Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

• 1. Introduction

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  Hawkeye, the Marvel Comics archer whose civilian name is Clint Barton, carries a bow so stiff that a man could not pull back its string. The man worked for Cross Technological Enterprises, and he tried to draw the hero's 250 lb-f bow and failed.

  That small scene says a great deal about a character with no superhuman powers. There is no serum, no flight, no invulnerability and no magic. There is world-class aim, a quiver of customized trick arrows and a body conditioned to the peak of human ability. Yet he stands beside gods and super-soldiers.

  This documentary follows several questions. How did a man who began as an enemy of Iron Man end up as a permanent Avenger? What does it do to a person to be the ordinary one on a team of extraordinary ones? Why did a 2012 series make critics look at him afresh? And what does a hero do on the days when he is not saving the world?

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• 2. A Villain Joins Up

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  Tales of Suspense #57, dated September 1964, introduced the archer as a menace, not a hero. Stan Lee wrote the issue and Don Heck drew it. Heck pictured something like a Robin Hood type, a marksman whose appeal came from physical daring rather than powers. In that first story Clint builds his costume and trick arrows out of jealousy of Iron Man. His slide into crime runs through the Black Widow, a Soviet spy who works on his affections to turn him against Tony Stark.

  Twice more he returned as a villain in Tales of Suspense. Then a scheduling headache changed his fate. By early 1965 Stan Lee insisted that every Marvel title share one continuity. Historian Sean Howe calls the result an unmanageable choreography problem. Thor, Iron Man, Giant-Man and the Wasp each starred in their own series, yet all four belonged to The Avengers.

  Lee's answer came in The Avengers #16, dated May 1965. He swapped out the founders for three reformed villains, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, with Captain America at their head. No superhero team in American comics had changed its roster so completely before. Writer Kurt Busiek later suggested the promotion was never planned. In his telling, Lee only judged that Hawkeye's potential was "too good to waste" after receiving Don Heck's original art boards.

  Readers quickly dubbed the new lineup Cap's Kooky Quartet, and eventually the characters used the name themselves. Hawkeye proved a prickly teammate. He bristled at Captain America's authority and pursued the Scarlet Witch without success. Roger Stern, who wrote the series in the early 1980s, read this as self-centeredness rather than deliberate sexism. In his words, Hawkeye was "not so much a sexist as an all-purpose butt-head."

  Roy Thomas took over from Lee in the late 1960s and tailored his scripts to John Buscema's richly illustrative style. The result was a run of mythological and cosmic adventures in which the three former villains served mostly as ensemble players.

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• 3. Ego And Insecurity

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  Comics historian Adam Besenyodi names the central contradiction in Hawkeye's makeup. A hero without powers needs "the staggering amount of egotism required" to survive among superbeings. Besenyodi says that ego is repeatedly undercut by "the overwhelming insecurity resulting from that same set of circumstances."

  The Avengers #63, from April 1969, shows the strain at full volume. Feeling inadequate beside his powered teammates, Clint secretly took Hank Pym's growth formula. He then snapped his own bow in two to signal that the Hawkeye persona was finished. Philosopher Christopher Robichaud reads the act as revealing Clint's "need to live up to the example of his peers and earn their acceptance as well as his own."

  The early stories also fixed a habit. Hawkeye walked away from teams whenever he felt slighted, then came back. Scholars have counted his climb from accidental villain to trusted Avenger and mentor to Kate Bishop among the most developed redemption arcs in the Avengers franchise.

  What keeps him in the fight is craft. He was trained from childhood in the circus and by the criminals Trick Shot and the Swordsman, and he is an exceptional fencer, acrobat and marksman. Captain America later schooled him in tactics, martial arts and hand-to-hand combat.

  His reputation is for turning any object into a weapon. Tin plates, coins, sticks and loose debris have all served him well. When he works as Ronin he adds proficiency with the katana and other melee weapons.

  His transport is the Sky-Cycle, modeled on a commercial snowmobile and fitted with anti-gravitational technology. It is voice-operated and has an auto-pilot steering system. Jorge Latham built the first one while working at Cross Technological Enterprises, and he later built several more for the West Coast Avengers.

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• 4. Carnival Years

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  Clint Barton was born in Waverly, Iowa. He lost both of his parents in a car crash at a young age and spent six years in an orphanage. Then he and his brother Barney ran away to join the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders.

  There the Swordsman took the boy on as an assistant. With help from Trick Shot, the Swordsman trained Clint into a master archer. The mentor turned out to be a thief. Clint caught him embezzling money from the carnival, and before he could hand him over to the authorities, he was beaten and left for dead. The Swordsman escaped town, and Clint's bonds with Barney and Trick Shot soured as well.

