Sunday Splash Page #229

 

"Lurkers," in Hawkeye (vol. 1) #3, by Mark Gruenwald (writer/artist), Eliot Brown (assistant artist), Christie Scheele (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Minus the occasional solo spotlight issue, Hawkeye was an ensemble character for the first 20 years of his existence. I almost typed "team player", but given his role as team irritant, that wouldn't be entirely accurate. In 1984, he got a 4-issue mini-series, written and drawn by Mark Gruenwald.

At this point, Hawkeye's not part of the Avengers, instead acting as Head of Security for Cross Technological Enterprises. Things are going pretty good until a certain blonde ex-SHIELD agent shows up following rumors that Cross is working on a sort of mind control weapon. In less than an issue, Clint loses his job, his home, and his girlfriend, the latter making sure to twist the knife on the way out. With nothing better to do, and too much pride to go crawling back to the Avengers, Hawkeye teams up with Mockingbird to help uncover the truth of what's going on and runs into a string of third-tier villains.

The mini-series sets up a lot of things that have carried through for Hawkeye over the last 35 years. The relationship between Clint and Bobbi (which also continues Clint's tradition of dating women involved in espionage work). Crossfire becoming an arch-foe to Hawkeye (he targeted Hawkeye for his villainous scheme because he consider Clint the weakest, most vulnerable known crimefighter, which ouch.) Although of all the villains Hawkeye faces, I liked Silencer the best. Sound-deadening outfit, with kind of a Dominic Fortune look to it. Professional, not annoyingly chatty. Sadly, this was apparently the only appearance of that version of the character, and they re-used the name a few years later for someone in Strikeforce Morituri. 

Clint losing his hearing is established here, as he defeats the mind control weapon by jamming one of his sonic arrowheads in his mouth and setting it off. The sky-cycle Hawkeye would use for a lot of years, I think at least until Bendis killed him in Avengers Disassembled, is introduced as something one of Cross' engineers made for him. Clint's tendency to take setbacks poorly and slip into a funk, something certain writers took to exasperating lengths later on.

Prior to reading this, I had no idea Gruenwald drew any comics, since I really only knew him as the guy who wrote Captain America for most of my childhood. His style seems similar to a Bob Hall or some of the other Avengers artists of the time. Brett Breeding is inker/embellisher on the first two issues, before it switches to Brown for issue 3 and Danny Bulanadi for the final issue. The issues with Breeding as inker look the best; more fluid and subtly expressive than Brown, less heavy-handed with the shading than Bulanadi.

Gruenwald seems to really like pages with one panel that stretches top to bottom at either the right or left edge. Uses them mostly as establishing shots, either introducing characters or the setting for a scene, but some of them don't work with the overall layout as well as others.

Relationship Therapy Via Violence

He's someone who understands nunchuks are cool, Bobbi.

New Avengers: The Reunion came out post-Secret Invasion. Mockingbird turned out to not have died sometime during the West Coast Avengers days, instead being replaced by a Skrull (who died). Bobbi is not dealing well with being back home after years spent as a fugitive on the Skrull world, and decides, rather than therapy, to throw herself into intelligence work. In this case, a biological weapon designed by AIM and intended to be unleashed at one of those symposiums for smart folks.

Complicating that plan of avoidance is Hawkeye, currently Ronin, who is both worried about Bobbi and trying to reconnect with her. In typical Clint Barton fashion, he is doing that by persistently trying to get in her business, so that she'll talk to him. Mockingbird eventually remembers that Clint doesn't give up, and grudgingly let him accompany her on the mission.

McCann adds a couple of interesting twists into the time Mockingbird spent as a prisoner. That she escaped confinement and was running loose on the Skrull world. That an imposter Hawkeye, meant to get information out her, hunted her relentlessly. You know, until she killed him. Hey, so that means all her hostility towards Clint about how badly he fucked up the - possibly retconned by Chelsea Cain a couple of years ago - Phantom Rider situation is done! There's also the timing of when, exactly, Mockingbird was replaced, and what that means regarding her and Clint's marriage.

