I’d like to thank Hawkeye Vol. 4 (Rio Bravo) for making me cry at the public pool. No, really. The other moms didn’t think it was weird at all. Jeez.

Since 2012, Matt Fraction and artist David Aja have been writing a Hawkeye comic for Marvel. This comic tells the story of “What Hawkeye does when he’s not Avenging.” Hawkeyes, AKA Clint Barton, adopts a dog, he trains his protege, Young Avenger Kate Bishop, (she gets several issues of her own drawn by Annie Wu), he fights with his ex, he drinks too much, and he gets beat up a ton. What makes this run so great is that Clint, on his off hours, isn’t trying to save the world – he’s trying to save his apartment building, and getting his ass royally kicked in the process.

This run is never gimmicky, but it’s often experimental and meta. There’s an issue (#3) in which Clint decides to sort his trick arrows. For complex reason, he and Kate find themselves in a car chase with one bag of arrows – Kate grabbed the un-labeled trick arrows on her way out the door. Hilarity,. mayhem, and a lon, long payoff joke ensure. There’s an episode in which a great deal is communicated via sign language, and an episode in which Clint dreams that he’s a character in a kids’ TV show. Above all, there’s an issue that takes place entirely from the point of view of the dog (Lucky, known to fans as Pizza Dog). In this issue( #11), people talk over Pizza’s Dog’s head, but the only words we see are ones Pizza Dog knows (I was impressed by “Collar stays.” How, I wondered, would the dog know what collar stays are? He doesn’t, bu the words are legible because he knows “Collar” and “stay.”)

Here’s a short and incomplete list of reasons I love this run – the last volume just came out and I can’t urge you enough to run out and buy all four and have a glorious binge. I didn’t even like Hawkeye before this run. It’s a jewel among comics.

1. Pizza Dog.
2. Everything else on here should be Pizza Dog.
3. The Russian Gansters who inexplicably say, “Bro, bro” all the time. In Hawkeye’s dream, Hawkeye is a dog and the Gangsters are wolves who say, “Dog, dog.”
4. Clint’s brother Barney.
5. Kate Bishop. LOVE HER. LOVE HER ARC.
6. The humor.
7. The heartwarming stuff
8. Everyone in the apartment and how they use Clint’s TV because he broke the satellite dish (with an arrow)
9. Boomerang arrow.

As is so tragically often the case, io9 says things much better than I do in their post “6 Reasons Why Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye is One of Marvel’s Greatest Comics” by James Whitbrook. So go read that, and then read Hawkeye. Or skip to Hawkeye. Because Pizza Dog, Bro.