Hawkeye, West Coast Avengers #1 & Redemption

By Theron Couch — Superheroes fighting each other has long since gone from reliable genre convention to outright cliché. Whatever the reason for the fight’s start, it almost always turns into a let’s discuss how best to defeat a villain coffee clutch. Avengers West Coast #69, though, is one of those great examples of superhero fights that have nothing to do with upholding justice and fighting crime, and everything to do with two characters who can’t keep their mouths shut literally picking a time and place to beat each other senseless. So yes, it remains my favorite superhero fight to this day—and it also forever-defined for me a major character who is returning tomorrow in Kelly Thompson and Stefano Caselli’s new West Coast Avengers #1.

Avengers West Coast #69: The A Story & B Story

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Avengers West Coast #69 is a glorified team picking. The story jumps back and forth in time, telling two stories concurrently. In the A story—the story that opens the issue—Hawkeye and US Agent dish out a mutual ass beating. In full costume and with arrows and shield, the two fighters hold little back. There is no love lost between them, and since the A story begins before the fight actually starts, it’s clear the whole thing was orchestrated in advance, which leads to the obvious question of why.

Enter the B story, which occurs earlier in the day and is confined to Avengers West Coast headquarters. The team is choosing a new roster, but before they do that General Heyworth has a message for US Agent. Both Avengers teams will operate under the United Nations going forward so the US government is no longer maintaining a representative on the teams. US Agent, who had had a guaranteed a slot on the team before, now has to earn his way on like everyone else. US Agent doesn’t take the news well, and Hawkeye rubs plenty of salt in the wound. Predictably, the voting doesn’t go US Agent’s way, and with only one vote cast in his favor he gets a spot as an alternate. The end of the B story dovetails into the A story as Hawkeye and US Agent set up a fight for later that night.

Avengers West Coast #69: The Fight

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The infamous fight in Avengers West Coast #69.

It’s a lean story in Avengers West Coast #69, one that really boils down to two events of consequence: the team selecting its members, and Hawkeye and US Agent fighting. With respect to the first event there’s no real rising action or plot twist; the result of the vote is so obvious that it’s hardly a surprise when Hawkeye makes it and US Agent doesn’t. As for the fight—it’s also clear that it has no real teeth. The story is the fight rather than the outcome, so to an extent it’s overwritten.

To the benefit of both stories, though, Roy and Dann Thomas used a convention that these days is pretty common, but it much less so at the start of the ‘90s: non-linear storytelling. Both stories benefit from being broken up and interspersed with the other, preventing the vote from feeling more important than it is and keeping the fight from feeling too long. It’s a brilliant move, one that makes the issue work.

I’ve never read other issues of Avengers West Coast, so I don’t know if there is additional backstory to the Hawkeye/US Agent relationship. You don’t really need it, though. The Thomases write US Agent as a self-entitled jerk through and through. Even before the general unceremoniously delivers the news in front of the entire Avengers team with no warning, US Agent’s smug attitude goes such a long way to damaging him in the readers’ eyes.

Hawkeye, though, is actually almost worse—and this is where I wish I did know the backstory. Hawkeye starts rubbing salt in US Agent’s wounds immediately, and it’s entirely personal. At no point does he offer a compelling argument for why US Agent is a detriment to the team. Hawkeye just doesn’t like him, and he’s having a good time kicking him while he’s down. The pettiness behind both men’s actions colors the fight and sets it into a special class—a more personal class—of hero combat. There are no lofty ideals here.

Can Hawkeye Be Redeemed?

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West Coast Avengers #1 is out Aug. 22.

Overall, Avengers West Coast #69 has all the makings of a forgettable one-off. And if not for the non-linear storytelling device, I’m not sure it would be so much fun. But it is the comic book that colored my perception of Hawkeye forever. US Agent is a jerk in this story. Everybody knows it. And everybody knows he’s not making it on the Avengers. But only Hawkeye takes the tack that he shouldn’t; he does it very personally and very publicly. Even if he’s right, his attitude in the B story and his willingness to stoop to US Agent’s level is definitely a stain on someone who just got overwhelmingly voted on to the team.

