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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

"My Life As A Weapon" is your new favorite song about my favorite Avenger.

As anyone who's met me would probably expect, I'm super pumped about CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. So to celebrate, here's a song I recently wrote about Clint Barton, the powerless, purple-wearing, bow-and-arrow-loving badass known as Hawkeye. (Specifically, it's about the comic book version of Hawkeye, with allusions to his relationship with Kate Bishop and his life growing up in the carnival and his death and resurrection at the hands of Wanda Maximoff but...let's not get so bogged down in continuity, yeah?)

LYRICS

This looks bad
You can blame that on my dear ol' deadbeat dad
But I'm not mad
Until the arrow that I've notched becomes my last

One more shot to break
this carny from his cage
where a low-life can escape
to save the day

So I'll stay on target
Because that's all I know how to do
Just as long as I'm next to you

And I know that this looks bad
But the quivering is all I've ever had
Like some Nomad
Or a Ronin dressed in black to hide the past

Draw the bow back, breathe
One moment of control
Because once it flies
You never know

So I'll stay on target
Because that's all I know how to do
Stay on target
While I'm fighting my way through
Stay on target
Just as long as I'm next to you

"Not like this."
When the silence stings
My sight's my only bliss
But I won't miss
Because I'm going out in style
with my greatest hits

I'm no Giant Man
But I won't give up the fight
Until my violet violence
Takes its flight

EPIC THEMES (and...some other stuff over there)

Jonathan Hickman is a comic book writer who has mostly taken over the two main AVENGERS books, and has also published a number of highly acclaimed creator-owned books that took remarkably innovative approaches to graphic narratives. But as much as I've enjoyed most of his work (especially his Secret Warriors which is one of my favorite Marvel series in recent years), I've noticed something...off...about his story telling (Red Mass For Mars and The Red Wing in particular both start off really cool and then...don't really go anywhere). Over at Tor.com, I've provided a detailed analysis of this strange narrative voice, but what it comes down to is that Hickman likes to explicitly tell his readers about his huge, epic, sweeping themes using marvelous spectacle and narrative devices. Then he finds a plot that works as an excuse for him to tell you about these themes and use these spectacles, and fills the plot in with characters, 'cause I guess you need those, too. And the theatre professional in me realized that this flies right in the face of Aristotle's POETICS, which have long formed the basis for our understanding of Western dramatic storytelling.

I'll let the rest of the article speak for itself:

"The Strange Poetics of Jonathan Hickman" on Tor Dot Com