The Batlord

Amazing. Like I said, great characterization. The characters are strong and you get a real sense of their personalities, while at the same time they're written subtlely and realistically enough that 19 issues in I'm still learning new things about them. For the most part the series is about Hawkeye and his quasi-sidekick Kate, also called Hawkeye BTW, but even side characters are strong and feel real. It's really as much of a compelling drama as it is a comic book. I seriously could not have given a crap about Hawkeye before, but now he's become a new fav. I was reading Loki's new series a few hours ago and he popped in for a cameo in the first issue and I actually smiled at seeing him. I'm also planning on getting into Young Avengers at some point which includes Kate/Hawkeye because of how much I loved her character. She could easily be a Joss Whedon character as she's written with a great quirky humor, but her relationship with Hawkeye fleshes her out and makes her as strong a character as him.

Oh yeah, as for the story it's just as strong as the art and the characters. It tends to switch between secret agent kinds of storylines, with Hawkeye as a sort of lovable loser version of James Bond, to street level stuff like a recurring storyline about Hawkeye's apartment building and all of the tenants that he sees day to day. The storytelling itself is pretty interesting too. At times it switches from past to future to present without much warning, making you wonder why that just happened, only to come back later in the issue, or even several issues later to finally let you know the context of this or that. It could be easily confusing, but it's cleverly done enough that it draws you in and makes every reveal, even seemingly innocuous ones, into fun "Aha!" moments that make you want to pay attention to every little detail that doesn't immediately make sense. They never make it impenetrable or anything, but they keeping you guessing. It's by far one of the most mature and well-written comic books I've ever read. Something I'd recommend to people who don't even like comics.

Haven't finished it yet. I'm starting to collect a stack of comics that I need to read, sort of like my book collection, and I sense that I'm going to end up falling behind on some of them. But it's pretty fantastic so far. Really trippy and surreal, almost Yellow Submarine-esque (as in the movie). There's a two page shot of a really bizarre city in the first few pages that's just stunning. Really need to get off my ass and pick that back up.

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