What’s more, the promised suspension at the end of the issue rings very much like the kind of non-punishment reserved for popular members of teams and groups. To me Hawkeye walks away from this fight looking far worse as a character, and to this day I’ve been ambivalent toward him, if not outright suspicious—his defining moment to me is a petty fight on the beach because he was talking shit to someone in a position beneath him.

Here’s wondering if Kelly Thompson can, at long last, redeem Clint Barton in my eyes.

Theron Couch is a writer, blogger, and comic book reviewer. His first novel, The Loyalty of Pawns, is available on Amazon. You can also follow him on Twitter at @theroncouch.

REVIEW: Avengers: Infinity War, a Movie that Defies Review

There is no easy way to review Avengers: Infinity War, because there has never been a movie quite like Avengers: Infinity War. Here we have a film that plays out narrative threads from 18 movies and 10 cinema franchises. It’s not a sequel, hell, it’s not even a season finale. It’s the culmination of a decade of disparate storytelling. It’s something new that we don’t have a word for yet. And how do you review a work of art without another comparable work of art to measure it against? That’s the conundrum.

But review we must, because we are results-driven as a culture and simply looking at Infinity War’s record-breaking domestic box office in its first weekend is unsatisfying. Money is one thing, vital for sustaining blockbusters of this magnitude, but it doesn’t answer a key question: is this movie actually good?

It’s certainly groundbreaking and unprecedented. There’s simply no denying that. You have to look to comic books to find something of comparable scale, and even then it’s a shoddy comparison because no comic book event has ever sprung from a continuity as clean and straightforward as this one.

This first panel comes from What to Get From the Man Who Takes Everything by Chris Hastings, Flaviano, & Federico Blee. This is the story of a regular guy who Thanos comes back to harass annually on his birthday. It's a funny panel, and I also like the imagery of Thanos in an office, where you know he would without question be that one co-worker who drums on his desk. 

It’s also a risky film (HERE COME SPOILERS!). The bad guy wins. He has to give up a cherished loved one—his only cherished loved one—but when the film ends he has everything he said he wanted. He heaves a sigh of contentment, and there’s nothing around to suggest it’s not a sincere one. Oh yeah, and half the heroes fade away and die. Now, if we’re being real, we know none that died in the fade out are going to stay dead. We have the advantages of knowing the source material and that the film was originally part one of two (more on that in a sec).

But the sheer volume of viewers who watch these movies certainly means there are thousands of fans who don’t know any of that, who simply know that many of their favorite characters faded away to ash. That’s risky, that’s bold, that’s downright innovative for a blockbuster film. So, with all that in mind, let’s get to my verdict…

Overall: Avengers: Infinity War is a new type of film I’m calling the uber blockbuster, the culmination of an expertly-played long game that has done so much right it’s easy to forgive anything done wrong. It’s a risky, bold, unprecedented, and groundbreaking film. For those of us along for the ride (and box office records for many of these films would suggest we are legion) it is indeed a very good film, one destined to influence both studio choices and fledgling filmmakers alike. 9.5/10

For more thoughts on the movie, you can hear me on the WMQ&A Podcast here!

Thanos Keeps Winning

This is, of course, a comics site first and foremost, so let’s cleanse our pallets after all that film talk with some good ol’ fashioned comics. Folks, I now present to you my favorite panels from last week’s Thanos Annual #1. I choose one from each of the six stories inside.

This panel is from My Little Thanks by Katie Cook and Heather Brickle, which is adorable but also one of the more interesting takes on what makes a villain tick. In this story, Thanos is put off by a race of little cuties who ascertain he enjoys maiming and death, so they pull out every stop to supplicate themselves and deliver that to him. The effect is...off putting. 

Panel numero tres here today is from That Time Thanos Helped an Old Lady Across the Street by Ryan North, Will Robson, & Rachelle Rosenberg. This story is a meditation on human potential, specifically on the way so much has to transpire for it to be fully released. It's a lesson Thanos teaches in a saccharine way. 

Kieron Gillen, Andre Arujo, & Chris O'Halloran's story Exhibition is basically a series of poems relating to the high concepts of various planets, every one of which ends prematurely when Thanos obliterates said plant. It's this ending panel of every planet exploding at once, however, that really delivers the crux of the story.

