Clinton Barton (Earth-616)

From Marvel Database

Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins and Early Days 1.2 Continued Career and Mockingbird 1.3 West Coast Avengers 1.4 Renewed Solo Career and Thunderbolts 1.5 Death 1.6 Ronin 1.7 Dark Reign 2 Powers and Abilities 2.1 Powers 2.2 Abilities 2.3 Strength level 2.4 Weaknesses 3 Paraphernalia 3.1 Equipment 3.2 Transportation 3.3 Weapons 4 Notes 5 Links 5.1 Discover and Discuss

History

Origins and Early Days

Orphaned at an early age, Clint Barton was sent to a children's home with his brother Bernard. Running away to join a traveling circus, the pair worked as roustabouts. While a member of the circus, Clint was trained by the original Swordsman and by Trick Shot.

Witnessing Iron Man in action, Barton attempted to emulate him by donning a colorful costume and employing his archery skills to fight crime. However, during his first public appearance, Hawkeye was mistaken for a thief by police and found himself actually fighting Iron Man.

Soon, the Black Widow enlisted him as her partner. Although he became romantically involved with her, he was unhappy being a criminal. When he approached the Avengers and told them of his desire to reform, Iron Man sponsored his membership on the team.

Barton formed, along with Captain America, Scarlet Witch and her brother Quicksilver, an incarnation of the Avengers known as "Cap's Kooky Quartet." This was the lineup that succeeded the original after the four remaining founders all took indefinite leaves of absence. This team was at first regarded as less formidable than the previous roster, but soon proved themselves against the likes of such as Kang the Conqueror and Doctor Doom. Hawkeye was an active member of the Avengers for years, with his archery skills and inventive trick arrows augmenting the superhuman powers of his associates. His carefree and rebellious personality meant that he sometimes argued with Captain America, but their teamwork never faltered when faced by outside threats.

Continued Career and Mockingbird

For a short time, Barton abandoned his Hawkeye identity, and taking Hank Pym's growth serum, operated under the name Goliath. He resumed his Hawkeye identity after briefly being the Golden Archer soon after. He has taken several extended leaves of absence from the Avengers, trying to establish a career for himself outside of the group.

During one of his leaves of absence from the Avengers, Barton was security chief for Cross Technological Enterprises. He met and eloped with Bobbi Morse, a.k.a. fellow crime fighter Mockingbird at this time. Another person he met while at Cross was Jorge Latham, who would design his Sky-Cycle. It was also during this time that he and Mockingbird were kidnapped by Crossfire, a villain who wanted to use hypnotic ultrasounds to force superheroes to kill each other. Hawkeye and Mockingbird defeated Crossfire, but Barton suffered permanent hearing damage due to the ultrasounds, and for a long time was forced to wear a hearing aid. Eventually Franklin Richards cured him of this injury.

West Coast Avengers

Upon his return to the Avengers, Barton was appointed to chair a new second team of Avengers based on the West Coast by then-chairman, the Vision. The team Hawkeye chose consisted of Mockingbird, his original inspiration Iron Man, Wonder Man, and Tigra. Hawkeye and Mockingbird acted as the guiding force behind the team. Barton hired his old friend from Cross Technologies, Jorge Latham, to act as the on-staff mechanic and to build a new fleet of sky-cycles. Hank Pym helped the team in a civilian capacity as the resident scientist.

One of the western team's adventures scattered them across time. Hawkeye and most of the team were stranded in ancient Egypt, but Mockingbird was in the Old West, held captive and rendered an amnesiac by Phantom Rider (Lincoln Slade), who posed as her lover. In a mountaintop battle between the two after her escape, Barbara allowed Slade to fall to his death. The couple separated after Clint learned of this (through the Rider's spirit); the rift was exacerbated when she proved instrumental in a plot by several world governments to abduct and dismantle the Vision for his near takeover of the world (although he had aborted the plan before anyone was truly harmed.) Mockingbird, along with Tigra and Moon Knight, left the team and with Bill Foster briefly formed a splinter group. Tigra and later Mockingbird returned to the AWC.

The West Coast team operated both independently and in conjunction with the senior East Coast team. One mission they were involved on was Operation Galactic Storm. Barton was initially relegated to remain on Earth as part of the "rear guard" team due to a "lack of raw power." With some timely aid from Hank Pym, he re-assumed his old Goliath identity, and took USAgent's place on Captain America's team bound for the Kree Empire. After Iron Man, against orders, led a group of Avengers to execute the Kree Supreme Intelligence, Barton was important in helping Captain America regain confidence in his leadership. Briefly maintaining the Goliath identity, Clint and Bobbi managed to reconcile during this time.

