Hawkeye's dog known as Pizza Dog goes on a solo adventure in this issue written by Matt Fraction with David Aja.
Hawkeye's solo title has always been a consistently satisfying read. It's got a good amount of action, comedy and drama that'll give you your comic book fix for a month or so. And that's with the lead character Clint Barton and his foil/sidekick supporting cast Kate Bishop, who also goes under the name Hawkeye. It's an entertaining read month-in and month-out.
I was apprehensive about this "pizza dog" issue mainly because it can be quite difficult to tell a good story with very little text and less color (i.e. dogs are color blind). So imagine my surprise when I started reading Hawkeye # 11 and getting a pleasant surprise. The issue was superb.
This ish basically gives us Lucky/ Arrow/ Pizza Dog's POV of his life in Barton's apartment and then it takes a life of its own and becomes a murder mystery of sort. It's like a really great episode of Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo minus Shaggy.
Couple of things I want to note though. Its the lack of discernable dialogues that knocks down this issue from being perfect to almost perfect. Sure we get a hint of what Clint and Kate are talking about but it's not clear. Are we purposely being kept in the dark here or are the dialogues really not that important?
Secondly, Aja's work here was awesome but it kinda floundered towards the end when Arrow is fighting the track suit gang (from issue # 1). It's kinda weird that they go from all fighting mode and the next we see them is they're having tea at one of the tenant's apartments. Kinda weird. That or maybe I just didn't understand the panelling.
Otherwise, this issue is a steal. Get it from your local LCS.
Verdict: 4/5
