Dark Reign: Hawkeye (Andy Diggle, Tom Raney)

Dark Reign was a Marvel storyline from nearly a decade ago when the villains were pretending to be heroes for astoopid reasons. So Bullseye’s cosplaying as Hawkeye but he’s having a hard time adjusting to the role and keeping his murderous nature in check. Then he starts hallucinating himself in the classic Bullseye costume taunting him and corpses start showing up with bullseye targets carved onto their foreheads, but he has no memory of killing them - is he going nuts(ier)?!

I actually really like Bullseye. I think he’s one of the best villains Marvel has and he’s the perfect foil for street level characters like Punisher and Daredevil. He can’t really sustain a story as the main character though. That said, Dark Reign: Hawkeye wasn’t bad.

Andy Diggle keeps the surprises coming and I was genuinely hooked into finding out what was really going on (though the conclusion was disappointingly unimaginative). The action is amusingly over-the-top and seeing Bullseye in any sort of heroic role is funny, particularly in one scene where he kills some muggers and then kills the victim too! I enjoy the sheer lunacy of the character.

The Ben Urich subplot though went nowhere and was entirely superfluous. From what I could tell a secret informer wanted to let Ben know about something, possibly that Norman Osborn and his Avengers aren’t really heroes, it’s not very clear, except we as readers already know that so waiting for Ben to catch up is boring. It’s a pointless storyline anyway as nothing happens with it and has no impact on what Bullseye’s doing.

I wonder if Antony Johnston and Andres Guinaldo suddenly taking over the final issue from Andy Diggle and Tom Raney after their four issues had anything to do with the unresolved, unsatisfying conclusion to the story? Also I wasn’t impressed with either Raney or Guinaldo’s art in this which is unremarkable superhero fare.

Bullseye fans like me might enjoy parts of this mediocre outing but otherwise Dark Reign: Hawkeye is nothing special and doesn’t really hit the spot.