“Say you have to kill the Avengers. Make a list. Who do you kill first? The regular guy.”
“Clint Barton’s the last man I’d call a ‘regular guy’.”
“Tell yourself that when he bleeds out in his precious little apartment in Brooklyn”
Clint Barton: The ‘Regular Guy’
Clinton Francis Barton, a.k.a Hawkeye, made his Marvel debut in 1964’s Tales of Suspense #57. Clint’s entrance into super-heroism was essentially an effort in trying to prove himself, combined with good intentions gone wrong. Upon witnessing the teched-out Iron Man save the day at the very circus he performs at, Clint becomes adamant that his talents in archery and swordsmanship could allow him to become a superhero too. Overnight, the teenage archer creates his own superhero persona -‘Hawkeye’- complete with a cowled costume and an array of hand-made trick arrows. Clint was ready to show the world that you didn’t have to be poisoned by Gamma or fitted with state-of-the-art technology to be a hero.
Unfortunately, Hawkeye’s first outing as a defender of justice goes awry when the police immediately mistake him for a jewel thief and he falls for the mysterious villain, the Black Widow. He does get to be an Avenger-eventually- but his identity as a hero has continued to be instructed by the fact that, as highly talented as he is, he will always experience the limitations and flaws that come with being a ‘regular’ human. [Read more…] about Between Three Hawkeyes: Adaptational Interpretations of the Avengers’ ‘Everyman’