The Resort Chapiteau has looked fishy since Kate got there. Now she’s found the culprit– the Circus of Crime. Will they burn the house down? Can Kate Bishop get out alive? Hawkeye: Kate Bishop #4, writing by Marieke Nijkamp, pencils by Enid Balám, inks by Oren Junior, colors by Brittany Peer, letters by Joe Caramagna.
Fashion Forward
Why did Kate Bishop ever leave L.A.? There she had a private detective agency and a stellar posse of friends, not to mention distance from her toxic, and wealthy, birth family. Now– at her sister Susan’s days-ago invite– she and her sweet dog Lucky are trapped in an evil luxury East Coast resort. She’s unmasked the director– Pascale Tiboldt, the new Ringmaster of the multi-generational, family-owned, evildoing Circus of Crime.
Kate has also figured out Pascale’s plan: mind-control the resort guests through bracelets, then find out, through mind-controlled Susan, where in the Bishop mansion one might find a Cosmic Cube fragment (a.k.a. a cosmically powerful macguffin). She’s even found Pascale’s secret in-mansion hideout.
Unfortunately the Circus has also found her. We open on captive, tied-to-a-pole, costumed Kate amid Pascale’s villain monologue. Those mind-control bracelets (Pascale explains) also “get rid of unhelpful inhibitions and constraints.” Guests who wear them live free of doubt and anxiety and fear, as well as doing the Circus’s bidding.
The scheme strikes a sarcastic Kate as boring, and on paper it might bore you too, but Balám’s ways of rendering Kate’s costume, and Pascale’s over-the-top ringmaster pinstripes and bowtie and epaulets, and even Susan’s demure yet stylish dress, held my interest and more, not to mention the henchwoman in striped acrobat tights with arrows through her wig (or in her head). This issue has less plot than Hawkeye 1 through 3, a lot less to be honest, which means Balám gets bigger panels, and gives her talent as a fashion illustrator room to stretch out. I’ve never seen a Big Two comic that looks so much like a series of costumer’s sketches, and I’m on board for more.
Pascale’s Wager
Kate, of course, isn’t on board for Pascale’s scheme, especially not since the evil plan involves literally burning down the house: the mind-controlled guests won’t even leave. Or mind. Or survive. Our amaranthine arrow-master also delivers a spiffy counter-monologue after Pascale makes fun of Kate for wanting to save the world: “I don’t need the world. I need my dog. And my sister. And a drink with an umbrella at the pool. And a bag of frozen peas. Or a frozen pizza.”
Someone’s been re-reading the Matt Fraction run. And watching the Hawkeye TV show, which is certainly the reason this very mini-series exists. Even without frozen peas or a frozen pizza, Kate proves able to loose herself from her rope bonds, fight her way past guests with “hypnotized anger issues,” and Save That Dog. Yes, the dog will be fine. (If you ever want to know whether the dog will be fine, you can find out here. I have the feeling that Kate has checked it.)
Susan gets rescued before Lucky, but she takes longer to liberate: more arrows, and more pages, and more angst. “We don’t need the world. We need each other,” Kate repeats while firing at Susan’s wrist, finally dislodging that bracelet. “I hate family reunions,” Kate muses in one of those purple narration boxes. But the reunion comes off: our amethyst archer appears to save the redshirts before the resort’s gasoline-fueled fire spreads. If there’s a mechanical flaw in this issue’s action plot, it’s here: gasoline-stoked, intentionally set fires surely go up a lot faster than this sequence has it? If there’s a Big Argument in this issue, or maybe a Theme or a Message or a Way to See Kate’s Character, it happens in the Kate-and-Susan dialogue, while younger sister tries to free the elder: heroism isn’t saving the world– it’s doing your job and saving your friends. It’s an oddly unambitious bit of advice for a Marvel comic, but sometimes it’s the advice scared readers need.
Home, Cooking
Kate and Susan and Lucky dive into the pool and take a minute to float and breathe before we remember where our plum projectile-slinger has to go next. “Bishop Manor. Center of chaos, nightmares and monsters under the bed.” Also the place where Pascale seeks, and must not find, a piece of that cosmic cube. The setup’s creaky and slow but the action art? the fashion art? the page with three vertical panels showing Kate and Susan’s fall from the house? and especially the full-page finale, with Kate and Susan and Lucky in the pool? They’re charming. They’re exciting.
In fact, they’re what makes this series worth watching, however oddly paced and deficient in banter: these colorful pages with their fast-moving fashion plates simply delight the eyes. Nijkamp has done nothing to make herself stand out, so far, among other YA novelists-turned-comics writers (and I cannot honestly recommend her much-praised, trauma-soaked YA fantasy Otherbound). She does, however, know how to write for artists, and in this thinly plotted issue Balám and her team– especially colorist Brittany Peer– stand up and respond.
Oh, and did I mention Kate’s friends? We should see them next issue, in the mini-series finale, since she’s been texting them all along: Cassie Lang and America Chavez, and maybe Clint Barton too, will try to meet Kate at the mansion. What will happen when they all arrive? I’m hoping for quips, and post-adolescent bonding, and a quick fight followed by an afterparty, just like in Young Avengers. It’s probably gonna be Bishop family quarrels (see what I did there?): all arrows point in that direction (whoops, I did it again). But a girl can dream.
Stephanie Burt is Professor of English at Harvard. Her podcast about superhero role playing games is Team-Up Moves, with Fiona Hopkins; her latest book of poems is We Are Mermaids. Her nose still hurts from that thing with the gate.
