Much like many other Hawkeye fans, with each and every new Marvel movie that is released, we hold our breath and hope that our favourite bandaged, broken badass will actually be allowed to come out of his shell and be, well, HAWKEYE.
He’s gotten a lot of flack as a character, usually due to his stiff, stoic, far-too-serious portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I came up with ten reasons why Marvel and Disney REALLY missed the boat when it came to marketing Hawkeye, and why he could’ve been just as popular and well-loved a character as Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and all of the other characters that are branded as the “real Avengers”, whilst poor Hawkeye and Black Widow are typically removed from merch and ignored by the marketing department.
01: HE’S A DISABLED SUPERHERO. The first thing that really interested me about Hawkeye, and the thing which upset me the MOST when it wasn’t included in the MCU, is the fact that Clint Barton is almost COMPLETELY DEAF in both ears. In Earth-616, he’s been deafened several times over, having it surgically fixed on one occasion and having special hearing aids constructed by Tony Stark on another. It baffles me why Marvel and Disney wouldn’t want to promote a deaf superhero to children who may also share the same disability and would take great solace and comfort in seeing a badass superhero with the same affliction as them. Here’s to hoping Clint comes too close to a violent explosion in Civil War…
02: HE’S HUMAN. My second favourite thing about Clint Barton as a character in a setting such as the Avengers team is the fact that he is absolutely, unapologetically, unashamedly, 100% HUMAN. There is nothing enhanced or supernatural or magical about him, he doesn’t rely on a high-tech exoskeleton or technologically advanced suit – he’s just a normal dude who happens to be able to keep pace with superhumans, legends, and gods due to his incredible archery ability. And not just keep pace – unlike in the movies, in the comics Clint is an essential and critical member of the team, despite the fact that he’s not in any way special. If that’s not inspiring to the everyday person who feels like they can’t accomplish anything compared to their friends, I don’t know what is.
03: ARCHERY IS REALLY, REALLY HOT RIGHT NOW. The Hunger Games, Arrow, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Tomb Raider – archers are sexy, and pop culture is LOVING them. I never really understood why Marvel chose not to push their own badass bow-slinger given the reception received by DC Comics’ Oliver Queen and District 12’s Katniss Everdeen.
04: HE’S AN ABSOLUTE SCREW-UP. The hardest thing to get through to people who have no idea who Clint Barton is beyond Renner’s reluctant, rigid acting is that Hawkeye is NOT a character who stands on a rooftop as a silent, deadly badass, shooting off arrow after arrow with a stoic face behind his sunglasses. Hawkeye is the most self-sabotaging, hapless, ridiculous, damaged, broken fuck-up, who spouts cocky one-liners and does his best to make it through life in one piece. Who can’t relate to a character like that?
05: HIS NEWEST COMICS HAVE GARNERED A LOT OF ATTENTION. Matt Fraction’s work writing for Hawkeye, particularly in alliance with David Aja’s artwork (which captured and reflected Clint’s personality PERFECTLY), has really put the kooky superhero on the map as one of Marvel’s best. Don’t believe me? Go buy Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon, read it, and get back to me!
06: HE RESPECTS HIS TEAMMATES, REGARDLESS OF GENDER. In the world of Marvel comics, Hawkeye rises to the task of training, coaching, and sometimes even acting as a personal therapist towards many of the new recruits to the Avengers. He’s a staunch supporter of Captain America, and would follow him to the ends of the earth. But one of the best relationships Clint has is with his sidekick Kate Bishop, whom he worships and respects for her skill despite the fact that she’s much younger and much less experienced than he is. I am praying that the Russo Brothers give Clint a bit of a mentor role with the newbies in Civil War and touch more on what we saw between him and Wanda Maximoff at the climax of Age of Ultron.