On the AWC's last mission, the team began an otherworldly trek to rescue the captured Mockingbird from the hands of Satannish The Supreme and Mephisto. During their escape, Mockingbird was tragically killed by Mephisto. Shortly thereafter, Vision began the vote that disbanded the West Coast team.

Renewed Solo Career and Thunderbolts

After Mockingbird's death, Hawkeye became a solo agent for a considerable amount of time. During this time, Barton 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 fiancee, a friend of James Rhodes.

As War Machine, Rhodes investigated and was surprised to see Hawkeye among the rebels, A government-backed group led by USAgent also arrived adding further confusion between the "Brothers in Arms". The three were able to stop the conflict and were confronted by the mysterious Advisor.

After years of fighting alongside the Avengers, Hawkeye offered to lead the Thunderbolts. Sympathetic to their plight as criminals trying to redeem their past actions, he decided to help them become a legitimate superhero team. They briefly assumed new identities to try and start over, with Hawkeye calling himself the new Dreadknight. He also became romantically involved with Moonstone. As leader, Hawkeye led the Thunderbolts both alongside and sometimes against his former teammates in the Avengers.

Death

Eventually rejoining the Avengers, Clint began a dallying affair with The Wasp, causing tension with her sometime lover, Hank Pym. When the Scarlet Witch had her breakdown that resulted in the breakup of the Avengers, Barton perished on an exploding Kree ship created by her crazed state.

The Scarlet Witch did not act again until a year later when she altered time and space on a universal level changing the Earth's history to where mutants were the rulers while human beings were a minority. Barton was was very much alive after these changes, and affiliated with an underground human resistance who opposed the mutant laws and supremacy. Like all of the other inhabitants on the planet, Clint retained no memory of his previous life. This changed however, after the X-Man Emma Frost restored his memories in hopes of recruiting him and the resistance to oppose Magneto and the Scarlet Witch. While his new teammates joined them and recruited more of his original Avenger teammates, Barton grew more reluctant in joining their cause and left them to deal with his returned memories. Through unknown circumstances, he eventually caught up to them and opposed the Wanda Maximoff. Failing to kill her with one of his arrows, he brought up their history as teammates as well as his former romantic feelings for her, angrily demanding to know why she ended his life. His confrontation with her did not last for very long. Clint's tensions eventually renewed Wanda's mental instability causing her to once again erase him from existence.

She then restored reality to it's original state, only to remove mutant genomes from millions of mutants on Earth making them human and without any powers. Clint awoke inside Avengers Mansion confused by the recent events. Leaving his "Hawkeye" wardrobe and equipment at the mansion, he set out to relocate the Scarlet Witch. He went to Doctor Strange for assistance in locating her. Doctor Strange was the only person in the world to know of his revival at the time. Clint found Wanda in a small European village located in the mountains living her life as a gypsy. Spending the night with her, Barton learned she had no memory of her previous life and was supposedly depowered. He left at dawn the next morning heeding the warning of Doctor Strange not to attempt to revive her memories and possibly worsen her mental condition.

Ronin

After the assassination of Captain America, Iron Man approached Clint about taking up the shield. Barton proved himself to be one of the few who could wield it effectively, and considered taking up the mantle. He and Iron Man encountered the Young Avengers called Patriot and Hawkeye. They convinced him that wearing Steve Rogers' costume and wielding his shield would be wrong, and he allowed the unregistered young heroes to go free. Later, when Clint learned that Stark had given the shield to "Bucky" Barnes (Cap's WWII sidekick and the reformed Winter Soldier), he payed this new Captain America a visit to express his disapproval.

Barton revealed himself as the current user of the Ronin guise, joining the New Avengers. During World War Hulk, he was defeated by two of the Hulk's Warbound while trying to defend Rick Jones.