  Clint rebuilt himself as a star attraction billed as The World's Greatest Marksman. Stints with Tiboldt's Circus and then the Coney Island Circus followed. There he watched Iron Man in action and decided to become a costumed hero. His first outing went wrong. A misunderstanding got him accused of theft, and he went on the run.

  Naive and alone, he met the Black Widow and fell in love with her. He followed her blindly and helped her try to steal technology developed by Tony Stark. In one battle with Iron Man she was badly hurt. Hawkeye carried her away to save her life, but she disappeared before he could reach a hospital. He resolved to be a "straight-shooter" from then on.

  His redemption began with a mugger. Hawkeye rescued Edwin Jarvis and his mother, and a grateful Jarvis invited him to Avengers Mansion. Jarvis staged a confrontation so the archer could clear his name. Iron Man, the very hero he had fought, then sponsored him after seeing he was serious.

  Friction followed at once. Quicksilver met Hawkeye's romantic interest in the Scarlet Witch with hostility. Hawkeye rebelled against Captain America's leadership because of his old trouble with authority figures. Over time he came to respect Captain America as a mentor and a friend. When the Swordsman later tried to join the Avengers, Hawkeye warned his teammates about the man's history.

  While he wore the Goliath identity, his brother Barney came to him for help. Barney had become a big-time racketeer and had learned of Egghead's plan to build an orbiting laser death-ray to extort money from the United States. Barney died in the battle with Egghead's allies, the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master. It was later revealed that he had been an undercover FBI agent. Egghead then hired the Swordsman to capture Goliath, mistaking him for Pym. Clint defeated and captured both men, finding justice for his brother at last.

  After the Kree-Skrull War he went back to being Hawkeye in a new costume. A bitter rift with the Vision over the Scarlet Witch made him quit the team. He returned when Avengers began to vanish, and he defeated the Collector of the Elders of the Universe single-handedly. Then new government liaison Henry Peter Gyrich trimmed the roster to look more politically acceptable, and the Falcon took Hawkeye's place. Clint ended up as Head of Security at Cross Technological Enterprises.

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• 5. Mockingbird And The Coast

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  Direct-market comic sales rose 46 percent in 1982 and another 32 percent in 1983. Marvel answered with a wave of four-issue miniseries for characters outside its top tier. One of them was a Hawkeye miniseries, published from September through December 1983.

  Mark Gruenwald wrote and penciled it, with inks by Brett Breeding. It introduced Mockingbird as Clint's professional partner and romantic interest, and it ended with their marriage. Gruenwald squeezed the wedding into the final issue at a pace critics found premature.

  In the story, Hawkeye meets Barbara "Bobbi" Morse, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent also known as Mockingbird. Together they uncover a plot by Crossfire, a cousin of the company's original owner Darren Cross, to wreck the superhero community with an aggression-inducing sonic weapon. To override the device, Hawkeye held the head of one of his sonic arrows in his mouth. Wizard Magazine later summed up the result: "Unfortunately, it cost the archer part of his hearing." He was left about 80% deaf and wearing hearing aids in both ears.

  The miniseries sold well enough to spark more. In September 1984, Hawkeye and Mockingbird received a four-issue limited series about founding a West Coast Avengers. It "proved so popular that it became a regular monthly book that ran for 102 issues." The title was retitled Avengers West Coast from issue #46 in August 1989 and ran until 1994, with Hawkeye as founder and leader throughout.

  In the story, the Vision sent the couple to Los Angeles. Former actress Moira Brandon helped them defeat a vengeful Crossfire and later let her mansion become the new Avengers Compound. Writer Roy Thomas, who worked on the title in the late 1980s, said the California setting made it hard to bring in guest characters. He also said it freed him to develop characters with fewer obligations to other series.

  Solo Avengers arrived in December 1987 as a split book. Hawkeye got an eleven-page feature, and supporting Avengers shared the second half of each issue. It was retitled Avengers Spotlight from issue #21 in August 1989 and ended after 40 issues in January 1991.

  The marriage was tested when the team was lost in time. The Old Western hero Lincoln Slade, the Phantom Rider, kidnapped Mockingbird, drugged her and forced a relationship on her. When she regained her senses, she let him fall to his death. Hawkeye was stunned that his wife would allow a man to die instead of facing justice, and she left the team and separated from him.

  A duel with his former mentor Trick Shot came next, and Hawkeye won. Trick Shot said he was dying of cancer and wanted an honorable death in battle. Hawkeye refused and promised to pay for his medical care. When Crossfire later put a bounty on Hawkeye's right arm, Trick Shot, whose cancer had gone into remission, returned to help. Hawkeye told Mockingbird he had been wrong to blame her, and the pair reconciled.

