Panel of the week: 6/25/08

From Young Avengers Presents #6

While not very self-contained, this panel still won out among all others this week as being one of the most amazing things I've seen in my life. The set-up? Young Avengers Patriot and Hawkeye are not on a date when the driver of their horse-drawn carriage (not a date!) lets the horse go and reveals himself to be...CLINT BARTON! Then he kicks them both out of the carriage and inflicts further violence on his unsuspecting namesake, as any good superheroic mentor should.

I never thought I'd be delighted over an appearance of Ronin, truly one of the worst character revitalizations of the modern age, but Matt Fraction's got some serious skills to pull it off here. Not just delighted--I doubled over in laughter. This marks the second or third time since Avengers Disassembled that Hawkeye/Clint has been written well. He is, after all, the man who once jumped on Captain America's bed to get Steve to cheer up. I miss that guy, as he's probably my favorite Marvel character. Fraction brings him back in this issue.

So anytime Marvel wants to put out a Clint Barton book written by Matt Fraction, my money will be there...(sigh) even with the ninja suit.