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!)