A review by buj
Hawkeye: Freefall by Matthew Rosenberg

4.0

There's a lot to love in Hawkeye: Freefall from Rosenberg's obvious knowledge and love for the Marvel universe to Schmidt's art--literally everything about Schmidt's art from the style to the bold and saturated colors...I will now read anything he illustrates, and I mean anything. The story is a little convoluted (comics...what you gonna do?), the ending feels like we're walking out of a movie before the final scene finishes, and there are questionable narrative choices (why create a neat character that other comic writers could utilize later only to kill them off like that when the injury on its own served the purpose for the plot progression??), but it's simply a fun time. Hawkeye fans will love the little nods to other Marvel characters and how Clint interacts with each as well as the way Clint is self-deprecating, a big doofus, and notably kind-hearted. Rosenberg doesn't dumb Clint down in the way he did in Tales of Suspense (picking his nose?? Come on...), and this refreshed me this time around.

I don't think I'll ever be fully happy with a comic that forgets to draw Clint's hearing aid at times or one that casually forgets he needs one when it would impair the narrative or require an extra panel or page to nod to it, but I genuinely enjoyed the occasional small bits about his hearing impairment (like the snide recording from Bullseye). Overall, it was money worth spent. Maybe I'm just too harsh because I'll be on a Matt Fraction/David Aja high until the day they lay me in a cold, damp grave, but who can say?