mcu | i'm watching hawkeye.

i'm four episodes in; i'll probably finish by the weekend.

some scattered thoughts:

— i didn't know swordsman was in this lol

— definitely enjoying the LARPing subplot.

— i knew going into this the challenge would be how the mcu was going to rip off fraction and aja's hawkeye without apparently giving aja any credit and also using… mcu clint, who is ultimate clint.

you can make an argument that fraction's clint was really his own character and not the classic 616 hawkeye, but he absolutely definitely was not presented as a grumpy old assassin with a dark past he's hiding. so all of the disaster energy has to come from kate, which i know some people have had a problem with.

what's great is that fraction has paid credit (or what I assume is paid) so uh

marvel just doing what it does best I guess

Fraction definitely tugged on the "Our heroes are just barely socially competent, it's comedy" thing Marvel likes to do lately.

(this is compounded by the fact that Kate in this is framed as a hardcore Clint fan who is clearly the junior parter/in over her head a bit, and I can see why that bothered people. It doesn't bother me too much, but I don't like kate's comics origin story even though I like kate)

but it's definitely a 100% different dynamic and what I realized it reminded me of a bit is the winter soldier holiday special, a comic i love a lot actually.

unfortunately there will not be a namor payoff.

the aja thing is so weird because i am not sure why they went so hard on his definitely recognizable aesthetic for all the title cards but the actual look of the series is very standard urban mcu.

it's a branding issue!!

I liked Kate in this and I liked the show overall, but I'm kind of worn out on everything being snappy quips nonstop

that's not an issue with this show specifically, it's a thing in MCU across the board and I'm like, pls

— i do like the groundedness of it, though, and how we see how the avengers are celebrities, and the format and the choice of protag really lets this breathe more than other mcu stuff that i can remember.

it's especially interesting because clint is a bad person. but he is also someone who has to interact with civilians on a regular basis, and everyone knows he's hawkeye.

that aspect was really interesting to me too

— the twist of course is that they don't know he was ronin, and, like, on the one hand it makes thematic and dramatic sense to harp on this, and it's good clint just murdering people for years in a ninja costume isn't just glossed over, but on the other hand the ronin idea is trash and i kind of wish we would forget it happened, ever

(this counts for comics ronin too)

— maya lopez is a character i like in theory more than in execution in the comics, and part of that is that she's very david mack identified and i don't like david mack since his tracing drama.

another part of that is the arc that introduces maya has her beat up natasha randomly to demonstrate she's a credible threat and i hate that trope, but the third, biggest part of it is that writers have really struggled to figure out what to do with her. i haven't read her most recent stuff where she becomes the phoenix and maybe that's good, but also

i feel "she becomes the phoenix" kind of illustrates my main point

maya was introduced with a very clear idea of the place she could occupy in a mythology— she was a daredevil character and a new love interest/antagonist for matt who could understand his disability from another angle

and her powers make "sense" for daredevil— she's deaf, but some kind of supergenius with the ability to repeat any action that she sees, so like, a kind of supersight

as a result she is able to read lips perfectly and also speak without anyone being able to tell she is Deaf. she doesn't sign. and the fact that she's Deaf is very important in the Daredevil stories where she first appeared but I think outside of that it kind of falls to the wayside? part of that is just that comics are a written/drawn medium

and part of it is that bendis did not know how to use her… and of course there's also lots that's been said about the problems with daredevil as disability representation.

haha yes, only murders in the building pointed this out nicely

all of this to say, i like maya in this maybe more than maya in the comics. i like they made the decision to have her sign and that she doesn't speak and act indistinguishably from a hearing person. and the actress has a lot of presence.

i'm… pretty sure i know who her boss is because i know her comics backstory but i think the link they've given her to clint is both a smart reworking and like… i admit i'm interested to see how it plays out here.

— yelena hasn't done anything yet really but i always liked the arachnid goggles idea from the diggle thunderbolts era

Oh boy, I have about a million Hawkeye thoughts but most of them come down to representation, haha. The Fraction/Aja run was also one of my first entry points into comics (I’m a huge latecomer) so it’s special to me in ways I can’t justify and therefore feel rabidly protective of it, lol. But yeah. Comics Maya has never resonated, but this rewrite I like.

ALSO the clear nod to Aja while doing absolutely nothing on earth to credit him really, really pisses me off.

andie 🍳 i read some of your thoughts at the time but not all of them because i didn't want to spoil myself

for when i watched this show… 9 months later.

Oh boy. I have a feeling that I likely did not do the greatest job of articulating myself, but here we are. I've gone through multiple emotional journeys with this show, from pure entertainment to deep analysis and my thoughts remain complex, haha. I definitely love reading what others think, though! So I'm glad you're talking about it.

any thoughts on the dog?

Okay, the introduction of Lucky was cute, but it was like a half-formed nod and a wink as far as I'm concerned. Cute dog, but no idea of what role he was meant to play. Maybe it's because I read too much about Fraction's homage to his own family dog through Lucky, and the thoughts that it spurred that I feel like are really present in the source material.

Obviously the show wasn't going to be able to do as much with him as the comics ever did, but. Man. Just thinking about the Captain Applejack story still kind of makes me cry, lol.