Episode Episode #4 - Comes A Swordsman
Original Airdate October 30th, 1999

Hawkeye leaves The Avengers and hooks up with his old mentor, The Swordsman. Will he immediatly regret his decision?

Written By: John Loy
Directed By: Ron Myrick
Music Composed By: Shuki Levy and Kussa Mahchi
Animation Services By: Sae Rom
Guest Starring: Martin Roach as The Falcon, Ron Rubin as The Vision, Rod Wilson as Ant-Man, Linda Ballantyne as The Wasp, Stavroula Logothettis as Scarlet Witch, Lenore Zann as Tigra and Gerry Mendicino as Taurus.

Review: You know something is very, very wrong when you’re longing for the days of Iron Man season one. I’ve said this in the previous reviews, but this version of Hawkeye is nothing short of a travesty. A dreadful design, an annoying attitude and one of the worst vocal performances I’ve ever heard left me wishing that Ron Friedman would return to Marvel Animation. This version of Hawkeye is simply painful to watch. I don’t know how else to describe it – he’s simply terrible.

The episode surprised me with its inclusion of The Ringmaster, a real old school supervillain from way back in the Stan Lee days. I remember him showing up in the late teen issues of Amazing Spider-Man which also featured Spider-Man’s first meeting with Daredevil, who was still sporting his nifty original yellow suit. He didn’t really do a hell of a lot, but still managed to fare better than The Swordsman, who despite being the title character, didn’t really do jack except apparently die at the end at the hands of a villain with an absolutely terrible design.

It appears they are going to build this bull villain thing up. I’m curious to see the results of how they pull of a long running arc, because the standalone episodes suck. Badly.

At the end of this episode, I can safely say it’s done nothing but waste 20 minutes of my time, plus however long it took to write this review. Look on the bright side – I’m a third of the way through the season. I’m praying at least one of the episodes is good (Captain America, don’t fail me now!)