The Comfort of the Good by Al Ewing and Frazer Irving is the story I found the most disturbing from this bunch of uniformly disturbing stories. It has to do with religion and morality, and whether people only act decent to each other to reap an eventual reward. There were so many panels to choose from here, some of which showed characters beginning to weep as they realized the blissful afterlife they'd been promised would never come to pass. This silent panel of Thanos cracking a knowing grin, however, is easily the most sinister. 

And this last panel reunites the team from Thanos Wins, the best Marvel villain story in ages. It's Titan's Greatest Dad by Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, & Antonio Fabela. This panel is from the back half of that story's two bookends, and I choose it because I'm looking forward to Cates forthcoming Cosmic Ghost Rider mini series and I think you should be too. 

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at @zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Splitting the Marvel Cinematic Universe into Tiers

I rarely write about comic book movies, for a few reasons: 1. I think they're pretty self-explanatory and most conversations amount to either wouldn't THIS be cool?, or screw you, let's fight!; 2. I'm an old-before-my-years purist who prefers comics; and 3. I'm not as passionate about these movies as most other people tend to be, so I usually just sit back and let strong feelings have the room.

But Infinity War is HUGE. It's part one of what feels like a major shift for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (part two being Avengers 4), and so I'm using it as an excuse for a rare post about the MCU, wherein I organize this mosaic of stories into tiers.  Unless otherwise noted, these tiers have less to do with quality than with content. Also, I generally enjoy all comic adaptations, which feel to me like nice bonus supplements for my favorite print stories. 

Enough preambling, let's do this!

Next Generation Tier

I know I said the tiers weren't about quality, but this first one is. Sorry. These are my three favorite Marvel movies, and I've grouped them in a tier because they feel like the future of the MCU, a future in which a talented director (or directors) is given a movie and trusted to execute a vision.

This is especially true of Taika Waititi's Thor Ragnarok and Ryan Coogler's Black Panther. It's almost like Kevin Feige saw and loved What We Do in the Shadows and Creed, respectively, and invited the filmmakers to come do that in his universe. And they did. Civil War gets a nod because directors Joe and Anthony Russo juggle so many characters without losing control, much like they did as directors on Dan Harmon's all-time great TV sitcom, Community. 

Risky Tier

It's weird to think, but these movies all took risks that evolved the MCU. Guardians of the Galaxy didn't have mega-popular characters (or actors back then, not counting voices). In fact, there were comic fans who were only vaguely familiar with the team. But Marvel executed well and fans came. Winter Solider incorporated darker complex themes, even dismantling SHIELD. Again, fans came. But it was Spider-Man: Homecoming that was probably the most risky and consequential, proving properties adapted elsewhere could be re-done for the MCU. It ignored the origin, added modern touches, threw in an RDJ cameo, and glazed over that nasty business about Uncle Ben with jokes. And fans loved it. (I'm mixed, myself).

Watch-While-Altered Tier

I've never been one for drug culture, although I used to tip a few brews when I was younger (another story), but I couldn't help but think how impressive/funny they'd have been if I had done some chemical altering before watching these movies...Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 because of the colors, Ant-Man because haha look how small he is, and Doctor Strange because obviously.

Origin Tier

I should note Iron Man is my favorite of these. I remember walking out of the theater thinking, WHAT was that? It just felt so real. But I think Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and Avengers are all solid at getting the job done in terms of introducing heroes and building a shared world. 

Skippable Tier

Listen, I know every one of these movies means a lot to someone, that's just how fandom works, and I'm not looking to criticize or attack. What I am saying with this tier is that if you were re-watching all of Marvel's movies, these are the four you could skip and probably still understand what's happening in the rest.

I should note, though, that if you do skip these, you should still watch the party scene in Age of Ultron, and also Google "Who are Vision and Scarlet Witch?" 

That's it for me. Enjoy Infinity War everyone. Depending on what I think about the movie, I may review it for you all here next week. 

Zack Quaintance is a career journalist who also writes fiction and makes comics. Find him on Twitter at@zackquaintance. He lives in Sacramento, California.