Each month the staff at 8th Dimension Comics picks out the best book to review. Look for Part 2 tomorrow.
Hawkeye #16: don't know why I don't follow Hawkeye more closely. I have literally never read an issue I didn't think was absolute genius. Part of that is Matt Fraction, who is easily one of the top ten comic writers working writer now, and a big part of it is that non-powered heroes always try harder.
Kate Bishop has taken the mantle of Hawkeye out to Los Angeles to try for a career as a private eye. She manages to land somewhere between Nancy Drew and Buffy Summers on the scale of detective effectiveness, and somehow that makes her all the more sincere and endearing.
This case finds her helping out a member of a Beach Boys-esque '60s group who is pretty obviously a fill-in for Brian Wilson. For almost half a century he's been working through mental illness to complete a mysterious masterpiece that now finds itself leaked onto the Internet. Bishop takes the case, befriending the old hippie and learning a great deal about the entertainment world and the magic of music. It's short on action, but extremely long on good vibrations. If some aspiring short film maker was looking to make a first class Hawkeye story, I'd nominate this one.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Deadpool: The Gaunlet #1: I treat Deadpool like I treat ICP... there are people who like him way too much and that always makes me keep a small distance. That said, I wasn't passing up the chance to see Wade Wilson take on Dracula.
This is a hard copy that comes from a free code to unlock the new digital service Infinite Comics, so if you want to ease the transition from paper to pixels it's a pretty good way to start. There's no arguing it's actually a hell of an explosive beginning.
Wilson foils an assassination plot out of the back of a helicopter in what may or may not be a weird Bondian dream sequence (Complete with amusing opening title song... in a comic... It's Deadpool, remember?) to find himself being molested by a vampire as he sleeps on a park bench. This leads to Wilson's usual bumbling but effective method of dealing out the pain, including a staking with an umbrella that is so perfectly timed I swear it moves on the page.
Oh, and John Denver was a mercenary, apparently. Good to know.
Rating: 7 of 10
This story continues on the next page.
