Clint Barton was orphaned at an early age when his parents died in a car
accident and was sent to a children's home with his brother Bernard. He
and his brother ran away to join the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders, and the pair worked as roustabouts. While a member of the circus, Hawkeye was trained by the original Swordsman (Jacques Duquesne) and Trickshot.
Clint's life, however, would forever be changed after he stumbled onto
the Swordsman counting the money he had just robbed from the carnival.
The Swordsman offered Clint to become his partner in crime, but Clint
rejected his mentor, sparking a fight that ended when the Swordsman left
him for dead after he fell from the high wire. Barney, too, abandoned
him, in disbelief that Clint passed up such an opportunity. Trickshot
stepped up his role as Clint's mentor, later asking him to join him in
raiding a criminal named Marko. However, Clint severely injured one of
Marko's guards and discovered him to be his brother, Barney. Repelled by
the consequences of his actions (and his mentor's role in prompting
them), he abandoned Trickshot and parted on bad terms.
His natural archery abilities honed to an expert level, Clint
wandered the country, working in various carnivals or otherwise making
money out of the costume and persona of "Hawkeye". One day, when
witnessing Iron Man
save the lives of some people at the carnival, he decided to become a
costumed crime-fighter himself. But as luck would have it, on Hawkeye's
first night on patrol, he was mistaken for a criminal by the police and
hunted down.
He soon met the Black Widow,
who was working at the time as a costumed villain for her country, and
she easily seduced the hot-headed adventurer, making him think it was in
his interest to defeat Iron Man. He attempted to do so according to her
prompting on several occasions, but soon wised up, regretting his
decision. Instead, he hoped to join Iron Man's team of Avengers. As a way of proving himself, he broke into the Avengers Mansion and convinced their butler, Jarvis,
to play the role of a victim so he could display his powers. Iron Man
vouched for Hawkeye, and he joined the new line-up that included Captain America, the Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver.
Clint continued to be an active member of the Avengers for years,
with his archery skills matching the superhuman powers of his teammates.
His brash attitude initially chafed under the leadership of Captain
America, and, although it took some time to come to respect him, the two
have become good friends. Also at first, he felt attracted the Scarlet
Witch, even to the point of having trouble getting over her eventual
marriage to the Vision.
For years, he also continued to hold a torch for the Black Widow, until
she returned to her espionage career and told him that she had never
loved him (although she said that in order to keep him away.)
Hawkeye stayed with the Avengers for a long time, leaving only
briefly when his temper and ego led him to believe he wasn't wanted. He
returned after a short period, having joined the "non-team" Defenders in the meantime. At one point, Hawkeye was passed over accompanying the Avengers in the Kree-Skrull War
due to his lack of superhuman abilities. Not one to be deterred so
easily, Hawkeye took on the identity of Goliath with the use of Hank Pym's
size-altering particles. He hitched a ride so as to join the team in
their intergalactic adventure and maintained the Goliath identity for
several months upon their return to Earth.
During his time as Goliath, Clint was approached by his brother, who had become a big-time racketeer. Barney had learned of Egghead's
plans to construct an orbiting laser death-ray to extort money from the
United States and came to the Avengers for help. The Avengers
confronted Egghead and his allies, the Mad Thinker and the Puppet Master,
but tragically, Barney died in the ensuing battle. Later, Egghead would
use the Swordsman to capture Clint as Goliath, thinking him to be Hank
Pym, but Hawkeye-as-Goliath soon defeated both criminals, avenging his
brother at last. Soon afterward, Clint abandoned the Goliath identity
but continued to serve the Avengers as Hawkeye the Marksman.
Another leave of absence was forced upon him, when, due to a type of "affirmative action", he was replaced by the Falcon
to comply with the Avengers' government sanction. During this time, he
eventually found employment as a night security guard for Cross
Technological Enterprises (CTE). Never gone from his team for long, he
soon rejoined the fold, although one particular solo adventure would
have a lasting impact. His boss, head of CTE, was the villain known as Crossfire
and hoped to test his ultrasonic equipment with which he hoped to turn
heroes against one another, With the help of the ex-secret agent, Mockingbird, Hawkeye defeated Crossfire. The two heroes, head over heels in love, promptly got married.