Then Clint's left struggling with what he thought he knew, which turns out to be wrong. He's also dealing with the fact he still carried a lot of guilt over his mistakes and Bobbi's "death" And this time, instead of Mockingbird being drawn into his superheroic world, he's fumbling around in her world of spycraft. You know, where subtlety and controlling your emotions are critical. Yeah, not exactly Clint's strengths.

David Lopez gets to draw a lot of fight scenes, in a variety of settings and scenarios. Clint and Bobbi against a bunch of AIM guys in a hospital. Clint and Bobbi against each other in a storage unit. Clint and Bobbi against a bunch of AIM guys in a fancy dress party. Bobbi against AIM's Scientists Supreme and her teleportation belt. They make for a nice break from the two leads arguing and yelling at each other, Clint putting his foot in his mouth, or Bobbi staving off nervous breakdowns.

Fixing One Problem But Creating Another

So there was bit in the sorta recently released Mockingbird #8 where writer Chelsea Cain tries to rewrite the history between Bobbi Morse and the Phantom Rider a bit, but I'm not sure if it's a net positive. Trigger Warning for discussing rape.

In the original story, written by Steve Engelhart during his stint on West Coast Avengers, the "Whackos" get suckered onto a partially functional one of Doom's time machines that can only go backwards in time and are sent to 1886. They have a brief team-up with Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, and Phantom Rider before deciding to try going back to Ancient Egypt to see if Rama-Tut will fix their time machine. Phantom Rider becomes obsessed with Mockingbird, and just as they're about to depart, sucker punches and kidnaps her. Then he drugs her to forget Hawkeye and fall in love with him. Eventually Two-Gun Kid snaps her out of it by dressing up as Hawkeye, Bobbi hunts down the Rider, during the fight he stumbles off a cliff, and Bobbi declines to pull him up (he doesn't help matters by demanding she do so, rather than asking politely or pleading). She and Clint are reunited, but Bobbi holds back about a lot of what happened, at first not wanting to burden Clint (and probably not dwell on it herself), and then later because she hadn't realized how strongly Clint felt about "Avengers don't kill". Which leaves an opening for the ghost of the Rider to appear and tell Clint Bobbi actually killed him. Which Clint, who had sensed she was keeping something from him, believes. It leads to him divorcing her like a total dipshit.

That's a lot of recapping, but I figured we might as well lay out the original parameters. What we get now is Bobbi telling the Rider Clint divorced her because she cheated on him. That the Rider could never have controlled her, and she made the decision to have a fling with him. And Clint, whether he would admit it out loud or not, knows this. {Edit: Now with the page in question from the comic that I totally forgot to include the first time!}

Now, there is a possibility this was all a ruse by her to shatter any illusions the Rider had of being in control. In story, it seems to make him realize he's always been a schmuck she used and discarded, and there's no hope of them being together. So he abandons the relative he's possessing. But Cain did say on Twitter (before she was driven off it by abusive jackasses in an uproar over Bobbi being drawn wearing an "Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda" shirt, because some people are stupid assholes) that maybe the drugged/raped story didn't need to be canon, and that yes, Bobbi is saying she had given consent and Clint just didn't want to accept it. So I don't think the intent is for it to be a ploy Bobbi's using, but rather, the new interpretation of the story. It gets a rape out of a female character's backstory that didn't really need it, seems like a good thing. Except. . .

I mean, as a side issue, it makes Clint look better. He didn't divorce his wife who had just recently been drugged and raped (I don't know how physical the two had gotten, but I don't think it matters much since the Rider had clearly removed her consent) because her attacker said she murdered him and Clint believed it. Pretty shitty. Instead, he divorces her because she cheated on him and (maybe) had a hand in killing the guy she fooled around with. That's more understandable. I've made my feelings on infidelity pretty clear in the past, so if we're going with "Bobbi was unfaithful", I am fully on Clint's side in this, whereas before I had basically no sympathy for him whatsoever.

