Sunday Splash Page #54

"Did I Stumble Into A Forever People Comic By Accident?" in Avengers Forever #10, by Kurt Busiek (plotter/scripter), Roger Stern (plotter), Carlos Pacheco (penciler), Jesus Merino (inker), Steve Oliff (colorist), Richard Starking and Albert Deschesne (letterers)

I was sure I did a review of this when I bought it 2 or 3 years ago, but no.

Kang, the Supreme Intelligence, and Libra use Rick Jones to draw a team of Avengers from the past, present, and future to fight Immortus. Immortus is trying to wipe out every timeline with Avengers at the behest of the Keepers of Time, who are really just a bunch of prats who think they have to exist because they're so special.

That involves splitting the team up and sending them to different timelines for a while, then eventually assembling for a final assault. It also involves Immortus trying to subdue Kang by merging with him. Eh, the two issues there were about how Immortus had been tampering with the Avengers from the start and also trying to explain Kang's continuity were my least favorite issues of this thing. Far too many pages spent trying to explain the whole Vision/Original Human Torch thing for my tastes.

There are a lot of fight scenes of Avengers against a variety of hordes of generic opponents, since Immortus can pull warriors from most any time period he likes. Plus the big battle at the end when both sides are pulling in every Avenger from every timeline ever, good or evil, and throwing them at each other. Pacheco handles it pretty well. Goes double-page splash when he needs to establish the scene, then focuses in on smaller pieces. That keeps it manageable, while still giving a sense of how the larger battle is going.

31 Days of Scans - Day 24

Today is for Least Favorite Costume. Now, I want to emphasize that it's "least favorite", not "worst". There are countless costumes worse than the one I'm going to pick on here. The various female characters on the X-Men alone could fill a month of Sundays, depending on your sartorial preferences. Wonder Man had that god awful Christmas colored outfit for a stretch in West Coast Avengers (which would have bothered me more if Simon hadn't wound up in the role of "egotistical asshole" on the team, an impressive feat for a roster that had Tony Stark and Clint Barton). Then there were all the terrible "armored" outfits of the '90s: Captain America's, Daredevil's, that suit Ted Kord built for Booster, Azrael's Bat-suit I suppose (though there are certain artist who made that not look too bad to me).

But like I said, it's least favorite, and so I'm picking this, plainclothes, basic, whatever you want to call it look for Hawkeye. There's nothing distinctly awful about it. It's too simple for that. It's a t-shirt with a purple chevron on it and some sunglasses.

Which is the problem: It's dull. It would be a good outfit for someone trying to maintain a lower profile, but this is Clint Barton we're talking about. Low profile is not in his vocabulary. He's loud, he's boisterous, he's bragging and butting heads with people, demanding you notice him*. He was trained and spent a fair amount of his developmental years in a carnival, where the whole point is to draw attention, get eyeballs on you, butts in the seats.

Also, the old costumes are more practical, and sure, practicality is rarely my major concern with costumes, but I figure it's worth addressing. Clint is essentially a normal human. He doesn't have any enhanced resilience to injury, no healing factor or bulletproof skin. The older outfits offer protection from head injuries, though I suppose the sunglasses could be equipped to project a small repulsor field around his cranium. Clint's brash, but he isn't an idiot. A costume that has some sort of protection makes sense.

I will say I prefer the current outfit to the one from roughly Avengers #100, with the headband and the mini-skirt. That one's both ugly and impractical.

Clint demonstrates what I assume is proper bowman technique on a variant cover for Hawkeye #2 of the 2012 series, drawn and colored David Aja. The other two covers are from Clint's 2003 series. The first was penciled by Carlos Pacheco, inked by Jesus Merino, and colored by Frank D'Armata. The other was, well I'd swear that's Scott Kolins work, but the Grand Comics Database says Joe Bennett (who did do the interiors). If the GCD is right, Sandu Florea inked it, and Kickstart colored it. If it was Kolins, he inked it himself most likely.

* It might almost have made sense for that stint leading the Secret Avengers, except for the part where Venom and the Beast were both on the team, not to mention Captain Britain. Guy in a bright black-and-white living costume, big, blue furry guy, and a flying guy wearing a modified Union Jack does not exactly scream subtle. Oh yeah, and Valkyrie and her big, white flying horse.