Hawkeye: Rio Bravo

The final installment in Matt Fraction's Hawkeye arc provided a thrilling conclusion and as much closure as you can expect from what will probably be an ongoing story arc, even after Fraction moves on. Although it might have worked better if I had a better memory of the previous arcs. I'll probably need to go back and read the entire story at some point to appreciate it all. Which I hope to do this summer.

This volume introduces Hawkeye's brother and reveals the ultimate plan of the tracksuit bros. I'm still a little unclear how it all ties together with Kate's adventures in LA, but it was nice to see her ride to the rescue just in time. There's a big shoot out and a siege in an apartment building. The good guys win, mostly, and everything is all right in the end.

On a deeper level, there's a really great storyline in here about Hawkeye losing his hearing. Hawkeye is canonically (usually, not in the movies) deaf, so it was nice to see that come around here. The story suggests that he was temporarily deaf as a child, and that old injury circles back around and becomes more permanent now. There's an issue that is almost entire without dialogue. The story relies on the art and a handful of captions in American Sign Language to get its ideas across, and it's disorienting for anyone not familiar with ASL, purposely so.

Still, I occasionally lost the thread in a major way. Probably because these stories are meant to be read and re-read. I'm sure it will all become clearer and richer the next time around.

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