Matt Fraction and David Aja are masterful comic book storytellers and in My Life as a Weapon, they capture so much about what I love about the form. This first volume introduces us to Clint Barton and Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye. Their episodic adventures see them barely survive encounters with sweatsuit mafia goons and international criminals.

Fraction imbues the characters with an endlessly amusing sardonic wit that compelled me on every page. While some may find his timeline trickery and in medias res storytelling confusing I found the action-oriented storytelling of the volume propulsively readable.

David Aja and Javier Pulido's illustrations with Matt Hollingsworth's colours were bold and striking. This team has some of the most consistently amazing action scenes I've read in comics and their style, in general, was stunning to look at.

Despite loving this volume I can't give it a full 5 stars because of the inclusion of Young Avengers Presents #6. Despite being written by Matt Fraction this issue was starkly lower quality than the Hawkeye comics in this collection. I deeply disliked Alan Davis's art style and the generally juvenile plot of the issue grated on me. While I could see why editors wanted to clue readers into Clint and Kate's first meeting this issue was so removed from the contexts of this Hawkeye run and added so little value to the story it ultimately felt like a pointless digression.