Hawkeye by Matt Fraction & David Aja Omnibus Hardcover – 5 Nov. 2015

Everything about this is impressive. I love the colours and lining, and the story is really good.I think this may have become my favourite book! (Sorry DD... but not sorry)

It was a gift for a friend. They seemed happy with it.

I had heard great things about this series and I don't think Hawkeye gets enough of the spotlight so I have the omnibus edition a go.I was extremely disappointed..... for the following reasons1. The dialogue is awful, Hawkeye is in conflict with a local mafia who use the word "bro" several times in every sentence , which just sounds ridiculous.Here's a quick example of the ingenious dialogue. "Bro, what you want here bro? Feed dog? Go #&€@# you , bro. "Seriously......2. Several issues are complete garbage , a terrible attempt to be different or simply to stretch out a story..One issue is told completely form a dog's perspective, which goes through half of tue previous issue which you've already read and covers half of the next issue which you're about to read next .Also there's an issue that's told completely as a children's cartoon tv show..... I skipped it because it was garbage.Another issue is told completely in sign language.......eh yeah...Thanks for that.Instead if being edgy and cool , it was just annoying.3. There is very little Hawkeye in this book. I don't know what sort of crossovers were happening at the time of this series, but half tue book is about an annoying teenage girl who calls herself Hawkeye and who is mentored by Clint Barton. Which is ok , until see runs away or something to the west coast and then several issues are wasted on her nonsense.4. The art style is simple, which I don't mind,.as long as it's clear , Steve Dillon was great at that.Aja's work just doesn't suit my taste personally.It can be inconsistent and sometimes is of a 4yr old standard.If you can get it cheap and have nothing else to read, give it a go, but, if you never read it, you're missing nothing.

The stories from Hawkeye’s 2012-2015 series are collected, along with Young Avengers Presents #6, as  Hawkeye by Matt Fraction & David Aja Omnibus . Issues #1-5 show us what Hawkguy does on his days off from being an Avenger (thanks, no doubt, to his prominent role in the Avengers Assemble film). They start off small, with him not even appearing in his (old?) Avengers’ costume (thanks, no doubt, to his prominent role in the Avengers Assemble film), dealing with his landlord’s attempts to clear his building to sell it for a profit to developers (Clint likes the rooftop barbecues); adopting a dog; teaming up with Kate Bishop (Young Avengers’ Hawkeye) to rob the Circus of Crime of the loot from their robbing the world’s top criminals (that apartment building didn’t buy itself); rescuing a mystery woman being hunted by assassins driving Minis and dressed for The (original) Italian Job, which features an almost book length car chase with running jokes about trick arrows (don’t knock boomerang-arrows); and a two-parter in which a tape showing Hawkeye killing the world’s most wanted terrorist is stolen from SHIELD and is to be auctioned off in Madripoor to a roomful of criminals and secret organisations, which requires Clint Barton to go and buy it back. This is an old-school SHIELD story that Steranko would be proud of, not to mention Robin Hood, Ian Fleming and Stan Lee.The Young Avengers Presents story is the one in which Young Hawkeye earns her bow in a story guest-starring Older Hawkeye during his Ronin period.The stories from issues #6-11 are more serious comics (with hilarious bits). The stories in the first half appeared to be made up of random adventures, but now we start to see that they were not so random, as some of these stories start to fill-in connections, as we see the return of the girl in the car, the track-suited gangsters, and the big criminal mastermind convention; more of the women in Hawkguy’s life start to get involved in the stories (Black Widow, Mockingbird, Spider Woman), and Young Hawkeye becomes a almost a permanent fixture in the stories; even Lucky the dog gets to be a major player in the storyline. We also get a new mystery European assassin joining in the random chaos (SPOILER: though thanks to Lucky’s nose, I suspect that the dead brother may not be as dead as we are supposed to think).This is a hilarious comic (with serous bits) and is excellently written with suitably supportive artwork. This really is an exceptional comic book (and not just because of the retro-60s dresses and hair).The second half of the volume has two strands, one starring Kate and Lucky, who have run away to California, and their story opens in the Annual, or at least 28 pages of it, as Kate Bishop has a falling-out with Clint Barton, packs her stuff – “You had that much stuff over here?” – and she sets off for a new life in Los Angeles, along with Lucky the dog and a quiver full of trick-arrows. Coincidentally, would you believe, Madame Masque is currently headquartered there, and her Intel people spot Kate arriving, and soon a nefarious (that’s a pun on Madame Masque’s real name, by the way – and it is not ‘Whitney Frost’) plan is put into operation… This sets up an ongoing revenge story – Madame Masque was humiliated in the previous volume (and again in this one) – that runs through this collection, which involves stolen Orchids, an army of henchmen dressed as Bell-Boys, house (and cat) sitting while moonlighting as a Public Investigator (you need a license to be a Private one), shopping for cat-food, and Harold H. Harold (from Tomb of Dracula) (no, really). We also get to meet Kate’s father, her step-mother (who went to school with Kate), a traditional embittered LA Police Detective, and a secret criminal enterprise involving SHIELD technology – Maria Hill: “We can neither confirm nor deny that, Ms Bishop”.Clint’s strand of the story reveals to him the reason for the Tracksuits’ campaign to take back control of his building, and just what is riding on their success. The action escalates on the part of the baddies, as Clint sets his friends to work on unravelling the conspiracy, and it really does come down to one of those old fashioned Western finales, though more John Wayne than Gary Cooper; though, being Hawkeye, he’s not shooting to kill, nor is Kate Bishop (who returns, with the dog for the finale), and she even gives a baddie a gun so she can shoot him with a clear conscience.This has been a superb series showing us what Hawkguy gets up to on his days off from saving the world: saving ordinary people.