Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: Comics, hawkeye, HRL, Jordie Bellaire, kate bishop, kelly thompson, leonardo romero, marvel, Review
Hawkeye #10 Review: When Bad Girls Wanna Have Fun, Readers Can Expect Action
Hawkeye #10 is just so much fun. It's an action-packed story filled with great characterisation and beautiful art.
This issue continues an ongoing plot wherein Madame Masque has installed herself in a clone of Kate Bishop's body, hoping it will develop superpowers. She decides to take her stolen identity out for a night on the town, with Bishop's trusted friends in tow. Kate Bishop possibly having as-yet undeveloped super powers is an ongoing plot that has been a genuine surprise for this character.
The characterisation is perfect in this issue. Writer Kelly Thompson does a superb job of making it clear to readers not what Kate Bishop would be like as a good girl gone bad — which would be a pretty tired trope — but instead showing literally a completely different person in another's body, through action and personality over visual cues.
It's actually reminiscent of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Faith takes control of Buffy's body and takes it for a ride. Here, Thompson does a similar thing very well.
The artwork from Leonardo Romero and Jordie Bellaire is really strikingly beautiful in its seeming simplicity. The fact is, it's probably not simple at all. The smooth line work is clearly very deliberate, and the colours add a wonderful amount of depth and dimension to the proceedings. Plus, overall colour overlays used in different situations are immensely useful at conveying the power of the situation.
Hawkeye is proving to be a fun, witty series, filled with voices that feel genuinely young and fresh. It steers tropes away from conventionality, and instead creates a fun and immersive story that has far more depth than you might think.
And Hawkeye #10 ends on a powerful final scene that could lead to some huge revelations for the character, so this comic still has me hooked.