07: HE’S BEEN INVOLVED IN ACTIVISM FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS… KINDA! If you’re a comic book fan who believes in equality between the sexes, and you’ve never heard of The Hawkeye Initiative, you need to check this shit out RIGHT NOW! In order to combat sexism in the way female superheroes are drawn and portrayed, artists across the Internet have been redrawing the ridiculous poses women are often drawn in (usually a butt-shot), but replacing the heroine with Hawkeye instead. This has given Hawkeye more of a reach than people think, as most Internet-goers who know their memes will have heard of him before even if they aren’t an Avengers fan.
08: HIS MOUTH. Hawkeye is one of the mouthiest Marvel characters (Deadpool aside, obviously), but I suppose it’s hard to find time for the side characters to act as they normally would when all of the funny moments, comic relief, and good witty one-liners are given to The Only Four Avengers Disney’s Marketing Department Thinks People Are Capable Of Caring About. Blah.
09: HE HAS THE BEST SIDEKICK EVER. If you don’t know who Kate Bishop is and you like strong, independent, badass female superheroes, you’ve been missing out and a Google search or a trip to the comic book store is very much in order. Kate spends most of her time (when she’s not helping run the Young Avengers) running after Clint, telling him to stop being a screw up, saving him from various bad guys, and assisting him more like a PARTNER than a sidekick. He even let her keep his name, figuring she was badass enough that she’d earned it – you gotta love a guy without an ego complex! I’m still hoping Kate Bishop will eventually show up in the MCU… and that she isn’t destroyed in the same way Clint was.
10: WE’VE ALL BEEN CLINT BARTON BEFORE. While a lot of us can empathize with Tony Stark’s self-destructive tendencies, or Bruce Banner’s anxiety and rage issues, I firmly believe that Hawkeye is the type of character who, if given a proper and equal shot at the silver screen, could capture the hearts of children and adults everywhere for one simple reason: we’ve all been Clint Barton before. We’ve all been a self-sabotaging, hapless, ridiculous, damaged, broken fuck-up at some point in our lives, and this charming, sweet, cinnamon roll of a character is exactly what we need to remind ourselves that while we aren’t in any way perfect, while we are flawed and broken and are struggling to get through life, that’s okay. Because even without superpowers, you still matter. You’re still important. You’re still a superhero!
Well, the problem begins (as problems often do) with comics.
See, comics are a sort of ‘soap opera with capes and tights.’ Comics are ‘fanfic but written by mostly straight white guys who are chosen by other straight white guys.’ Comics are a never ending arms race of suffering, and that’s the problem.
So it’s hard to pin down a character. Because it’s not one character.
Every writer wants to make their mark. They want THEIR version of the character to be the one that people point to and say, “THIS. THIS is the quintessential Hawkeye. THIS is the reason I love Hawkeye.”
Because they’re not going to write the character forever. That’s comics. There’s always someone right behind them, nipping at their heels, someone who wants nothing more, in most cases, then to sweep their careful work aside and make THEIR mark on the character.
There’s not much you can do to stop that from happening. You can write a really good book, you can be clever and creative and still not hit the readership the right way. You can write A GOOD BOOK and you’ll still end up in the trash heap of the 25 cent bin, because the promotion team or the movie schedule or the competitor’s event cycle screwed you over.
It’s much easier to make a lot of noise. To be remembered, rather than beloved. To get people tweeting and talking and protesting and fighting, because that means when you tossed off this book, there’ll be another one waiting for you.
Don’t believe me? I mean, someone keeps giving Nick Spencer new books. (shrug)
So there is no one Hawkeye. The Hawkeye of the early West Coast Avengers has little in common with the Hawkeye of Fraction and Aja’s solo book run. The Hawkeye of the most recent Secret Avengers by Ales Kot would be unrecognizable to the Hawkeye of the Ultimates verse. Movieverse Hawkeye is almost a mirror image of Hawkeye of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
When you love a character, the question is, which one? Because even if you take fandom interpretation and fanon out of the equation, there’s a lot of them to choose from. And while canon feeds fanon, fanon bleeds back into canon.
Describing the character you love takes some effort, some cherrypicking.
