Top 10 616 Hawkeye facts

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I'm bacc with a post about ma boi, Hawkeye

in which I'll discuss 10 interesting facts about

his comic book 616 version,     which is my

favourite version of his. #MAElite

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BOOM!

His childhood, tough as it was, actually defined his superhero life. He had an abusive alcoholic father who used to beat him up but his brother, Barney taught him how to fight and that's how he started to use the bow. Both of his parents ed away in a car accident that, of course, happened due to his father driving while drunk and Clint, together with his brother were sent to foster homes. As they kept on running away from them, they eventually came across a travelling circus and ed as roustabouts.

Now, this is where Clint begins his superhero journey for real as he gets trained there by The Swordman himself and Trick Shot. Later, though, he found out that the Swordman had been embezzling money from the carnival and before he could do anything about it, he was beaten up as his mentor left town. This is when his relationship with his brother and Trick Shot takes a bad turn and later, he'll face them again.

Like many great Avengers, Hawkeye made his debut as a villain! He first appeared in the Iron Man comics "Tales of Suspense" #57 in 1964. There, he's more of a carnival man at first, showing off his archery skills and being called the "World's Greatest Marksman". Being jealous of Stark taking his spotlight, though, he decided to get into the action aswell but due to his costume, he was mistaken as a thief. That's when he first crossed paths with Black Widow (who had been sent after Iron Man before in those same comics but failed to assasinate him) and teamed up to bring Tony down.

Of course, they failed and Natasha was taken by the Russians again and brainwashed (and later she was sent to end the Avengers) and on the way, Clint followed another path and later became an Avenger.

Barney's jealousy on his brother first started when the Swordman chose Clint as his assistant, instead of him and he condemned him for not being loyal to his mentor because he discovered his plans. There also was tension between the brothers when Barney wanted to the army but Clint refused to do the same. Still, he told him that the offer still stood and he would wait for him. When his brother did change his mind, it was too late and Barney had already left.

He later became an FBI agent and on his first mission he worked undercover as a bodyguard for Marko, a criminal. It was right then that Clint and Trick Shot robbed that same criminal's mansion and in the process, Hawkeye shot his brother and after he found out what he had done, he turned against his mentor.

During a battle against Egghead, Barney sacrificed himself but was later found to have faint vital signs and Baron Zemo, who had a deep hatred for Clint Barton, manipulated him into turning against his brother. During his training, he killed Trick Shot, delivered him to the Avengers and used the Trick Shot alias for himself. Later, Zemo had them duel each other to death (and I'll talk about the details of this duel a little later on fact #3) and Clint won.

Of course, as it is in comics, Barney wasn't dead this time either. Later, he becomes a Dark Avenger and his relationship with his brother actually becomes better and better over the years BUT in the "All-New-All-Different-Marvel" he steals Clint's wealth and moves to a private island where he starts a family with Simone, one of Hawkeye's former neighbors.

Like many other heroes, Clint operated under more aliases. His first one was "Goliath" as he took Hank Pym's growth serum and for a limited time, he had superpowers! He also was known as the Golden Archer for a while and along the years, he even was Carnage's host. A big surprise was him getting Captain America's Shield for a while, before Steve gave it to Bucky, which angered him a lot but his most notable of these identities is obviously Ronin. In the 616 Universe, the Ronin is actually a kind of mantle that several heroes have had and Hawkeye takes up this identity in the New Avengers comics, issue 11.

Apart from being an Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Hawkeye has been in lots of other teams, so many that I'm not even going to name them all, as there are soooo many and I'll stick to the most important ones. First of all, we've got the other Avenger teams he's been on like the New Avengers, the Avengers Academy, Avengers West Coast, Avenging Host led by Daredevil and the Secret Avengers etc. He even was part of the Defenders back in 1972 and of the A.I.M., an organisation for brilliant scientists who wanted to overthrow all the governments with the help of technology. He was also apart of the Human High Council and the Thunderbolts.

Aw, man- he did have a few. Complicated man. His first one showed in the comics was Black Widow and it was pretty tragic as the Russians brainwashed her and sent her against the Avengers, team that Clint was apart of at the time. Thanfully, the brainwash somehow wore off and they got on better . I haven't read all the comics with them together and that's gonna be a lot but I'm pretty sure that they were on and off, especially as both if them found many other lovers.