From Bobbi's perspective though, it's kind of hard to square her actions in that story with this retcon. Like, the last she sees of her team, they're going further back in time to try and parlay with a potentially dangerous time-traveling despot to get back home. She has no idea how that's going, but she should be able to reasonably conclude they're worried about her (and Clint is probably frantic), which is going to make them desperate and cause them to maybe take risks they shouldn't so they can get back to her. But there's no indication she thinks about that at all*. What's more, Two-Gun Kid and Kid Colt are trying to track her down and rescue her through all this, and the first time they catch up, she helps the Rider beat their asses. Which is one thing if she's drugged, but quite another if she's not. That's going a little far for an affair, no?

Then there's the whole issue of the Phantom Rider's death. In the original story, Bobbi shakes off the effects of the drugs, is rightly pissed, and hunts down the Rider in a fury, telling Two-Gun and Colt to stay out of it. She's clear-headed enough to be ready for all his tricks, but her emotional state could be questioned in terms of how much she's thought this out. In the new version, she was toying with the Rider the whole time, and when it's over she attacks him until he falls over the cliff. Then she watches him die. Which makes it seem like her trying to cover her tracks. She got what she wanted, time to get rid of the evidence. How inconvenient he didn't stay dead. There's a greater argument for premeditation on her part. Slade is no innocent, he still kidnapped and tried to drug her, even if it didn't work. But the fact Bobbi played along with it, rather than kicking his ass the moment she regained consciousness - or the first moment he dropped his guard, or the first time Two-Gun and Colt caught up - doesn't look too good**.

The original story didn't really do Bobbi any favors, in terms of adding or illuminating aspects of her character. I think there were probably stories in her SHIELD years that could have handled pointing out how her attitude towards killing differs from Hawkeye's, without adding rape to her backstory. The new version takes that out, but I'm not sure it puts back in anything good. One answer might be that the story had to play out differently from how we've seen it, but there's only so far you can stretch it. Phantom Rider still has to die, and Bobbi still has to be present. Hawkeye still has to lost somewhere in time during all this. It still isn't going to be great for her, any way you slice it. So I don't know. Not so much turning a negative into a positive as it is turning a big negative into a little one? You could do something probably with exploring why she made that decision, how it fits into her personality as a whole.

{Edit: Something that came to mind after I posted this originally is this retcon does sort of explain why Clint and Bobbi have had an on-again, off-again thing since her return in Secret Invasion. Based on how the story played out originally, it's hard to understand why Bobbi would want anything to do with a jerk who abandoned her at a traumatic moment and basically blamed her for it. I'm sure Clint regretted it (and it certainly fed into him venturing into Hell to rescue her soul that time Daimon Hellstrom tricked him into rescuing Patsy Walker, a story which is probably not in continuity anymore, but whatever),  but I'd expect Bobbi to feel a lot of resentment towards him. But if he divorced her because he was hurt she cheated on him, but he still cares for her, and despite the affair, she still cares for him, then the fact the mutual attraction persisted makes more sense. For what that's worth.}

* Cain also made a point we've only seen the story from male POVs which if she means the writers, yes, I imagine that's correct. But in-story, we did see Bobbi's thoughts, via the magic of thought balloons.

** There's also the question of Phantom Rider's mental health. Even setting aside his unhealthy obsession with Bobbi, which has persisted beyond death, he was clearly having problems. Struggling to uphold the law, dealing with the guilt of his brother's death and trying to carry this mantle of the Phantom Rider, which left him feeling isolated. I mean, he's so ecstatic when he thinks the drugs worked, because he isn't alone. It doesn't excuse his actions, but the guy needed treatment (treatment he would almost certainly have not received in the 1880s, but that's another matter). At the minimum, he probably needed to get out of law enforcement and vigilantism entirely. That's not relevant, it's just something I noticed a little more thinking back over the story recently.

