It’s Halloween and a hacker steals the personal information of numerous SHIELD agents, stores it on a thumb drive, and drops it into Deadpool’s bag of candy. Some brainwashed men dressed as Marvel superheroes try to steal it back and Clint Barton aka Hawkeye gets involved. It’s up to Clint, Wade and Kate Bishop (the other Hawkeye) to make sure the information doesn’t get into the hands of the mischievous Black Cat.
Doesn’t sound like a Vs comic, does it? That’s because it’s not. Most of the recent Deadpool Vs comics (Vs Carnage, Vs X-Force) have basically been about Deadpool fighting the opposing characters but that’s not really the case here. Deadpool and Clint do fight but the first time they do it happens off page and the second, and last, time they do is more of a sucker punch/stab; not the most satisfying encounters for readers looking for these two to lock horns.
So it’s not a Vs comic so much as it is a team-up one with Deadpool and the Hawkeyes - and it’s not a half bad one at that. Writer Gerry Duggan uses Matt Fraction’s Hawkeyes because it seems they’re now the standard for the characters of Clint and Kate, and artist Matteo Lolli even mimics some of David Aja’s art with the same Hawkeye title page and a Pizza Dog splash page (with Deadpool commentary: “Are we waiting for the DOG to solve the crime? What the hell is going on?!”).
There’s also a fun scene where Clint and Kate encounter the weirdness of Duggan and Brian Posehn’s Deadpool series. They go to one of Wade’s safe houses to play video games and lie low, and encounter the ghost of Benjamin Franklin and Michael the wizard materialising in front of them separately.
Kate: (After seeing Ben Franklin wink at her) Did you see that?! Did I see that?! We have to go RIGHT NOW.
Clint: You saw the naked wizard, too?
Kate: WHAT NAKED WIZARD?!
The story’s been done before a zillion times - stolen classified info, gotta get it back - and it’s very (black) cat and mouse-y, so it’s not very complex or that interesting. And if there’s one concept Marvel overuse besides time-travel, it’s the brainwashed character, and there’s plenty of that here. Also, even though Clint’s temporarily deaf in this book (see Fraction’s series for how and why), he still reacts to people as if he can hear them even if he’s turned away and can’t read their lips.
Hawkeye Vs Deadpool isn’t an amazing comic but really none of the Deadpool Vs books are, and this one is comparable in title only. That said, they’re entertaining enough quick reads and good for a chuckle or two. Especially when Wade dresses up as classic Hawkeye and jumps on his old sky-cycle after singing a modified version of Queen’s Bicycle Race (“I want to ride my sky-cycle!”)!
Hawkeye Vs Deadpool
I really want to read this one just for the riff on the "pizza-dog" issue from Fraction's book. I loved that issue to death, but it's nice to have someone point out how crazy a premise it is.
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