Ultimate Hawkeye #1: Hard Arrow’s Night

Charli Ramsey is easily one of the breakout characters of this current Ultimate Universe, so it makes perfect sense that they would have their own comic. Right now it seems to be released as a one-shot, but with their increasing popularity don’t be surprised if more issues starring them pop up in the future. 

This issue is broken up into two segments, each written and illustrated by different creative teams. Nonetheless the first leads into the seconds so it tells one complete story. 

The prologue, fittingly titled “Prologue”, is done by the regular Ultimates team of Deniz Camp and Juan Frigeri. It’s a tight, but fun introduction to Charli as they hunt down this universe’s version of the Black Panther villain Ulysses Klaue. 

The main course of the book is the story “The Right Tool For The Job”, written by B. Earl and Black Eyed Peas member Taboo (who has written for Marvel in the past), wherein Charli follows a lead to another potential target but soon finds themselves in way over their head when they are forced into gladiatorial combat by a very upset Oubilette Midas. 

This second story is where this one-shot starts to get a little wonky in it’s execution. As a whole it’s fine, but there are a few ideas here that just don’t have the space to breathe and be fully fleshed out. We are introduced to Ultimate Ronin (whose identity should be fairly obvious so I’m not even going to pretend), but we learn next to nothing about them before they meet their fate. There’s also this idea that Midas has this entire death battle arena/freaky masquerade sex club in NYC and it’s just treated like its just there. There’s a couple of meaningful ideas along this vein, but they are kind of just thrown out there like “here you go. Have at it.”. 

As for our titular hero, Charli continues to be a fun character, and the creative team do manage to inject just a teeny bit more life into them. Something that will likely continue on in the main Ultimates book as it moves along.

The art is also solid, but nothing to really write home about. Frigeri continues to do great work in the prologue and while Michael Sta. Maria’s pencils certainly have a few highlights in the second story, there’s nothing that will blow your mind.