  Then came the clash between the demons Mephisto and Satannish. After the team forced them back to their own realms, Mephisto fired energy blasts at the escaping heroes. Mockingbird sacrificed herself to save Hawkeye and died in his arms.

  Embittered, he left the team, which broke up almost at once. He isolated himself in the Canadian Rockies, which is the setting of Chuck Dixon's four-issue second volume of Hawkeye in 1994. There he fought Viper, leader of the Secret Empire, and her hired villains, Javelynn and his old mentor Trick Shot. That volume failed to produce an ongoing series.

  Before the battle with the entity Onslaught, he rejoined the Avengers. Franklin Richards then moved the apparently dead heroes to a pocket universe. Because the boy rebuilt the heroes from his own memory of them, Hawkeye's hearing came back in full. That restoration did not last.

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• 6. Thunderbolts, Death And Ronin

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  In the 1990s, writer Kurt Busiek cast Hawkeye as leader of the Thunderbolts, a team of former supervillains trying to rehabilitate. Clint, a former criminal whose own redemption Iron Man had sponsored, now played the Captain America role for a new generation. Busiek's successor Fabian Nicieza admitted the risk. He worried the archer had been "too perfect" and was "batting 1,000." His plan was to give Clint moral and leadership failures that would test him.

  In the story, Hawkeye first contacted the team in disguise as Dreadknight. He then trained the members in Captain America's fashion. He began a romance with fellow Thunderbolt Moonstone, and the team followed him to Hell to save Mockingbird's soul. They beat Mephisto, but Hawkeye could not find his wife. To win the team full pardons, he let himself be arrested in their place. The pardons came on condition that the Thunderbolts retire from costumed heroics.

  The Avengers #502, from 2004, ended his run in blaze and flame. During the "Avengers Disassembled" event, a mentally destabilized Scarlet Witch conjured a Kree warship over New York. His quiver was set on fire, and he knew the explosive arrows would blow up faster than he could remove them. Hawkeye flew into the warship's engines and sacrificed himself to save his teammates.

  Death did not hold him. The "House of M" storyline resurrected him, and in Brian Michael Bendis's New Avengers he returned under the alias Ronin. The new name let him join covert operations without the baggage of his old costume. Writer Jim McCann described those months as genuine psychological instability for Clint. Having Bobbi and Captain America back, McCann said, left him "more grounded, sure of himself, and his place in the world."

  In the story, Doctor Strange gave him shelter, and a young woman named Kate Bishop inspired him to turn down Tony Stark's offer of the Captain America shield and costume. Echo, the original Ronin, blessed his use of her old identity. When Clint revealed himself to Kate, he was impressed by her skill with a bow and by how much she reminded him of himself. He blessed her to keep using the Hawkeye name.

  McCann's New Avengers: The Reunion appeared in 2009 as a four-issue limited series. It brought back Mockingbird, who had survived the Mephisto confrontation. McCann pitched it as "the Mr. and Mrs. Smith of the Marvel Universe." Fan and retailer response turned a planned miniseries into the Hawkeye & Mockingbird ongoing of 2010, the first sustained solo publication for either character in over a decade. McCann said "it was the fans' and retailers' support of The Reunion that made this possible." The ongoing lasted six issues.

  The Skrull invasion complicated the reunion. A Mockingbird found in a crashed Skrull ship in the Savage Land was exposed as an imposter by Mister Fantastic's invention. The real Mockingbird, who had been held captive by the Skrulls for years, was later found.

  Then Norman Osborn took over national security. His Dark Avengers included the assassin Bullseye wearing the Hawkeye mantle. Clint unmasked on network television and denounced Osborn's regime. The New Avengers elected him leader, and he argued that the only way to beat Osborn was to kill him. His teammates disagreed. He stormed Avengers Tower alone and defeated the Dark Avengers, but Ares attacked him from behind. Imprisoned and tortured by Mentallo, he was freed by his teammates and apologized for his actions.

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• 7. Hawkeye Off Duty

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  In August 2012, Hawkeye volume four launched under writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja. It was a deliberate break from the event-driven storytelling that dominated Marvel's line. At the C2E2 convention in Chicago, Fraction pitched it as a look at what Hawkeye does when he is not an Avenger. Fraction had first declined the assignment. He found his way in through the first page of a planned second issue.

  The two men worked in close step. Fraction would develop a rough plot, Aja would sketch ideas and produce full-issue thumbnails, and Fraction would write dialogue in response to those pictures. In a 2012 interview Aja said they had worked so closely that he sometimes did not know "where some of our ideas come from first."

