and Clint stories kept things hopping. There was a lot of emotion, too, and depth.
Lemire’s run, on the other hand, had a drawn out flashback to Clint and Barney’s childhood with the carnival that felt flat and rehashed and didn’t seem to contribute anything to the actual story in the present. Even Clint’s reunion with Barney didn’t make those flashbacks seem any more relevant despite them mentioning it briefly, certainly not enough to justify those flashbacks covering half of each issue.
Then we get this arc with the weaponized kids or whatever they are — I still really have no clue and it’s been long enough for there to have been some concrete explanations for why we should care about them — and a silly flashforward that again, doesn’t seem to have any real relevance because it’s not something Clint or Kate could know, so it can’t influence Clint into changing his mind about those kids. To me, that’s lazy writing and poor plotting, and basically, makes the flashforwards come across like filler, same as those flashbacks to the carnival. So, three issues and we’re pretty much back where we were before those flashforwards, but now Clint wants to get the kids back. Why? And for that matter, how is that a satisfying ending to something billed as 3 of 3? It’s not an ending, so why the 3 of 3? Talk about dragging out a story. And the art is some of the ugliest comic art I’ve ever seen in my 55 plus years of reading comics.
So, yeah, Fraction was a tough act to follow, but Lemire is better than this. Descender is amazing. Maybe he should stick with his own creations and not play with established characters. His take on Hawkeye feels like he had a story to tell and has tried to fit it to Hawkeye, rather than find a story that was suited for Hawkeye.
The Fraction/Aja/Wu run is arguably one of the best comics run we’ve gotten in some time, and arguably my favorite run of comics. Anyone short of Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples would have struggled in the new team’s place. While I really wish Lemire’s scripts had more humor to them, but I much preferred this arc to that drawn out origin arc.
My complaint with the book is that under Lemire, it became a big bore, and the art for the future scenes looked like storyboarding for the actual art we never got to see. Fraction was a tough act to follow on this book, and Lemire wasn’t up to the task. Nothing of note really happened in his brief run of the book, causing me to drop it.