Their evil Long Island resort may have burned to the ground, but the Circus of Crime has bigger plans: they’re after a fragment of the Cosmic Cube, a reality-warping macguffin locked up in the Bishop family mansion. Can Kate, her faithful doggo, her difficult sister, and her Young Avengers gal pals stop the heist? Hawkeye: Kate Bishop 5, writing by Marieke Nijkamp, pencils by Enid Balám, inks by Oren Junior and Roberto Poggi, colors by Brittany Peer and Rachelle Rosenberg, letters by VC’s Joe Caramagna.
Young Avengers Assemble
Now this is more like it. After a sometimes drawn-out, repetitive- but never not fun– four issues of misadventure at the Ringmaster’s happy-guest-hypnotizing holiday hangout, the action in this final issue of Nijkamp and company’s mini-series moves to the mansion where Kate Bishop grew up, or tried to grow up, though her manipulative birth family– however many archery lessons they funded– didn’t make it easy for her. “Half of my family tried to kill me at one point or another,” Kate reminiscences, and now she has to follow a supervillain into the family home: Ringmaster Pascale Tibodlt knows where the Cube-bit might be, and she’s got a head start on Kate as they all try to get there.
Kate, however, has her no-longer-brainwashed, “maybe-I-misjudged-her” older sister Susan at her side. And Susan’s driver (did we mention they’re rich?). And her former teammates and current besties America Chavez and Cassie Lang, who now goes by Stinger. And her dog Lucky, a.k.a. Clint Barton’s former dog Pizza Dog, familiar from the Hawkeye-and-Hawkeye series Matt Fraction wrote a few years back. (If you crave a longer intro to Kate, we’ve <https://www.comicsxf.com/2022/01/06/kate-bishop-hawkeye/> got you covered.) “Think of it as your Avengers Assemble moment,” Susan advises the young adult heroes. Kate answers “Are you making fun of me?”
She’s not: she’s finally serious about standing up for her sister, and standing up for herself, and (oh yeah) preventing her family home from becoming Ground Zero for the RIngmaster’s attempt to take over the world. And while Cassie and America absolutely do assemble, they end up as side characters in an elegant story about Kate herself, who’s going to have to choose– who will always choose– pluck and defiance and friendship. And her dog.
Me and My Arrow
Remember that archery-and-acrobatics-themed baddie who worked for the circus, wore a domino mask, and dressed like she shopped at Hot Topic? She’s back, and she’s been practicing, and she engages Kate in dramatic bowstring-versus-bowstring combat. Multiple inkers and colorists on a Big Two comic are often a bad sign, indicating a rushed production or a sketchy, much-revised script. Here, though, whatever the process, the product rocks. Every page of Kate’s fight scenes boasts a new layout, strong diagonals, clear action lines, curved mirrors, clean shots, ricochets, and ever-changing angles that ramp up the visual interest while putting the story first. Balám’s faces and figures get shaky at times, and her Cassie Lang looks improbably skinny even compared to other teen heroines, but in terms of action scenes, eye-lines and visual fluidity, this final issue of Kate’s mini comes off spectacularly right.
And Kate vs. Hot Topic Lady is just the opener. Next up comes the confrontation the whole mini-series has been introducing: our indigo investigator vs. the Ringmaster, in Kate’s childhood home, where Kate must also confront her past selves. Pascale Thibolt, the Circus’s current Ringmaster, already has her hands on a piece of the Cube, and the mansion’s corridors and ballrooms become a curvy, confusing hall of mirrors, a fever dream full of reproachful alternate Kates: the child she once wanted to remain, the optimistic Kate from the first Young Avengers stories, a girl in a ballgown….
“I always knew this place was a nightmare,” our adorable archer remarks, and she’s right. Her struggle to keep reality-warpers from taking over her sister and her family home becomes a neat symbol for half my friends’ experience of Thanksgiving and Christmas and any other Return to the Place You Grew Up and Freak Out holiday, in which past selves and traumas come back to stare you in the face. But for our quippy quiver-wielding Kate, the danger is physical, and literal, and the panels stretch warp to reflect it.
Up on the Roof
You know how reality-warpers bend what would otherwise be straight lines in and between comics panels? That happens (see also Uncanny X-Men 125-128). And how, when there’s psychic warfare going on, a battle inside the hero’s head, the art team doesn’t have to draw a background– things just get white? That happens too (see also the recent Defenders mini-series). You know how artists set up a fight by depicting the combatants as two-dimensional pieces on a board game, and the house where the fight takes place as a 3-D game board? I haven’t seen that before (maybe you have), but it happens here too, and I love it. More lighthearted action scenes from Balám and company, please?
The end of the boss fight works out so elegantly that frankly I don’t want to give it away, although I will say that it’s a good thing Kate has a dog. (I have a dog.) The conflict wraps up in time for some Quiet Moments with Kate, America, Cassie, Lucky and Susan, hanging out indoors, outdoors, on the balcony, as we pan out and see the larger city, the Earth-616 Manhattan, in which all these colorful characters move, and where they might get together for more adventures, along with (Cassie drops a hint) ex-teammate Eli Bradley (who’s also got a gig on Marvel TV).
Oh, fine, I’ll give it away. Lucky lunges at the RIngmaster, takes the Cosmic Cube fragment in his powerful jaws, and gets to keep it: that means his personal reality is puppy treats, dog toys and endless boxes of pizza, and that’s OK. “Lucky deserves a treat… He’s such a good boy.” America is right (especially after what Lucky went through in the Fraction run). It’s a dog-eat-Cube world out there, and it could be worse.
I had my doubts about Nijkamp and Balám early in this series, but I was wrong: this showdown at the mansion makes it so. I still think this series could have been four issues rather than five, but I’ll take more– I’ll take as much– Kate as I can get, as long she’s in character and her jokes hit their targets: which they do here. “Reality is so much better with me in it,” Kate quips in the midst of that archer-on-archer grudge match. And, once again, she’s right.
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.
