YMMV / Kate Bishop

• Base-Breaking Character: After her character exploded in popularity following Fraction's Hawkeye run, Kate has became quite an audience splitting figure. Some fans really like her, and consider her the Breakout Character of both Hawkeye and Young Avengers, while others dislike her for being a perceived Spotlight-Stealing Squad with a personality some find obnoxious. The fact she's often grouped with the 2010-era 'teen heroes' doesn't help, as they as a whole divide the larger Marvel fandom sharply.

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• Ensemble Dark Horse: She's the most popular and iconic of the Young Avengers, so it might be a surprise to learn that she was never really treated as the main character of the team during Heinburg's run. Instead, she was treated as The Team Normal and The Heart who connects everyone together, but someone going into those books expecting Kate to get more focus out of the others would be shocked to see that it was largely an ensemble storyline. In The Children's Crusade, it was Wiccan that was largely treated as the main character. In fact, she wasn't made the leader until all the way until Gillen's run. Before that, Iron Lad was the leader and when he left, it was Patriot. Since then, she's branched out as the Breakout Character of the team as a whole, with her being the one most people can easily name.
• Older Than They Think: Some accused Fraction of giving Kate severe Badass Decay in her later solo adventures in his series. They seemed to overlook how during the earlier issues where she worked with Clint, Kate was shown several times being overpowered or caught off-guard when by herself (much like how Clint was shown often getting in over his head when on his own), never mind that before the series started, Kate was never depicted as any more exceptional than other non-powered teen heroes.

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  • Kate herself, is sometimes wrongfully grouped together with the Champions (2016) and other Marvel NOW! (2016) era 'new characters', many of whom happen to be Affirmative Action Legacy characters like Kate, even though Kate herself debuted in the early 00s with the rest of the Young Avengers, and in-universe is a couple years older than that generation of heroes. Usually this is done by people who complain about the way Marvel tried to add more diversity to its lineup, and don't really know much about her character beyond 'Hawkeye's teenaged female legacy', despite Kate being in her 20s alongside the other 00-era new heroes, and some even assuming she's Clint's daughter (in-part thanks to his Marvel Cinematic Universe self having kids).
• My Real Daddy: Matt Fraction didn't create Kate, but he shaped her relationship with her mentor and predecessor as well as expanded on her personality so much that its had the most lasting effect, never mind how his run introduced her to people who had never previously read the Young Avengers.
  • Kelly Thompson has also became something of Kate's real mom, building off of the threads Fraction left behind when he departed Marvel, including fleshing out her dad's criminal enterprises and connections, giving Kate's mom some depth, giving Kate civilian friends and a new status quo, and

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• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For the most part Kate's ongoing is pretty solid, but one thing many were annoyed by was how the series could have given an opportunity to crossover with the LA-local heroes like Runaways or Robbie Reyes, which never happened (in Kate's book, at least; she and Robbie did team-up in The Unbelievable Gwenpool though). Not to mention, none of the Young Avengers got to appear either (at best, America and Kate teamed-up in America's ongoing), which given how many had been in limbo during this time (Eli Bradley and Tommy Shepherd, for instance), would have been welcomed, but instead Kate gets a new supporting cast and the only hero to drop by, besides Clint, is Jessica Jones.

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