Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye #1

We'll start this non-DC week off by reviewing the comic that I picked as my top choice for the week, Ultimate Comics Hawkeye #1. Since I should be done with this week's reviews by Friday(at the earliest), I'm going to have a couple of days to just write whatever the hell I feel like, as opposed to being tied down to doing nothing but reviews. And since this is me we're talking about, I'm sure I'll have PLENTY of things to talk about! But that's down the road, let's get through this week's books first.

Ultimate Comics: Hawkeye #1(of... um, 5? 6?):

Summary: We kick this one off with Hawkeye: Agent of SHIELD arriving in Bangkok since the SEAR(that would be the Southeast Asian Republic) had requested SHIELD help since some rebel force was attempting to overthrow the government there. Hawkeye isn't exactly overjoyed to be heading up this mission, since he sees the leaders of the SEAR as a bunch of dictators, but Nick Fury tells him that the president of the US himself was asking SHIELD to support the SEAR, thus explaining Hawkeye's presence there. So who is trying to overthrow the SEAR government? We flashback a month and find out the chancellor of the SEAR(I'm guessing the head honcho) and a couple of scientists are discussing a virus they concocted to eliminate the X-gene in the western world, while creating a serum that would give people in their country mutant powers. The chancellor is pleased, since having an army of super-powered mutants would swing global power to the SEAR, but is a bit concerned about controlling the new mutants, at which point the scientists assure the chancellor that the new muties COULD be controlled. Right before the fighting broke out, the two scientists headed to the SHIELD facility in Bangkok and requested asylum, which brings us back to the present. While talking to Fury, Hawkeye's SHIELD base is attacked by three Asian mutants, who knock out the video feed to Fury, as well as take down several SHEILD agents. Unfortunately they weren't counting on Hawkeye being there, as he proceeds to kill them with an assortment of arrows and thrown pieces of glass. Later on, Hawkeye meets up with the two scientists who defected, and they tell him the entire story about how the SEAR created a virus to eliminate the west's mutants while creating mutants of their own. They add that the mutants they created were the ones trying to overthrow the SEAR government... I guess they weren't able to control the new mutants as well as they thought they could! After relaying the story back to Fury, Fury, a bit pissed that the SEAR did this behind everybody's back, tells Hawkeye that his mission was to now get a sample of the serum that created the SEAR mutants.

Thoughts: What can I say? I loves me some Hawkeye, be it the regular, 616 version, or the Ultimate version. Now, I wasn't blown away by this story or anything, but it was solid. Basically, the SEAR tried to create their own mutants(after neutralizing the mutants around the rest of the world with a virus), succeeded, and then these lab-created mutants turned on the SEAR and decided to use their powers to take over the SEAR... The only part of that story I have a problem with is the fact that the SEAR officials weren't smart enough to have implanted these lab mutants with some sort of a kill switch... Seriously, what kind of a government, especially one as seemingly corrupt as the SEAR government, would grant people powers and have NO way of taking them out in the event they turned rogue? So while that portion of the story was a bit odd, everything else here was pretty solid. It's always fun to read about Ultimate Hawkeye, who has no qualms about killing, unlike his 616 counterpart. What more can I say? You know I'll be looking forward to the next issue of this mini.

Score: 8 out of 10.In any dimension, Clint Barton is the man.