Ronin is back and causing strife for the villain of the week, The Hood (a nobody wearing a Doctor Strange-esque cape). People think it’s Hawkeye but it’s not. Or is it…? Who cares…
Otto Schmidt goes from drawing Green Arrow at DC to drawing the Marvel bow and arrows character with the always terrible Matthew Rosenberg writing to produce the worst Hawkeye comic I’ve read yet: Freefall.
The plot is so unnecessarily convoluted. The Ronin crap, the Life Model Decoy, the Skrull - all of it in service to what? Why does Hawkeye need Hood to think it’s not him ripping him off? He’s still fucking with the Hood anyway as Hawkeye so what does the pointless misdirection give him? It’s just lots of page-filling nonsense as more popular Marvel characters pop up to ask him if he’s Ronin or not. It. Doesn’t. Matter.
The explanation Hawkeye gives is a lazy piece of exposition to wave away the dumb plotting. Hawkeye’s motivation for fucking with the Hood was equally easy - I guess because Hood’s a crook and that’s it? It adds to the blase feeling I had when reading this - I couldn’t have cared less because Rosenberg is so bad at setting up a meaningful motivation or any kind of relationship between the characters.
Hawkeye has a pointless subplot about Night Nurse because, hoho, Clint’s bad at relationships, and a rubbish hacker kid stereotypical character is introduced for Hawkeye to have some sort of stake in the outcome or something - it’s so contrived. I don’t dislike Otto Schmidt’s art but it’s too cartoony to sell the seriousness of one of the supporting character’s deaths in the final act.
Hood is such a bad character. Multiple times he kills people he needs information from so he has to find other people to get that information from - we’re meant to fear someone this astoopid? It’s like Rosenberg knows nobody cares about this character so he introduces a better character - Bullseye - towards the end for Hawkeye to have a slightly more interesting (though it isn’t) final fight with. And the ending is rushed, predictable and anticlimactic.
I didn’t like anything about Hawkeye: Freefall. It was really boring to read, poorly written, conceived and executed, and a thorough waste of time. If you’ve not read it, I recommend Fraction/Aja’s Hawkeye run instead.
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