In the fall of 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States and caused millions of dollars in damage throughout southern New York and New Jersey, and unfortunately even the deaths of over 200 people.
The then-writer of the Marvel Comics series Hawkeye, Matt Fraction, contributed raise money to help rebuild after the destruction of the storm in many ways, including donating his royalties from issue #7 of Hawkeye towards the relief efforts. Just due to the lead time it takes to create and print and ship comics, the issue didn’t come out until early 2013.
The issue told two stories, both written by Fraction, showing the storm affecting both characters named “Hawkeye” in the Marvel Universe, Clint Barton in New York and Kate Bishop in New Jersey. Clint’s story was drawn by Steve Lieber and Kate’s story was drawn by Jesse Alan Hamm. One of the more memorable moment’s in the Clint-centric tale is when his friend known as “Grills” asks if the Avenging Archer knows how to operate a boat, and Clint responds with:
In addition to donating to the Red Cross myself, to try and raise some more attention to the issue and Matt Fraction’s fundraising efforts, I thought it would be fun to make a one-panel Hawk & Croc image that referenced it. It amused me that one of the main characters in MY comic was named “Hawk,” AND wore black and purple, just like the Mr. Barton. Both characters even wore purple sunglasses at the time. So I drew the below, which has a bunch of references to the events of the first half-dozen issues of the series to that point:
It’s kind of goofy, and I’m not sure how much it actually helped drive sales of the issue or help the relief efforts of Hurricane Sandy, but I don’t think it ever hurt anything.
Anyways, I’m pretty sure this only ever got posted on the social media site Tumblr back in 2013, my account for which has since been deleted. So now you can enjoy it here, too. Yay!