At the time, the Vision was expanding the Avengers' operations, and he named Hawkeye chairman of a west coast branch
of Avengers, and Mockingbird joined him as a charter member. Hawkeye
led the team through several adventures, growing into a competent
leader, and he even had time to embark on a series of solo adventures.
During one of these latter adventures, Hawkeye had to defend himself
against many costumed mercenaries and villains hoping to collect a
bounty placed on his right arm. The mastermind behind it all proved to
be Trickshot, now dying of cancer, and he was hoping to goad Hawkeye
into killing him. Instead, Hawkeye reconciled with his former mentor and
friend.
During an adventure where the team became lost in the past, his wife was involved with the death of the Old West hero, the Phantom Rider, and the situation caused the couple to split up. Shortly after, the government forced the membership of the U.S.Agent on the team, and Hawkeye quit. Both he and Mockingbird wound up investigating and leading the heroes known as the Great Lakes Avengers. Eventually, however, Hawkeye left the Midwest to rejoin the Avengers West Coast, although he never really led the team again.
Hawkeye continued to adventure with the team, even alongside his
separated wife, and was present with them when Mockingbird was killed in
a demonic dimension, saving her husband's life from an attack by Mephisto.
Distraught, Hawkeye left the team and took a cross-country walkabout.
Later, Clint was commissioned to train a group of rebels known as the Shadows along with Sundance and Striker. He attempted to keep them from killing, but on one raid Striker killed a woman and injured her fiancé, a friend of James Rhodes.
As War Machine, Rhodes was surprised to see Hawkeye among the rebels,
and even more so when a government backed group led by the U.S.Agent
also arrived. The three were able to stop the conflict and were
confronted by the mysterious Advisor.
Eventually drawn back to the Avengers' fold when the team was attacked in a plan orchestrated by Immortus, Hawkeye was present with the team when they apparently died, sacrificing themselves to absorb the energies of Onslaught. Eventually, Hawkeye and the other heroes were restored, and Hawkeye quickly rejoined the reforming Avengers.
However, Hawkeye was dissatisfied. His previous experience as a
team leader left him feeling too anxious as a regular member. Hawkeye
turned his attention instead to the team of reforming villains, the Thunderbolts.
Sympathetic because of his own outlaw past and eager for new
challenges, Hawkeye offered to serve as the Thunderbolts' new leader if
they would continue fighting crime and remain reformed. During his stint
as their leader, he became a friend and mentor to the group, honing
their skills and greatly enhancing their reputations. He and his
teammate Moonstone
had even began developing romantic inclinations. The Thunderbolts soon
became trusted allies of the Avengers, though Hawkeye formally resigned
his membership in the latter group since he didn't want any perceived
criminal association with the Thunderbolts to negatively impact the
Avengers.
Unfortunately, CSA agent and former Avengers government liaison Henry Peter Gyrich
targeted the Thunderbolts for assassination as part of a larger scheme
to eradicate superhumans. Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts exposed and
thwarted Gyrich's conspiracy, freeing Gyrich himself from the
mind-controlling technology Baron Strucker
had used to make Gyrich act out his anti-superhuman fantasies. Hawkeye
agreed to keep the entire affair a secret in exchange for a full federal
pardon for the other Thunderbolts, but a bitterly furious Gyrich
refused to go along with concealing the incident unless Hawkeye went to
prison for operating as an illegal vigilante with the Thunderbolts.
Hawkeye agreed and was remanded to federal custody.
While in Seagate Federal Penitentiary, Barton was contacted telepathically by Mentallo, who orchestrated a break-out for Hawkeye and three others (one of which was a Mentallo-possessed Headlok).
Despite their success, the inmates remained remotely "chained" to each
other. The so-called “Chain Gang” reluctantly agreed to work together to
search for a way to survive, deactivate their security manacles, and to
search for a weapon of great power left behind by the death of the
criminal industrialist Justin Hammer. Unknown to his associates, Barton was actually working undercover on behalf of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., who hoped to use Barton as a mole to track Mentallo's criminal activities. S.H.I.E.L.D. also hired the Thunderbolts' Songbird,
who tracked Hawkeye and defeated his erstwhile allies. They discovered
that Hammer's legacy was a biological toxin that had been ingested by
every single villain who had ever worked for him and that one of the
villains, Plantman,
was the carrier. Hawkeye, Songbird, and Plantman began a new search for
the trigger that would release Plantman's toxin. The search ended with
Hammer's daughter, Justine, who turned out to be the Crimson Cowl, leader of the Masters of Evil.
