Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Hawkeye (Vol. 4), Issue #2 – “The Vagabond Code”! In the previous installment, we see Clint Barton being kind of a douchebag. His shitty Russian mob landlord raises the rent of his whole building, so Barton brandishes a sack of money to buy everyone’s rent. And then the building itself!

A dog gets hurt in traffic during a scuffle. Barton takes the dog to the vet and opts to take him home once he’s fixed up.

What will become of this story? Who can say. But slightly fucked-up and flawed heroes are my bread and butter, sir. Looking forward to seeing what comes of this. Or do I?

Hawkeye (Vol. 4), Issue #2 [November, 2012]
Written by: Matt Fraction
“The Vagabond Code”

“Okay…” Hawkeye says, jumping into what looks like a hotel swimming pool while some big bad guys shoot their big bad guns at him and some other gal. “This looks bad.”

That’s how Issue #1 started. Something looking bad. We’ll get back to that later. Kate Bishop, whom I barely know from Young Avengers, is hanging out in Barton’s apartment. They’re fucking, I assume. Bishop reads the paper and busts Barton’s balls.

“Kate took over for me as Hawkeye once upon a time when I was… well, dressing up like a ninja, sort of, is the short version. She is without a doubt the finest and most gifted bowman I’ve ever met but she’s like nine years old and spoiled rotten.”

There goes my theory about the fucking. CLEARLY she’s not nine, but Barton doesn’t like the idea of fucking nine-year-olds (I hope). At any rate, Barton spaces out and Bishop asks if he’s ok. Everything’s fine and dandy! Like sour candy! Heh. George Bush.

Hawkeye practices at arrows.

“Y’know,” says Bishop, “they say the Roman Emperor Domitan could fire four arrows at once between his fingers.”

“Showoff.”

It’s a bunch of big ol’ titties I saw at Burning Man 2009.

Bishop rifles through a few polaroids and asks what these are. Without seeing them, I’m guessing dick pics. Other people’s dick pics. “Vagabond code,” Barton answers cryptically. Barton starts talking about hobo drawings and their meanings and… look, you saw that episode of Mad Men, right? Well, these drawings of a circle with two arrows on the right side have been springing up around town and Barton is worried that some shit’s going to start happening. “Shady people are warning folks to get out of town if they don’t like the heat… because after, the cops are gonna start tearing things up.”

Bishop makes fun of the hobo code. Barton drinks his coffee straight from the pot. These two knuckleheads, I tell ya.

LATER, Barton and Bishop dress to the nines and appear at a Cirque du Nuit six-star hotel opening event. Some guy named Gunn is expected to show up (with a gunn, no less), so let’s keep an eye out for suspicious-looking assholes with brass knuckles and mittens pinned to their jackets. Bishop tells him that Bernie Gunn is an old family friend. He bought her a pony when she was eight. He has always been a suspicious-looking asshole. Barton still has a five-o’clock shadow and looks like trash.

Barton and Bishop mosey around the banquet hall and try to look inconspicuous. They amble to the stairway while Barton keeps saying things like “careful…slowly…casually…quitely…”, drawing the attention of literally every single frowny patron. “Lots of guns, rich people, and scumbags in that room down there.”

Bishop hands Barton a pair of sunglasses with special lenses that, I assume, can see skin through clothes. Lots of dangling, floppy penises in the room ripe for polaroids.

Some complete creep in a top hat, named the Ringmaster, steps up on a stage and commands everyone’s attention. Maynard Tiboldt, the Cirque du Nuit guy. Barton thinks he’s as French as apple pie! Suddenly, some Cirque du Soleil shit happens (except this is Cirque du Nuit, which is later in the day! Ha!) and Barton continues to talk at me. “There’s a thing that happens when a pro is around the work of another pro. You spot the style – even without a signature.”

Yeah, steal my breath away. Hubba hubba. Love the mustache.

A blindfolded man throws knives at a woman spinning on a board. “I know before the knives hit the boards the face of the man that taught this guy. This guy – and me – we share the same mentor. The same man that taught this guy how to throw… taught me how to be a living weapon.”

SNORE! SNOOZE! BORING! YOU’RE BORING ME, CLINT BARTON!

This Student of the Swordsman guy, “The Student of the Swordsman” as it were, thanks the audience with a humble “merci beaucoup.” Clint Barton leans over to Kate Bishop and calls all these fantastic performers a bunch of fucking thieves, which seems rude and harsh to me. These Cirque du Nuit performers? Thieves? Mais non! Je suis consterné! C’EST LA PIRE INSULTE!!! PUTAIN! PUTAIN!

