Hawkeye

Hawkeye – Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The definitive Hawkeye – Clint Barton and Kate Bishop – issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for comic books, omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated September 2024 with titles scheduled for release through December 2024.

If there is a single character outside of the holy-trinity of Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor who is most associated with The Avengers, it’s Clint Barton as Hawkeye.

Hawkeye began as an early Iron Man villain in Tales of Suspense and so it comes as a surprise to the team in the classic Avengers #16 when he breaks into their Mansion with a request to join (he’s soon followed by fellow former villains Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver).

Despite his unlikely initiation, Hawkeye has one of the longest tenures of any character in the Avengers – and has maybe quit and been kicked out the most of any character, too. He is often represented as the core of what the Avengers are and as a conscience for the team.

In 2005, with Clint out of the picture, a young woman named Kate Bishop took up the mantle of Hawkeye. Kate is nearly the opposite of Clint – she grew up rich and privileged, while he literally joined the circus as a child.

However, their shared grit, marksmanship, and moral compass finally brought them together as partners in Matt Fractions’ remarkable 2012 Hawkeye ongoing.

From there on out, they share the codename. [Read more…] about Hawkeye – Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Comic Book Review: Avengers Assemble – Science Bros (#9-13)

September 3, 2013 by krisis

If you are part of the entire population of the free world who kinda dug The Avengers movie, afterwards you may have been moved to consider, “Wow, can I read more high-action, high-drama, high-comedy stories like that in Avengers comic books?”

avengers-assemble-science-bros-tpb

Yes and no. There are certainly action-packed, drama-filled, laugh-inducing Avengers tories out of umpteen thousand different Avengers issues Marvel has released over the decades, but few come close to the glossy sheen of the film. It’s a big challenge for Marvel, which frequently finds itself flat-footed when it comes to delivering the right comic into the hands of an inspired movie-goer.

Enter Avengers Assemble – a comic Marvel pulled together in 2012 with the specific mandate of being friendly to the movie-loving audience headed from cinemas straight to their local comic book store.

The first collection of issues #1-8 was a highly-enjoyable intergalactic romp written by Brian Bendis, but the universal scope of the adventure did more for capitalizing on Thanos’s split-second reveal in the credits of the movie than it did for matching the tone of the film.

Enjoyable comics, but not exactly a sequel.

Then there is the proceeding run of issues #9-13, by Marvel writer and Manga-adaptation vet Kellie Sue DeConnick, just released as a trade paperback called Avengers Assemble: Science Bros. It features the entire movie cast and the ever-awesome Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman – plus, a brief appearance from a peanut gallery of perennial favs, Spider-Man and Wolverine.

AvgAs - 0009 - pg10 The first story features a science squabble between big brains Tony Stark and Bruce Banner that could have easily occurred in the car they drove away in at the end of The Avengers. When a science-y mystery arises, they each pick one teammate to see who can solve it first. Stark, ever the competitor, picks Thor. Banner, knowing his Hulk persona might need some minding, picks the beguiling Spider-Woman. The Captains America and Marvel wind up as team three, doing the fist-fighting dirty-work while the science bros embark on (and ultimately bungle) their initial mission.

The second story finds a former victim of Black Widow calling in a marker – a chance for her to repay a bit of the red in her ledger. Against her wishes, both Hawkeye and Spider-Woman accompany her on the mission as an ongoing part of their ex-lovers’ spat. It starts as a simple search and rescue, but becomes more complex when the person the Avengers are rescuing turns out to have a different repayment in mind for Natasha’s sins of the past.

This comic feels just like the movie, splitting it neatly in two halves between the super-powered members of the team and its more human side. From the pointed banter between Stark and Banner, to Spider-Woman both taming and sympathizing with Hulk, to Captains America and Marvel shouldering the hard part of the mission, the first story reads like a natural extension of the film so perfectly that you can play it in your head as a direct sequel. The second story does that beautiful thing that comics can do – expanding a minor plot point of the movie to its own tale that deepens the backstory of a character.

DeConnick navigates both stories with ease, proving that comics can be fun and funny, and entertaining while being appropriate for readers of all ages. The artwork isn’t the cinematic, lifelike stuff of some of Marvel’s go-to talents, but it’s bold and engaging throughout. That’s especially true of Stefano Caselli on the first story – he needs a regular Marvel gig, pronto!

CK Says: Buy it! 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Avengers West Coast – Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Updated Mar 25, 2025! The Avengers West Coast & Force Works definitive collecting guide and reading order for comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback format. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through December 2025.

The Avengers had the best kind of problem in the early 80s, whether your perspective was from within comic book continuity or behind the scenes: there were just too many darn Avengers!

The Avengers had gradually shifted its focus from Marvel’s major heroes who anchored their own books (like Iron Man and Captain America) to a roster of characters that needed a team book to thrive. That meant plenty of fan favorite characters would be left out during any given run.

The best solution was to follow a trend set by Spider-Man and just recently by Chris Claremont’s X-Men: launch a second Avengers book!

West Coast Avengers launched with Hawkeye as a central focus. He was chief amongst those team-based, fan-favorite characters, hot off of his own limited series. Hawkeye was initially joined by his wife, Mockingbird, Tigra, and West Coast natives Wonder Man and Rhodey Rhodes as Iron Man.

From a story perspective, the central conceit of the book was that America was a big country, and the NYC-based team couldn’t always be responsive to threats across the nation. In practice, it allowed writers like Steve Engelhart, John Byrne, and Roy Thomas to tell big stories that still focused on character history and personalities. Byrne, in particular, used it to dig deeply into the story of Scarlet Witch.

As comics became more entrenched in extreme, violent themes, the relative staid Avengers team was disassembled in favor of an Iron Man lead Force Works. (The in-continuity reason was the team’s standoff with the UN Security Council over happenings in Genosha in the “Blood Ties” crossover in the penultimate issue of the series.)

Despite a flashy launch with a pop-up cover, Force Works never caught fire like the similarly themed X-Force, and was cancelled as part of the line-wide removal of Avengers in 1996 as they headed off to the Heroes Reborn pocket universe in the wake of Onslaught.