For me, it’s this:
On the surface, he’s ordinary. And his awareness of his ordinariness is part of what makes him so extraordinary. He’s raised himself to his current position by sheer force of will and a refusal to stop. He’s bullheaded and snarky and has a chip on his shoulder the size of the island of Manhattan. He’s not as stupid as he thinks he is, and he’s not as good as he believes he is, and both of those facts are a little heartbreaking.
He’s a man who destroyed his own hearing, because he knew if he didn’t, he was going to hurt someone he loved. He’s also a man who entered canon trying to rob Tony Stark, which was universally regarded as a very bad idea, since that’s how a lot of people end up dead.
He’s not a god or a genius or a super soldier.
He is a man who looked at the end of the world, and said, fuck you, I’ve got a COUPLE OF STICKS AND A PIECE OF STRING and I’m still going to KICK YOUR ASS. There is something comforting about that, for most people.
We want to believe, after all, that if push came to shove, if things got bad, then we would stand up. With all the risk, and all the fear, and a very good chance that we would not win, we want to believe, that we would still stand.
So all the other stuff, the ragged ends and the bad choices, the stupid plots and the OOC moments, the embarrassing contradictions in canon and the writers who can’t figure him out or don’t want to bother trying, it melts down to one truth at the core of his character, every time.
He is a man that doesn’t feel too different from you or me. And he stands. He makes bad choices, he screws people over, he ruins relationships and cheats on partners and girlfriends, he does stupid, stupid things, because this is a soap opera, and half the writers don’t remember what the last one did and the other half don’t care.
For all the parts of him I don’t like, he’s still my favorite. Because he shouldn’t be there. He has no place there. He’s outgunned and outflanked. Everyone around him is smarter than him, better trained than him, better equipped than him.
According to the Russo brothers, Hawkeye is on his own journey during Infinity War and he is in a special spot in the movie
I don’t want him in a special spot, I want more!!
We all walk into the first screenings of Infinity War. We sit down with our popcorn and the lights go down.
Blurry motion on the screen and the sound of heavy breathing and footfalls are all we get for a few seconds, and then it freeze frames on CLINT BARTON, running through a street in New York, being chased by several men with guns.
VOICEOVER Okay. This looks bad.
The rest of the movie is just Clint fighting semi-organized crime in Bed-Stuy for two hours. Occasionally, in the background, you see the rest of the Avengers battling Thanos, but never for more than a few seconds and usually just on a television on mute.
In the post-credit scene, Clint and Kate are eating pizza at an outdoor bistro, Lucky under his chair, all three of them covered in bandages. Clint checks his phone and discovers he has thousands of missed calls and texts. He opens the Avengers group chat and texts, “Did I miss anything? *crying with laughter emoji*”
Smash cut to Bucky Barnes, looking down at his phone, asking, “Who the hell is Hawkeye?”
…Yeah Clint’s not really sitting, but he’s trying, okay?
I am now WinterHawk trash! I blame @april-429 for opening my eyes and @captn-sara-holmes for everything else (can’t tag for some reason, but we all know who is at fault xD)
(Was going to stay out of CW, but looks like in Soviet Russia, the side chooses you. I regret everything.)
I have never been gladder to be blamed for something.
This is GORGEOUS. I my head the next panel is Bucky holding onto Clint’s ankle while he looks sheepish and tries to insist that no, he didn’t slip.
Thanks so much to everyone who purchased last year and supported me by reblogging. I love my followers so much and look forward to 2018, filled with even more marvel (how bout that infinity war trailer, eh?)
It’s almost time for back to school, and the omg-hawkeye doodle kit is a must have for any hawkeye fan! With a custom pencil case, bookmark, sticky note pad, pencils and a button, this is the best way to make back to school bearable.
One dollar (Canadian) will be donated to the Canadian Hearing Society for your purchase of this doodle kit. omg-hawkeye wants to support the many kids and teens with hearing disabilities who are also returning to school this year. Thank you for your support and have a great school year!
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