Barton continues to call them phonies working a long con. All of them. Meanwhile, goth-looking large adults sneak around the audience stealing expensive watches and jewelry and, uh, 70” TVs. The audience has been completely hypnotized by the performance. Literally! They’re all in a grand stupor! Just like me reading this comic book.

Barton and Bishop take their leave and notice a bunch of bad guys stealing from other bad guys. Once Barton says he has it all figured out, fighting ensues. People get hit in the face with fire extingusihers. Barton gets hit with a crowbar. It’s really a sad state of affairs is what it is.

“Wake up, cretin,” says Mr. Student of the Swordsman, brandishing a sword. Like, an old-timey muskateer sword. “What a disappointment you are.”

Clint Barton is NOT a disappointment! He may be a wisecracker, a terrible son, an arsonist, and an unapologetic pedophile, but his NOT a disappointment! He happens to be very good at those things. Barton calls the Student of the Swordsman a phony. Phonies, the lot of them! *spit*

Fuckin’ Holden Caulfield-ass cracker.

“You’re going to die soon,” the Student of the Swordsman continues. I wish I knew his goddamned name. “I hope being pedantic in your final moments brings you some form of comfort.”

I don’t know what this dude’s problem is, but he wants his cronies to tie Barton up and put him on a boat! I guess. And stay on top of him! I guess. “We cannot have a dead Avenger in the middle of our operation!” he says, swinging his sword around flamboyantly. So kill him somewhere off shore and throw him to the fishes before the end of Act II! Chop chop, people.

While they’re dragging Clint Barton’s fat ass across the platforms leading off to the observation deck, Kate Bishop shows up to fling a bunch of arrows through everyone’s neck. An arrow flings through Barton’s wrist ties, and he starts beating some thugs up while Bishop continues to literally kill people.

This is the part where the RINGMASTER shows up. “KILL ‘EM ALL!” he screams. Now the guns go off and we’re at the beginning of the issue all over again. Do I really need to cover it again? No.

Barton begs Bishop not to die as they fall through the glass and down toward the pool.

“GAHHHHHHHHHH that sucked,” Barton says. Bishop is assuredly not dead, but ready to fling more arrows at more mofos. “Suck it, Domitan.”

FWIP FWIP BOOM BAM MOO MOO BLEAT. Arrows right through their eyeballs. “See?” Barton thinks. “She’s perfect.”

“Did I get him?”

“In the eyes, Kate.”

“They’re not dead, they’re just blinded now. For life probably.”

“Yeah, no, I know. Still. It’s grim.”

Hey, that was what I was gonna say! “FFLLLLRRRRRGG!” Stop copying me!

After they share this moment, the still unnamed Student of the Swordsman taps his way over. “BARTON! You dumbass cornpone son of a bitch. You have absolutely ruined everything for us. We’re thieves stealing from thieves. People like us – we’re supposed to have a code.”

Barton grabs Bishop’s bow and looses an arrow. It clips this guy’s ear. He “pfffts” and advances, but the arrow ricochets off of the wall and sinks itself in the back of his neck. Not dead, but he collapses all the same. Have a nice life, quadriplegic.

Anyhoo, with this nameless Student of the Swordsman threat eliminated, Barton and Bishop hobble their way out of there. Bishop can’t drive a boat, but Barton can. “I’M GREAT AT BOATS!” he exclaims.

“And that’s how we robbed the robbers who were robbing robbers.”

“They’ll be back, of course. The circus always comes back. Fine. Let ‘em come. Let ‘em bring every crook and clown after me.”

Back at the hotel, a menacing bald man announces to his group of well-dressed cronies that an Avenger fucking robbed them! Clint Barton! Can you believe it? That hoser! “I suggest we begin workshopping solutions…” he says. Dun dun dunnnnn!!

“Why me?” Kate Bishop asks.

“Because you’re good,” Clint Barton responds.

“Cap is good. Spider-Man is good. Why me?”

“You’re smart.”

“So’s Iron Man. So’s — everyone at your day-job. Why me?”

“You’re rich?”

“So are you now. Why–”

“–because I don’t want to sleep with you?”

Fair enough.

“Katie, I look at you and think you’re a lot like me. There are – I have these things I have to do. Not want but have, y’know? I can do them alone but I bet that whatever it is that’s in me is maybe in you and… I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Bishop says she’s a big girl who can handle her own. And she wants to help him. He says ok. They hang up. She is sad that he doesn’t want to sleep with her. Gross.

Barton looks at a giant bulletin board of the world and all the Avengers shit he has to do around the world. Of course he needs help! He’s got a lot of Avengers shit he has to do around the world!

His dog is named “Lucky”.

Barton smiles, knowingly. Time to kick some names and take some ass!

Final Thoughts

I’d rather this be a Kate Bishop Hawkeye series. This Clint Barton guy can eat a bag of rocks.