Matt Fraction reunites with David Aja for a brand new Hawkeye series debuting this August. The duo (along with Ed Brubaker) last worked together on The Immortal Iron Fist. The announcement was made at C2E2 in Chicago.
Aja told Marvel.com his lifelonglove for the Avenging Archer is what led to the reunion.
“Hawkeye was one my favorite characters when a kid,” he recalls. “One of first Marvel comics I read was Avengers #25, and I [fell] in love with [the] guy; he acted as real person, was a complete jerk, so I suppose I identified with him.”
For Fraction Hawkeye represents a challenge after taking on the X-Men, Iron Man, and Thor.
“Never had the chance to write a character like him, or to do a book like this before,” the writer reveals. “And I wanted to chronicle him in an ongoing series because it’d keep me from getting bored. Repetition bores me to death. I had this idea for how to do a book that wasn’t like anything else we’d seen him in before, wasn’t like anything I’d done before, and couldn’t stop thinking about.”
Fraction went on the describe this series as Clint’s life outside of team and what drives him after the events of AvX. I was excited that Kate Bishop (you could call her Lady Hawkeye of the Young Avengers) will be in the series.
“She’s his junior partner, his apprentice,” says Fraction. “It’s a very Avengers relationship—meaning Steed and Peel—and she’s as adrift as he is. What the hell are these two doing with their lives? Turns out, helping people is what they have to do to get through the night. In costume, in life, doesn’t matter. Good guys don’t punch a time card at 5:00.”
For the more quotes from Fraction and Aja here’s the Marvel.com link.
Fraction is one of the luckiest writers at Marvel. Iron Man and Thor movies were released during Fraction’s early runs on the those series. I don’t remember his clever quote exactly (at an Emerald City Comicon panel) but I think it went something like “nice of Marvel to do a million dollar promo for my comic book.”
Hawkeye awareness will be at at all time high with Marvel’s The Avengers out May 3rd and then Jeremy Renner (who plays Clint Barton) is on the big screen again in August for The Bourne Legacy. Good timing for a Hawkeye launch.
Hawkeye is currently leader of Secret Avengers under Rick Remender but that book is changing direction to tie-in with AvX. I hope after the event Hawkeye and his covert team return to their secret missions and Remender can continue The Descendants plotline he started.
By Editor