The Archer, Amour, And Espionage

Should I take Hawkeye's casual hookup with the redheaded lady in Hawkeye #3 (I'm guessing she's the "Cherry" mentioned in the future solicits) means his relationship with Jessica Drew is kaput?

I'll be honest, I stay so far away from most Avengers books (largely because of Bendis), I didn't even know Jessica and Clint had become an item until I read a review of Avengers #30 that mentioned they came to the conclusion they each had too much baggage to make it work. I knew there'd been some flirtatious banter, but come on, when he isn't in a relationship, Hawkeye flirts with just about every woman.

It doesn't explain that phone conversation he had with Mockingbird in Avengers Solo where he insisted that no, he hadn't brought "her" with him to an isolated cabin of Bobbi's where he was going to hide the people he was helping. I had no idea who the "her" was at the time, but I guess it was Spider-Woman.

Anyway, I figure if Clint's fooling around with other women, then he probably isn't in a committed relationship at the moment. One thing I like about Hawkeye is that, for all the stupid things he says and does, he is generally faithful to whoever he's in a relationship with*. He'll still say and do stupid things - letting his mouth outrun his brain at the worst moment is another of his character traits - but he's doesn't fool around. Not on Natasha, not on Bobbi (he screwed that one up in other ways), not on Karla Sofen. A month ago, I bought the hardcover that collected, among other things, the Hawkeye mini-series from the '80s where he met Bobbi. Though they wind up together by the end of it, when it starts he's in a relationship with Shelia Danning, one of his bosses, and the reveal that's she been up to no good and playing him for a sap sends him into a massive funk. He's pretty much oblivious to the fact Bobbi's interested in him until very late in the mini-series, well after what he and Shelia had is conclusively dead. Of course, it's also clear Hawkeye does rebound, sometimes faster than others, so it wouldn't be a surprise he meets another woman he likes not long after he and Jess split.

However, there was one other thing I noticed thinking over his past history, and that's his tendency to fall for women versed in the espionage trade. The Black Widow and Mockingbird, obviously, but Jessica Drew has a long history as a double and triple-agent. Shelia wasn't a spy, but she was playing at liking Hawkeye to keep him duped. Dr. Karla Sofen doesn't have an espionage background either, but if you consider that part of that job is understanding what makes a person tick so you can move them around as need be, then Sofen's an expert. The only two I can think of that wouldn't really fit the bill are the Scarlet Witch and the Wasp. The former never went anywhere, because Wanda wasn't interested in Clint that way, and the latter was written by Chuck Austen, which I'm guessing qualifies it for an asterisk**.

All the relationships he's been in that lasted any period of time have been with women who are, not more devious, necessarily. More clever, more worldly perhaps? I'm not sure what it means. 3 of the 5 (Natasha, Karla, Shelia) started out with the lady in question manipulating Hawkeye, but Natasha and Karla both developed genuine feelings for him over time (though Karla was having issues with the Moonstone at the time, so I don't know how we factor that in). Hawkeye's attracted to smart women? They're attracted to his honesty and straightforward approach, his openness with his feelings?

Natasha, for example, is very good at concealing her true feelings when she needs to. It's part of the job. Someone may disgust her, but if they are necessary to complete her mission, she sets that aside and works with them. She's probably already thinking of ways to make sure they go down as well, but she doesn't let it distract her. Hawkeye, on the other hand, pretty much says what he feels. If he's angry, he says so. If he likes you, he says that, too. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and he lets it rule him if he's not careful. There's also the arrogance and insecurity that can be played with. Which makes him a prime target for manipulation by someone with that goal in mind. Which can certainly explain how things started with some of these women, but not all, and not why things changed between him and Natasha/Karla.

It's interesting, because it's an inversion of that old Western trope where the kind young schoolteacher manages to tame the rough and tumble cow-puncher/honorable bandit guy***. Hawkeye's the more open, naive person, but his honesty and belief in redemption gradually wins over at least some of the cynicism. They see the good guy beneath the bluster, and decides it's someone they like, rather than someone they can use.