  The story follows Hawkeye defending an apartment building from the Tracksuit Mafia, helped by Kate and his brother Barney. The series also made Hawkeye deaf again after a mercenary called Kazi the Clown jammed two of his arrows into his ears. The deafness became both a formal device and a theme of the run.

  The 2014 issue told largely through untranslated American Sign Language has drawn sustained academic attention. Scholars see in it a shift from the medical to the social model of disability. Since this run, Clint's partial hearing loss has been drawn with increasing depth.

  Critics embraced the series. The A.V. Club asked in a headline how Hawkeye became Marvel's best comic. It wrote, "Spider-Man has long been considered Marvel's superhero everyman, but Hawkeye has stolen that title with this series." ComicsAlliance's Chris Sims observed that Clint deals with the pain of the book "because he wants to help the people around him."

  One of the most praised issues was number 11, known as the "Pizza Dog" issue. It is told from the point of view of Barton's dog, Lucky. Wired Magazine judged that Fraction and Aja "stick the landing with a poise and grace that deserves full marks." It added that the book works both as a noir murder mystery and as an experiment.

  The awards followed. In 2013 the series earned five Eisner nominations and won two, for Best Cover Artist and Best Penciler/Inker. It also drew seven Harvey nominations and won one. In 2014 it again received five Eisner nominations and won two, along with five Harvey nominations and one win.

  Also in 2012, the mother of 4-year-old Anthony Smith contacted Marvel because her son refused to wear his hearing aid. Superheroes, he pointed out, do not need them. Marvel sent a custom comic starring a hero called Blue Ear, and it reminded the family that Hawkeye had been deaf and used hearing aids for years.

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• 8. Later Fights, Wider Reach

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  During Civil War II, Hawkeye shot Bruce Banner in the head with an arrow after Ulysses Cain foresaw a rampaging Hulk standing over dead heroes. At the Avengers-presided trial, Hawkeye said Banner had once asked him to kill him if he ever became the Hulk again. He was acquitted, but the superhero community split over what he had done.

  To make amends, Clint began traveling the country in "Occupy Avengers" to help underprivileged communities. His first effort concerned the water supply in Santa Rosa, and he eventually gained the help of the Red Wolf of Earth-51920.

  In the "Secret Empire" storyline, Captain America leads Hydra's takeover of the United States, and Hawkeye becomes leader of the few free heroes left. He favored recovering the fragmented Cosmic Cube Kobik to restore Steve Rogers, while Black Widow wanted to kill Rogers. During the story he fell back in love with Black Widow, and he was devastated by her supposed death.

  In the "Fresh Start" relaunch, Clint and Kate revived the West Coast Avengers after an attack by land sharks in Santa Monica. They recruited America Chavez and Johnny "Fuse" Watts, and were later joined by Gwenpool and Kid Omega. Short on funds, the team tried to raise money by starring in a reality show.

  The "Freefall" story found Clint dating Linda Carter while someone dressed as Ronin attacked the Hood's facilities. The Hood hired Bullseye, who stole Clint's Ronin costume to frame him for murder. With Count Nefaria's help, Clint removed the Hood's powers. In the Thunderbolts revival, Luke Cage, now mayor of New York City, asked Clint to lead the only legally sanctioned super-hero team in the city. Nightmare mocked Clint's leadership and selfishness, but the team prevailed, and Clint contacted Mockingbird to ask her to get coffee.

  Beyond the main continuity, alternate versions of Hawkeye appear in Marvel Zombies, Old Man Logan, Secret Wars and the Ultimate Marvel series, among others. In the Amalgam Comics series, Oliver Queen is a composite of Hawkeye and DC Comics character Green Arrow. The Infinity Wars storyline introduced Cat's Eye, a composite of Hawkeye and Hellcat.

  Television gave him many voices over the decades, beginning with Chris Wiggins in The Marvel Super Heroes. Troy Baker voiced him in several animated series, and also in films such as Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. Video games brought him in as a playable character in titles including Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Marvel Heroes and Marvel Rivals, and as a cosmetic outfit in Fortnite.

  Jeremy Renner portrayed a version of the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Thor in 2011 to the Disney+ series Hawkeye in 2021. Wizard magazine ranked the archer 45th among the greatest comic book characters of all time. IGN placed him 44th among the greatest comic book heroes and 9th on its 2012 list of the top 50 Avengers.

  Renner is set to reprise the role in the film Avengers: Doomsday, and Stephen Lang voices a very different, older version of the character in Marvel's Wastelanders: Old Man Hawkeye.

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