It was also revealed that during his time at the circus he had a little something with a tattooed lady called Eden. He also got betrayed by one of his girlfriends, Sheila Danning who was the Head of Public Relations at Cross Technological Enterprises. She apparently betrayed him to a villain named Crossfire. In Matt Fraction's comics, he shares a little romance with Darlene Penelope "Penny" Wright that we don't know much of. He also dated a fellow Thunderbolt, Karla Sofen aka Moonstone and even the Wasp kind of but not long, due to the tension that had created between him and Hank Pym. Hawkeye also had a little romance with Scarlet Witch too and I'll talk about it in fact #4.

Ok but the tea tho- His most, let's say "important" lover was the Mockingbird - Bobbi Morse. Man, they got married! They were peaking, an amazing romantic due who even formed up their own Avengers team together. But...what happened between the two of them? Well, in West Coast Avengers #23, they get into a disagreement after Bobbi lets Phantom Rider fall to his death. While she thought that he deserved it, Clint believed that Avengers shouldn't kill unless absolutely necessary. But, there's more to it and it's really controversial. I have no idea if it's appropriate to discuss it into this post and I encourage you to look this up if you're curious but Bobbi went through a lot of dark stuff due to the Phantom Rider and it also was pretty personal to her.

Yas, this is a trend- these Marvel superheroes just won't stop dying and coming back. During Scarlet Witch's breakdown that broke the Avengers apart, Clint died on an exploding Kree ship. Wanda changed the Earth's History: making the Mutants rulers over humans. Clint was back alive on this changed Earth but with no memories of his previous life. Still, he opposed to the Mutant supremacy. Emma Frost restored his memories though and he decided to confront Wanda about why she would erase their shared time as teammates and confessed feelings for her. Sadly, this went badly and Scarlet Witch erased him from existence. This all ended well, though as Wanda restored the reality but removed the mutant genes from most inhabitants, making them powerless humans. Won't go more into detail since this is mostly Scarlet Witch, not our boi, Clint :)

I'm happy that Marvel has been diverse even many years ago through many heroes and Clint is a great example of disability representation done right and really accurately (Matt Fraction researched a lot for his comics in which hand signs were being used). So, first of all, let's talk about his deafness. It is thought that he had already been partially deaf since childhood, due to damage done by his father but some say that might no be true. He actually gets deafened many times and keeps on restoring his hearing again and again... in some comics he is 80% deaf after getting injuried in Crossfire's captivity, then gets his hearing back after another rebirth in Counter Earth. Then, the Clown does damage to his middle and inner ears with his own arrows and he gets hearing aids from Tony Stark and uses sign language. He also goes deaf in Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comics.

Now...about going blind, well, that's not too great for an archer but thankfully it wasn't permanent. This happened after he got a strong blow to the head in a battle with Alexei Shostakov (Red Guardian) in his Ronin form. Not that serious at first but his aim got worse and worse. As I mentioned about his brother fighting him, it's right when he's going blind that they fight each other and yet, even like this, Hawkeye wins and Trick Shot agrees to help him restore his sight, only so they could fight again in the future.

After Bruce Banner was cured of his condition and hadn't turned into the Hulk for months, he decided to give Clint the burden of having to kill him with a special arrow, in case he was going to transform again. It was months later that Ulysses Cain had a vision of Bruce turning into the Hulk and killing everyone and they actually discovered that he had been experimenting on himself with dead gamma cells. Banner denied this accusations and as he was getting angry, Clint killed him from a hidden place with the special arrow. For this, he was put on trial for murder and later went on a journey for redemption.

Let's not end this blog on a sad note, though as I have even more exciting trivia about Clint! I had no idea where to fit some of these so here we go...

•He's trilingual: fluent in english, sign language (American Sign Language - ASL) and in italian.

•He is one of the few people able to properly handle Captain America's Shield

•He's got peak human reflexes, which even not on superhuman level, are superior to 98% of the normal human beings and of course, he's the world's most accurate archer. It is known that he once aimed five shots at 5 enemies simultaneously.

•And most importantly, even with no superpowers, he keeps up with other super soldiers, guys with flying suits and other gadgets, Gods etc. and he's just a dude with a bow.

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Thanks for reading! #CuratorReview

Here are sources that I have used (did you really think I'd all of those facts??): Wikipedia, Marvel.com, Comic Vine.