In some ways, it could also portray Hawkeye as the younger person in each relationship. It isn't as though he's had an easy life, but he is in some ways so much less aware of the uglier aspects of how the world runs, that it makes him seem less experienced than the woman he's currently involved with. I don't know the ages of everyone involved to know whether that's true or not. The Black Widow is clearly older, by a lot, and I would imagine if Karla and Bobbi had enough time to gain doctorates and become established in their fields then they're both probably older as well. I'm less sure about Jessica and Shelia, but I wouldn't be surprised, and it's a little different for the guy to be the younger person in the relationship. This being superhero comics, none of them look older than Hawkeye, but it's still another interesting piece. That he's consistently attracted to older, more worldwise women, and most of the time, they end up being attracted to him as well (even if it takes awhile).

* This in contrast to Green Arrow who, for all he frequently declares how much he cares about the Black Canary, sure seems to sleep around a lot. I think it's been more of a problem since Kevin Smith brought him back from the dead, but I'm pretty sure there were flare-ups between Dinah and Ollie over prior to his death as well. Which is fine, that can be a character trait, and it fits with all the contradictions in Ollie's character, that he deeply loves one woman, but can't seem to stop being a cad.

** It's hard to tell if anyone would have followed up on it. Hawkeye died in the very next storyline, and I don't think he and Janet had any chances to interact between the time he returned and her death/disappearance at the end of Secret Invasion. That no one made an attempt, though, probably says a lot about the other writers' view on it.

*** Unless it's just the "make an honest woman of her" thread. Which would be less interesting, and wouldn't really work for Bobbi, certainly, and not really Jessica, either, since they didn't enter into the relationships with Clint with ulterior motives. I prefer the inverted Western trope theory myself, but figured I better at least mention this one.

Why Not To Kill A Mockingbird

Hawkeye and Mockingbird #3 ended with Crossfire and Phantom Rider doing the slow-mo walk while a building explodes in the background. The building was supposed to contain Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Dominic Fortune. Odds are we'll find out next week it didn't contain them, because they made some narrow escape.

I think it'd be more fun if they were blown up, then as ghosts, proceed to make the villains' lives miserable. They should have powers like Phantom Rider. Not necessarily the same powers, but ghostly powers nonetheless. That would put them on equal footing with that pain, and Crossfire would be completely outclassed. What's he going to do, shoot at them some more? Sic his robot drones on them?

See Phantom Rider figures once Mockingbird is dead like him, she'll be his forever. So the key is to make him realize just how unappealing being around someone who hates your guts for an eternity can be. Especially when her ex-husband is along for the ride, plus another fellow who probably isn't happy he was just collateral damage in all this. Basically, make the Rider's afterlife a nightmare, until he uses all his vague spectral powers to somehow restore them to life, just to be rid of them. Then he realizes by surrendering the person he was pursuing for so long, he has no unfinished business, and he gets dragged to Hell. Meanwhile, Crossfire's been driven to madness by their persistent haunting, and does something stupid and reckless which gets him captured and thrown into prison.

Plus, our heroes all learn to appreciate life now that they've lost it and regained it. Well, phrase it in a less schmaltzy manner than that, but Bobbi could see the need to step back from her work, decompress, and Hawkeye could perhaps see the wisdom in not always trying to fix things without asking the people involved. Being Hawkeye, that wisdom would last for about five minutes, much like the time Spider-Man died for one issue*. But perhaps he could do something good in those five minutes.

* While in the realm of the dead, he realizes how he was always worrying too much, and he needed to enjoy life more. Once he's alive again at the end of the issue, he promptly resumes worrying about stuff again, the lessons learned in the afterlife having not carried over.

When They Know They're Listening To The Little Devil

When it comes to super-villains, how many of them do you think realize what they're doing is wrong, but are simply more interested in their own wants?

