The Bill October 27, 2011

Jeez, has a week gone by already? Time flies when you're swamped I guess. I apologize for the lack of updates, as things have been rocking and rolling over here (Check out my other blog for an insight) I've found myself without a whole lot of time to chat about comics. That said, nothing's gonna keep me from prattling on about at least one new book this week. Which one? Why don't you follow me after the credits and find out?





The Book I Want to Like:

Avengers Solo # 1
Writer: Jen Van Metter, Jim McCann
Artist: Roger Robinson, Clay Henry


Confession time: I have a complete run of the first volume of Solo Avengers (or Avengers Spotlight). The start of that series (the first year or so) are some of the best Hawkeye stories around, written by, surprisingly enough, Tom Defalco. The stories from that period have endeared me to Hawkeye and made me want to give all of his series chances. There are a few good ones, but most of the time they're pretty shitty.

Unfortunately, Avengers Solo is one of the shitty ones.

'Shitty' is a hard word and not the right one. Disappointing, confusing, needless complex, not fun... any of those are a bit more accurate. For me, a good Hawkeye story involves some snarky one-liners, some espionage, and some high flying action. This issue opted to give me none of that, and I think that's my problem with it.

The issue begins with Hawkeye stopping a routine mugging between a normal dude and a hi-tech armored assailant. Said assailant escapes, leaving The Hawk to figure out why the dude was being attacked in the first place. From there, it becomes a detective story as Hawkeye goes from mysterious benefactor to mysterious benefactor, getting tips and getting closer to a solution. Or something like that.

Honestly, it was around here that the story started to lose me. It's not that I can't handle a detective story, but there's only so many times you can use the same cliches before I get tired of it. It felt like it desperately wanted to be an awesome mystery, but only had two tricks to play before the writer ran out of ideas.

Suffice to say, I was not impressed.

Rounding out the issue, was a short little backup featuring my faves: The Avengers Academy. Here, Hank Pym takes a couple of the more troublesome kids out on a fieldtrip, only to have tragedy strike. It was fun, if a bit short. There's a part of me that wants to continue the series just for those backups, but at 3.99 I don't know if it's that worth it.

Yeah, I don't know about this one. I really want to keep reading and support the idea of a Hawkeye series (again), but not if it'll be written like this. Alas, I fear this'll have to be one of those that I grab out of a dollar bin in a few years.

Oh well. Better luck next time, Hawkeye!