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Hawkeye #18

Mar 2014

Matt Fraction, Annie Wu

Story Name:

(no title given)

Synopsis

Hawkeye #18 synopsis by Rob Johnson

Rating:

Kate Bishop is still not doing a very good job of being a Private Investigator in Los Angeles. This evening she cycles over to the supermarket and runs into her mysterious friend who always seems to be there. Last time he persuaded her to stay in LA. But now he says *he*'s leaving. He's got a great opportunity but he wants to know if she'll take his cat. Next we see her back in the beach-side trailer she's house-sitting with Lucky the Pizza Dog and a different cat the owners left her to look after. The dog and cat #1 don't get on with cat #2 and they've wrecked the place and covered her in scratches.

Now friendly neighbours Finch and Marcus are driving her and cat #2 to an address they found on the cat-carrier, which turns out to be an old Hollywood mansion. On the way Marcus and the cat bond. There are no lights on but when they go in they find the mystery guy severely beaten. As they clean him up and dress his wounds he explains that some supervillains have been keeping him trapped in LA for 22 years. Every time he tries to leave they have him beaten up.

He tells them of his life as a journalist investigating weird stuff which eventually led to vampires and then to Hollwood where he got rich. At a swanky party hosted by Count Luchino Neff and his daughter Gia he ran into his publisher Peter Hudson who hinted at a way to stay young and healthy forever. 2 days later Hudson supposedly died in a car crash but he saw him looking younger jogging on the beach. And Hudson saw him noticing. The other vehicle in the accident was a Neff Interstate Trucklines van whose driver's body was burned beyond recognition. He contacted his cop friend Det Caudle who showed him the bodies. So that night he broke into Neff's mansion and discovered they were creating bodies. He abandoned everything and tried to drive out of town but Neff's goons caught him and beat him up and told him he was never allowed to leave. And they keep doing it.

The trio leave the guy to recuperate in his house. Kate wonders if Neff is short for Nefaria who was the father of her enemy Madame Masque. And she saw loads of duplicates at Masque's place (in the Annual) which she thought were dummies, but now maybe not.

Anyway sometime later the trio scheme to spirit the guy to safety. Kate physically bought him a plane ticket from LAX to Phoenix, and learned that his name is Harold H. Harold (and she says the H stands for Harold too). They are in the almost deserted restaurant of the UFO-like Theme Building outside the airport. Harold is at the bar while Kate keeps an eye on him from a table. Finch and Marcus are separately outside keeping watch.

A waitress approaches Kate to ask if she wants something to eat, placing herself between the PI and the bar. Flynt Ward (from #14) approaches Harold and offers to sell him some weed. (As we learned in #14 he has a license to sell mild drugs.) But then some 'bellhops' (the goons who worked for him in #14 and for Masque in the Annual) KO HHH and drag him out. Ward shoots at Kate to stop her following so she phones the outsiders to alert them. Finch is waiting at the groundfloor exit and attacks the bad guys with a tyre iron. Kate *has* followed them down and piles on from behind. But as she beats on Ward the others get away with Harold in a van. However Marcus shows up with their car and they give chase. Hawkeye leans out of a back window to shoot an arrow at the van but Marcus has to swerve to avoid some pedestrians. The arrow goes awry but does hit the van on a rebound. And it winds up crashing into the giant LAX sign.

Det Caudle has Kate and the other 2 arrested for causing the damage. But when she mentions Harold he mellows a bit. He hasn't heard from him for years so she tells him what Harold told her and her theory about the identity of the Neffs. He warns her off because they're dangerous, but then gets called away to a body that's been found. Kate is handed a note someone left for her. It's from Madame Masque telling Kate that she's helped Harold to finally escape LA because now he's dead. And we see his beaten body hanging from a billboard.

As the trio drive home Kate reveals that she lifted Ward's phone. And as she searches through it she finds that Masque is involved in a widespread supervillain plot to kill Clint Barton. So she's got to get back to New York to help him. But when they get back to the beach they find the trailer she was living in on fire. (But Lucky and the cat are OK.)

Review / Commentaries

Hawkeye #18 Review by Rob Johnson (August 13, 2022)

Harold H Harold's reporting career investigating the weird was 1st documented in many issues of Tomb Of Dracula. He also wrote fiction about Dracula. Later he crossed paths with Dracula again in Howard The Duck Magazine #5 and got turned into a vampire himself. He was then 1 of the vampires shown destroyed by the reciting of the Montesi Formula in Dr Strange (1974) #62, where it was revealed that he'd become rich in Hollywood with 2 hit sitcoms and a movie deal. He's not been seen since then until this series, but presumably he was brought back to undead life with all other vampires in Blade (2006) #12 (Dracula and a few others had been revived before that). His vampire nature was hinted at in #14 when the supermarket CCTV couldn't see him.
However this doesn't really square with him being trapped in LA by Madame Masque for 22 years (which also breaks the 15-year Marvel sliding timescale). And as a vampire he should easily be able to evade if not kill MM's goons.

Count Luchino Neff *is* actually Count Luchino Nefaria and his daughter Gia is really Madame Masque/Whitney Frost whose birthname is actually Giuletta Nefaria. Count Nefaria started off as a human Maggia boss but became an actual powered supervillain in Avengers #165-166.

The plot to kill Clint Barton is running in the other alternate issues of this comic. There's some confusion (at least in my mind) whether it's organised by a bunch of businessmen or a bunch of supervillains. But if it's the supervillains then Madame Masque was in on it in #8.

This is it for Flynt Ward. But Harold H Harold will be back in the next alternate issue #20, but not apparently surviving because he's a vampire.

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Main/1st Story Full Credits

Matt Fraction

Annie Wu

Matt Hollingsworth

David Aja (Cover Penciler)
David Aja (Cover Inker)
David Aja (Cover Colorist)

Additional Credits

Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos.
Editor: Steve Wacker. Editor-in-chief: Axel Alonso.

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Harold H. Harold

Hawkeye
(Katherine Elizabeth Bishop)

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