There are the Carnage-types, the ones who don't see there as being any right or wrong, so what they do is only relevant in how much they enjoy it.

There are the Phantom Rider types (which is who started me on this line of thinking), that believe what they're doing is right, or at least justified. I'd tend to lump Luthor and Dr. Doom into that group as well, sine I get the feeling they really believe killing Superman/Reed Richards or conquering the world is the right move. I think they believe that ordinary folks simply can't see it now, but once they succeed, everyone will properly appreciate what they've done, and lavish them with the appropriate accolades.

Still, I figure there have to be a few villains that don't delude themselves. They rob a bank and think "Yeah, this is wrong, but I really want that money, so here we are." Electro strikes me as the type that would have that line of reasoning, or he would have back when he committed robberies. Is he still doing that?

Super-heroes struggle with doing the responsible thing versus the selfish thing as well, but they tend to do the responsible thing. They help people in trouble, rather than causing trouble or using their powers to satisfy their own urges. I don't see any reason there wouldn't be at least some villains still human enough to have similar struggles. The difference being, their selfish urges win out.

Ghosts Don't Spend Time Reflecting

It's sad that Phantom Rider can't get a clue. Actually, it's annoying. It's been 130 years and the ghost of Linc Slade is still after Mockingbird, and still thinks she wronged him. I'd like to think at some point he'd realize kidnapping and drugging her so she'd love and marry him (when she was already in love with, and married to, Hawkeye) was messed up, and he pretty much got what he had coming. She didn't even kill him. He fell off a cliff because he wasn't watching where he was going while trying to flee a very pissed off Mockingbird. She didn't help pull him up when he asked, but I don't think it was very bright to expect her to, and it certainly wasn't smart, when asking nicely didn't work, to demand you pull me up right now, woman! He's honestly lucky she did haul him back up and beat him to near-death (before letting him fall back over the cliff to actual death) just for that.

He doesn't get it, and if her comments in the first issue were any indication, the descendant he's empowering/possessing doesn't, either. Prattling on about Bobbi having damaged her family's name. No, I think your crazy drugging and kidnapping ancestor did that. I suppose that's why they're villains, no acceptance of personal responsibility. it really makes the Slades look pathetic to me, whiny even. Like Superboy-Prime, which is never an association a character wants to be making in my mind. After all, I didn't even care too see that brat defeated, I just wanted him gone, didn't care how. I'm not there with Phantom Rider yet. I'm hoping for a scene where someone - Bobbi, Hawkeye, that other descendant of his - makes Linc Slade realize he's been in the wrong all this time, and he goes screaming into the void. Or to Hell. Whichever.

Death and Imitation

The end of Hawkeye and Mockingbird #1 had Mrs. Morse telling Hawkeye that her daughter Bobbi had been dead for years. The start of the second issue shows us we're dealing with the "hero fakes their death to protect their loved ones" gambit. A slightly more extreme version of how most costumed types handle it, simply not telling their loved ones they are vigilantes. Thanks to Hawkeye, the plan goes kaflooey, as he brings her family to see her, and her mother winds up shot by the end of the issue. Whoops.

Anyway, the faking a death tactic isn't unusual in comics, so I really should have expected that to be the result. For some reason, though, I was expecting a different revelation. I thought we'd learn that Bobbi Morse really is dead, and Mockingbird is someone else. No, not a Skrull. Maybe an old friend of Bobbi's, or a coworker, or heck, maybe a random agent Fury wanted to assign a safe identity. So he gives her the name of a prior agent who passed away, whose family won't be endangered, and this will subsequently protect Mockingbird's identity.

It's not a new idea for stories, because I've seen it before myself*, but it could put things in kind of an interesting light. Hawkeye's been worried that Mockingbird is shutting down, and she won't talk to him. So he tried to find her family, because maybe that would help. Except they aren't her family, and Clint would have to realize he didn't know her as well as he thought. You'd hope this would cause Hawkeye to reevaluate things, maybe make more of an effort to study things before he tried to help her again, but it's more likely he'd get huffy and offended**.