Hawkeye convinced several members of the Masters of Evil to side with
him and Songbird against Crimson Cowl and their former allies, pointing
out the dangers of the super-weapon. Hoping to throw off suspicion,
Hawkeye made the villains reinvent their costumed identities, thus
creating a new team of Thunderbolts. The group ultimately defeated the
Crimson Cowl and her Masters of Evil, and Plantman (as Blackheath)
managed to release an antidote for the toxin into the atmosphere.
Hawkeye and his Thunderbolts also helped Citizen V and the V-Battalion
to help destroy their headquarters' engine of alien technology that had
began distorting, In so doing, they were reunited with other the
Thunderbolts, led by Baron Zemo and trapped on Counter-Earth.
The two teams combined forces to shunt the alien ship from Earth. After
much discussion, most of the costumed heroes and villains chose to part
company. Hawkeye agreed to leave the Thunderbolts to Zemo's leadership,
reluctantly agreeing that Zemo had proved he had potential to be a
hero.
Hawkeye returned to the Avengers full-time. At one point, he and the Wasp
had a dallying romance, upsetting Yellowjacket, and the two heroes
avoided talking about the uncomfortable situation. Soon afterwards,
however, the Avengers suffered a series of sudden and devastating
attacks from friends and enemies alike, culminating in a surprise attack
by the alien Kree.
During the Kree invasion, Hawkeye suffered a mortal shot to the back.
In his dying moments, Hawkeye overpowered a Kree soldier, using the
soldier's jetpack to fly both of them into the Kree's command ship.
Hawkeye sacrificed his life to single-handedly thwart the invasion.
(These attacks were in part motivated by the Scarlet Witch, whose mind
became unhinged with the magical powers she constantly felt forced to
control, and it is believed the Kree invasion was all a magical construct of the Scarlet Witch.)
Hawkeye showed up alive once more in the Scarlet Witch's mutant-dominated alternate reality,
with no memory of the reality before. When a young mutant gave several
of the heroes the ability to remember the way the world once was, Clint
and the others were horrified at what the Scarlet Witch had done. With
his memory restored, Hawkeye remembered the events his own death. When
the heroes confronted the Witch and her children, Hawkeye angrily shot
her in the back, demanding to know why she had killed him, as he was her
friend and had only love for her. One of the Witch's children made
Hawkeye vanish into nothingness with just a thought. After reality was
restored several heroes arrived at the ruined Avengers Mansion
after a report that someone had been there, only to find Clint's
costume and a newspaper cutting about his death, pinned to the ruins by
Hawkeye's trademark purple arrows.
It
was later revealed that Clint indeed survived and that he was the one
who nailed the costume on the wall. He realized that the whole world
thought that he was dead and he himself also had doubts of who he really
was. In his disordered state of mind he found himself standing in front
of Doctor Strange's
house. He met Strange who ensured him that he was who he thinks he is
and that he is indeed alive. Strange informed him of what had happened
and that Wanda couldn't be found and that he thought she might be dead.
Clint didn't believe this and started to search for her. He found her in
Wundagore Mountain
where she lived with her aunt Agatha. She didn't remember anything and
didn't recognize him at all. She also told him that she had lived her
whole life in that village. Clint decided to stay in the village for
some time with her until he for some reason came back to the states and
contacted Iron Man revealing to him that he was alive. After Iron Man
had ensured that he was who he said he was he made Clint an offer to be
the next Captain America. Clint even tried the flag on and got to use
the original shield but he realized that it was a mistake when he met Patriot and new Hawkeye
who convinced that he wasn't Captain America. Clint let them escape and
gave the shield back to Iron Man and told him that he will mail the
"flag" later. Not long after this Clint again found himself in front of
Doctor Strange's house now seeming as though it had been abandoned and
sold to a franchise company. In reality, however, it was illusion cast
by Strange to hide himself and his team members from Iron Man. They
decided to show themselves to Clint and after some talk and magic they
decided to give Clint Ronin's costume. They then left to Japan to save
their team member Maya Lopez from the Hand.
