That "guy" is Ultimate Hawkeye, [I can Assume that's Ultimate Black Widow]. I guess this comic takes place before Ultimates 2 [if you read Ultimates 2 you'll know what I mean ^_~]
It is Black Widow.
I think the extra string could be something the penciller used to line up the bow ends but forgot to erase and so the inker filled it in as a line. Can't find the issue to be sure they are two different people though.
--Scott
I looked again. The first two panels blew away my theory. I must be tired. I'll go to bed now.
Hey, it probably *could* post date Ultimates 2. Remember the rule. . .
Doesn't she have the arrow on the wrong side of the bow, too? Isn't it supposed to be on the outside (the right side of the bow for a right-handed archer)?
No, that's one thing they got right. The arrow oes on the same side as the archer's body, except in some exotic forms that I don't know anything about.
I did, however, neglect to rail about the stupid two-finger shooting technique. *sigh*
Re: two fingers, IIRC, using four fingers is to give a better grip. In this, at least, she has a decent excuse- superhuman physical abilities. Her two finger grip is likely as good or better than any other archery newbies four finger grip. 
Four finger is for longbow. Recurve shooters use three, mostly because the third finger helps to keep the string vertical where it passes through the nock.
If she were actually using a compound, she would also most likely be using a mechanical release, but that's a whole other can o' worms.
MacQuarrie, I'm going to take you up on that offer sometime, if you don't mind - I've got a comics project in the line-up, and I plan on having archery lessons involved, and I don't know the first thing about archery.
Not a problem. I live to serve.
macq@monkeyspit.net will reach me. Or go to Superpages and search in Pasadena, CA. I'm the only MacQuarrie in town.
Not to mention the fact that Natasha's left foot is almost as big as her had (even taking into account mild perspective).
...her head. Bugger.
Yeah, if we're getting into anatomy, there's something... disturbing about her left arm in the last panel.
The bow looks a whole lot like someone wanted to draw a compound bow, but didn't understand what they look like really. It's a mutant child of a recurve and a compound, really.
"The power transfers from here into the belly of the bow" makes some sense from a physics angle. The belly is the part facing the archer, and as the string is drawn back, the belly is the part that is being compressed by the drawn string - therefore storing the energy like a spring. This isn't to say the back of the bow isn't storing energy either, but it's one way to look at it. And every bow I've seen with crystalline fractures always have happened on the belly - it's rare, but with hand-made longbows it can happen.
And I'm not sure about four fingers for longbow users - every longbowman I've know (from the SCA) uses three. The personal difference between archers seem to be whether it's three under, or one up two down for a grip.
True, but the bow can't tell whether the power is coming from the archer's arms or back, so it's an irrelevant comment in the middle of a discussion of form.
"Belly" must be either an english or traditional term; all the archers I know call it the face. But that's a quibble.
More pressing is why isn't Natasha (a beginning archer) wearing an arm guard? First time I went without one I scarred my arm for life.
That bow may be the mutant child of a recurve and a compound, but the riser on that thing doesn't look like either. It vaguely resembles some exotic thing like a mongolian horseman's bow or something.
Or like what somebody would make up out of thin air fi they couldn't be bothered to use Google's image search.
It looks like someone did a Google search, found some fancy recurve target bows (hence, the projections, that look like the weights that people screw onto their bows), and used that, but had some inkling of a compound bow having multiple strings.
More pressing is why isn't Natasha (a beginning archer) wearing an arm guard?
I think she just happened to pick it up on the plane. It's Hawkeye's bow, and they were bored, I guess.
Better question is why Hawkeye's not wearing one. You'd think he'd know better.
I can forgive that; I know guys who shoot without one. Se, the primary function of the arm guard is to protect you from the consequences of your own poor form.
"It's storing that power--"
Again, say what? The clicker is storing the power?
Now this criticism only works if you make certain grammatical choices in parsing the discussion as a whole.
I immediately interpreted that as meaning the bow is storing the power -- which is clearly correct -- and the clicker is going to tell you something about that -- how much you're storing, when to release, whatever. But the statement is interrupted.
[Grammar nazi mode=ON]
A pronoun generally references the last noun used, unless there is some other indication given (for instance, if the pronoun is "he" and the last noun referred to an inanimate object). In this case, "It's" would refer to the clicker, not the bow.
[Grammar nazi mode=OFF]
It's a moot point anyway, since a compound bow (which this is clearly not) does not have a clicker.
Commenting by HaloScan