It works with her codename, since mockingbirds imitate the calls of other birds, as a way to keep as many species as possible from setting up shop near their nest. She'd be pretending to be a dead person to protect anyone from her past life she might care about. Plus, it makes for a sort of interesting Russian nesting doll situation, where you have a Skrull impersonating a woman using the name of another woman. Deceptions within deceptions, though I suppose the Skrulls would have figured it out when they copied her, which could produce interesting results. Would knwoing their subject was pretending to be someone she wasn't alter how the Skrull would behave? Would it behave like Mockingbird-pretending-to-be-Bobbi Morse, or more like Mockingird, period? Even if she's just using the name as a cover, I'd think taking someone else's name would produce some sort of change in how she acts.

* Gundam Wing, for example. One of the pilots is called Trowa Barton, the name of a fellow he worked with on the assembly of what eventually became his mech The real Trowa was killed in a disagreement with some of the other staff over a plan to drop space colonies on the Earth. The guy who went through the series being Trowa had no name he could remember prior to that, and he agreed it was as good a code name as any.

** With some reason, since this would mean she was lying to him about this even when they were married. He wouldn't even have known his wife's real name. Could be cause for anger.

The Road To Credibility Is Harder For Some Villains Than Others

Due to my unfamiliarity with him, I've been having trouble taking Crossfire seriously as a threat in Hawkeye and Mockingbird. I don't think I've ever read a story he was in, so there's no history to convince me he's a dangerous guy. No, shooting Mockingbird's mother doesn't count. Despicable act, yes, act capable of marking him as a threat to super-heroes? No.

The costume doesn't help either. The red "X" on the eyepiece especially, seems like it would obscure his vision. It's far too wide to serve as good crosshairs. Plus, just a little turn and the "X"es on his costume would become crosses, meaning he's either part of a militant faction of the Red Cross, or some cadet from the Swiss Army that showed up in that one episode of The Tick.

Maybe it's his attitude. In issue #2, he was prattling on to the Phantom Rider about how he was done teaming up with other costumed types. Now he was going to be some major arms dealer, make his cash that way. As if he's the first villain to think of that. As if he's any closer to the A-list than the so-called 'fifth-rate hacks' he used to work with. He really strikes me as the sort of character who thinks he's much better than he really is. Somehow, that leads me to the thought that at some point, he ought to have run afoul of Bullseye, or Deadpool, or Taskmaster, someone who takes a little more pride in their craft, and they'd kill him*.

Hmm, maybe Crossfire is a self-loathing costumed villain? Hates being one, hates being around them, but can't step away from the life? Surely he'd be a less conspicuous arms dealer minus the costume?

* Outlaw shot him in Simone's run on Agent X, but either it wasn't fatal, or it was ignored. That Crossfire seemed to enjoy himself more. He actually had a quickdraw with Outlaw. Perhaps getting shot as a result took the joy out of his work.

About Steve Rogers' New Shield

What's the story on it? Bucky is keeping the Captain America shield, while Rogers sports some clear plastic-looking facsimile. I don't imagine it's anything as simple as plastic, that's simply what it reminded me of when I saw it in Hawkeye and Mockingbird #1.

I'm a fan of that energy shield he was rocking for a time there in the post-Heroes Reborn world. He had it for the Ultron Unlimited story in the Busiek/Perez Avengers run, for example. The generator for it was stored in the glove, and it could even change forms. I only saw it as a shield or staff, but I don't know if that's the extent of its abilities.

The downside was he couldn't throw it, based on the limitations of the device creating it (a photonic generator?). He can throw this current shield, and Steve Rogers being able to bounce his shield off multiple objects (or bad guys' noggins) is always fun. We have Bucky for that, though, so no reason Rogers couldn't do things a bit differently.