The Name is Barton, Clinton Barton

[Clint Barton aka Hawkeye]

Written by Kal-El

How many great superheroes have Stan Lee created already? Well we don't really know, all we know is that Stan Lee is a god for creating the likes of Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, The X-Men etc. But today we won't be talking about these regular icons, today we'll talk into one of his other great creations. namely Hawkeye. Hawkeye is one of the senior member of the Avengers. Hawkeye is a costumed archer, possessing a variety of specialized arrows. Brash and somewhat cocky, he has often butted heads with teammates but has been a member of some segment of the Avengers fairly consistently throughout the group's history. He also led the Thunderbolts, attempting to guide the former villains to become heroes. Sounds familiar? However DC Comics has thier own marksman specialist, aka The Green Arrow. But lets not get into that for now. Here's how he amazing story begins.

Clinton Francis "Clint" Barton was born in Waverly, Iowa. The second son of an alcoholic butcher and a shopkeeper, he was orphaned at age 8, when his parents died in a car accident caused by his father's drunken driving. He ran away from an orphanage as a pre-teen to join the circus as a performer, where he was trained by the Swordsman and Trickshot. When he discovered that his mentors were both criminals he rejected them, leading to a beating by Swordsman which left the teen-aged Clint Barton badly injured and hospitalized.

Years later, he decided to become a costumed hero after being inspired by seeing Iron Man in action, but his first attempts were less than successful; he stopped an armed group of jewelry store robbers only to be mistaken by police as the thief himself. On the run from police, he met and came under the influence of the Black Widow, who was a spy for the Soviet Union. The Black Widow's main mission at that time was to steal Stark-developed technology to turn over to her handlers, and she was able to convince the besotted Hawkeye that she was working in the interests of international peace. The pair tangled with Iron Man twice, being defeated both times. When Hawkeye finally learned the Black Widow's true mission was to steal the technology and destroy Iron Man he refused to betray his country for her, but was persuaded to help her one last time. When the Black Widow was injured during the last fight, Hawkeye broke off his attack on Iron Man to help her, choosing to withdraw rather than kill Iron Man.

[Clint makes a statement]

Hawkeye has no superhuman powers although Somtimes uses Pym particles to become Goliath on occasion but is a peak-athlete. He possesses exceptional strength, endurance, and stamina. His reflexes and agility represent the absolute pinnacle of human perfection. He is capable of acrobatic maneuvers that would put an Olympic gold medalist to shame. His accuracy as an archer is virtually unerring. He is also a highly competent strategist, tactician, and field commander. He is an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained by Captain America. His primary weapons in crime-fighting are a long bow and an arsenal of arrows, often 36, carried in a back quiver. Half of them have either target or blade points, while the rest carry a wide variety of customized special heads: high explosive, acid, cables, webs and bolas, smoke and freeze arrows are just a few samples. For emergency use, Hawkeye has several spare arrowheads in his costume's belt and straps, enabling him to refit the target point arrows into trick arrows if need be. Hawkeye also has a sky-cycle that he sometimes uses.

[Hawkeye teams up with Black Widow]

Eventually Hawkeye applied for membership in the Avengers by breaking into the Avengers Mansion and announcing that he wanted to be a part of the group and was accepted. He served alongside the late Captain America, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch as "the New Avengers". Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch had also initially been supervillains until realizing the error of their prior actions. Although Hawkeye wanted the Black Widow to join the Avengers with him, several other Avengers were resistant to the idea, given her Cold War spy past, and Black Widow's increasing involvement with S.H.I.E.L.D. also created tension between the pair, finally resulting in a split.

Although Hawkeye was enamored with the Scarlet Witch and very briefly tried to romance her, she eventually married their teammate, the Vision. During a later solo adventure, Hawkeye met the former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbara "Bobbi" Morse, alias Mockingbird while she was investigating Cross Technological Enterprises, Hawkeye's employer at the time. Unknown to Hawkeye, Cross Tech was run by the villain Crossfire, who had a plan to use an aggression-inducing sonic wave against all of New York's superheroes. Crossfire captured the snooping Hawkeye and Mockingbird and tested the sonic wave on them, causing them to fight each other. Hawkeye used a sonic ray arrowhead, hidden in his mouth, to cancel out the sonic waves, freeing himself from the wave's control but ruining his hearing requiring him to use hearing aides afterward in the process. After defeating Crossfire, Hawkeye and Mockingbird eloped.

During the Avengers Disassembled storyline, the Scarlet Witch becomes insane and uses her reality-manipulation powers to create deadly threats to her teammates. Hawkeye dies in one of the battles, sacrificing himself to destroy a Kree starship and save his fellow assembled Avengers. However, during the House of M, he is alive once more in the Scarlet Witch's mutant-dominated altered reality, with no memory of the previous reality. When a young mutant named Layla Miller gives several of the heroes the ability to remember the way the world once was, Hawkeye and the others are horrified at what the Scarlet Witch has done. He travels to Genosha and, as Dr. Strange is trying to get the truth of the altered reality from the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye shoots her in the back, apparently aware that it would not harm her. He demands to know why she killed him. In the course of their argument, one of her re-created children becomes angry and simply dissolves Hawkeye into nothing.

Immediately after the altered reality is terminated and the world restored, sans most of the mutants, the dispirited New Avengers answer an intruder alarm at the ruined Avengers Mansion, and find only Hawkeye's costume and a newspaper cutting about his death, pinned to the ruins by Hawkeye's trademark purple arrows.

In the time period between Avengers Disassembled and the events of House of M, when Clint Barton was believed dead, Kate Bishop, a member of the Young Avengers, takes up Hawkeye's bow and general appearance as a superhero. She later between the formation of the New Avengers and Civil War adopted the codename "Hawkeye" at Captain America's suggestion. As explained to Kate by Jessica Jones, Kate reminded Captain America of the first Hawkeye not only because of her skill with a bow and arrows but because she was unafraid to stand up to Captain America for what she thought was right, as the first Hawkeye had often done.

[Kate Bishop is the New Hawkeye]

In Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America series "Bargaining," Clint Barton confronts Tony Stark over the death of Steve Rogers. Upon confirmation of Barton's identity, Stark offers him Captain America's costume and real shield. Stark takes Barton out on patrol and they discover Elijah Bradley and the new Hawkeye, Kate Bishop, defeating the supervillain Firebrand. Stark confronts the duo about their violation of the Super Hero Registration Act. Dressed as Captain America, Barton confronts Bishop about her assumption of the Hawkeye mantle. Unaware of who he truly is, Kate berates Clint, saying that she took Hawkeye's name to honor him but didn't copy his costume as that would be shameful; she further states that "if Hawkeye were alive, I'd call myself something else." She also states that it was the REAL Captain America who gave her the name Hawkeye as a tribute to his friend. Her words convince Clint to return the shield and costume to Tony Stark, condemn Stark for his role in the Civil War, and go his own path. Stark vows to pursue Barton if he sides with the New Avengers.

[Clint Barton dons the Ronin costume]

In New Avengers #30, Clint Barton returns to speak with Dr. Strange, meets the New Avengers, and ends up donning the Ronin costume to assist them, accompanying the team to Japan to rescue Echo Who which later officially hands the Ronin costume and identity over to Barton. The New Avengers are driven by two goals; to save people "the way they want to", and to investigate the reason why the world has been turned upside-down recently. After a confrontation with Elektra and the Hand to rescue Echo, the team discover that Elektra had been replaced with a Skrull some indeterminant time ago.

What a twisted story his life was, but honourable indeed, anyways, stay tune with us more on the Avengers, it's coming your way. Hopefully Hawkeye makes a movie on day.