Comic Book Herald

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Alexandra Iciek

Between Three Hawkeyes: Adaptational Interpretations of the Avengers’ ‘Everyman’

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“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’

Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Pursuit of Queer Planets

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The (Un)Queer Planet

In Michel Warner’s Fear of a Queer Planet, Warner refers to the ‘Pioneer Plaque’- an image that was sent on board the 1972 Pioner 10, spacecraft and later the Pioneer 11 in 1973 (Warner & STC, 1993). The crafts were sent by NASA as part of their space exploration program and were built to feasibly travel beyond our solar system. The plaque- designed by astronomer Carl Sagan and his wife- was designed to give basic information about humanity, in case extra-terrestrial life were to encounter the probes.

Warner observes that the plaque represents humanity through the image of a white, naked man and woman (ibid). He describes how this representation says much about the normative assumptions upon which Sagan, and by extension the American institution, understand ‘humanity.’ On the two figures, Warner writes:

They are not just sexually different; they are sexual difference itself. They are nude but have no body hair; the woman has no genitals …To a native of the culture that produced it, this bizarre fantasy-image is immediately recognizable not just as two gendered individuals, but as a heterosexual couple…, a technological but benign Adam and Eve. It testifies to the depth of the culture’s assurance (read: insistence) that humanity and heterosexuality are synonymous. This reminder speeds to the ends of the universe, announcing to passing stars that earth is not, regardless of what anyone says, a queer planet (ibid: 21). [Read more…] about Al Ewing’s Guardians of the Galaxy and the Pursuit of Queer Planets