During the Secret Invasion, Barton headed to the Savage Land with the New Avengers to investigate a crashed Skrull ship. There, both they and the Mighty Avengers came across many heroes from years past including a "Hawkeye" and a "Mockingbird". This "Hawkeye" was discovered to be a Skrull, but after Clint questioned "Mockingbird" of her miscarriage, he truly believed her to be his late wife. Teammates Luke Cage and Wolverine were more suspicious. This was justified later, when Clint was proven wrong by Mr. Fantastic, whose technology forced the Skrulls to revert to their true structures. Clint did not hesitate in shooting the Skrull Mockingbird impostor dead with one of Black Widow's firearms. Enraged by such deception, Barton became more dedicated to opposing the invading Skrulls without any second thoughts on killing them. During the final battle with the Skrulls alongside dozens of superheroes, he used his old bow and quiver of trick arrows (dropped by the wounded Kate Bishop) to kill several Super-Skrulls and to severely wound Queen Veranke, the orchestrator of the entire invasion, who had been posing as Spider-Woman. After the fighting, it was discovered that the people replaced by the Skrulls were alive and well, including Bobbi. She and Clint shared a tearful reunion. The two were the first to be invited by Captain America (Barnes) to his safe house which he offered as a base of operations to the New Avengers' cause and future activities. Although Clint initially opposed Barnes on his decision on becoming the new Captain America, he is beginning to accept him.

Dark Reign

When Norman Osborn went public with his own "Avengers", Clint and his Avengers quickly deduced their true identities. Outraged at Osborn's actions, and seeing criminals and murderers posing as heroes, Barton proposed to expose the surfaced Dark Avengers' true identities to the public. The New Avengers unanimously agreed with his idea, and had Spider-Woman deceive Norman and his own team into going to the Hellfire Club's abandoned headquarters where she and her team intended to weaken, and combat them. Instead however, they were forced to fight the Hood and his criminal empire whom Osborn sent instead. Ultimately escaping, Clint decided that Osborn was associating with the Hood and went to press to tell the general public of his discovery and the true nature of the Dark Avengers. While Clint and his wife joined up with the New Avengers to search for Luke Cage's daughter, Green Goblin formed the Dark Avengers with villains assuming the identities of fugitive heroes; Bullseye assumed the identity of Hawkeye. Clint was very much infuriated that those who would exploit their good names took advantage of the invasion. He didn't even want to wait for the Dark Avengers to show their true colors and wanted to fight them immediately.^[1][2] After a failed attempt to lure the Dark Avengers into a battle turned instead into a fight with the Hood's crime syndicate, Clint went on television, unmasked, and publicly denounced the Dark Avengers, stating that Osborn formed an alliance with the Hood, and urging people to fight against his new regime.^[3] He promised that evidence would be showing itself very soon. He was later chosen to become the leader of the New Avengers as the de-facto leader, after Luke Cage turned down a leadership role.^[4] In "The Reunion" miniseries, Clint followed Mockingbird along on a secret mission of her own. During the adventure, Clint received a brutal emotional blow: the Bobbi who came back to reconcile with him was the Skrull impostor. The true Mockingbird still wanted a divorce and no longer considered Clint her husband.

The Secret Invasion limited series features an alien Skrull ship crashing in the Savage Land, with Barton battling Skrulls impersonating Mockingbird and himself. He is reunited with the real Mockingbird during a final battle with the Skrulls. During the Dark Reign storyline, Barton is angry that villain Bullseye assumes the identity of Hawkeye. Barton publicly denounces Norman Osborn (and ally the Hood), and Barton takes over leadership of the New Avengers.

The limited series New Avengers: Reunion depicts Barton's successful attempt to reunite with Mockingbird, who rekindle their relationship.

Powers and Abilities

Powers

As Hawkeye or Ronin, no superhuman powers.

"Formerly"

Size Alteration: Thanks to the works of Hank Pym, Barton had the abilities as Goliath to use Pym Particles to grow to immense size or shrink to tiny proportions. The Particles would interact with the electrical impulses of his brain, creating an organism-wide "growth field" or "reducing field."

The growth process required the rapid acquisition of bodily mass, presumably from an extra-dimensional source. This extra-dimensional mass fortified all of his cellular tissue, including his bones and muscles, enabling him to support his increased weight, and giving him superhuman strength.

Via the shrinking process, Barton could shrink down to a size as low as one half-inch in height. Usually, he did not compress his mass into his smaller size. Instead his mass was extended into an extra-physical dimension that is opened by the activating of the Pym Particles, from which the mass could later be reclaimed. Strangely, because his mass was extended extra-dimensionally when he was at reduced size, Barton retained full human-size strength at that size.

Unlike Pym or the Wasp, he was never exposed to Pym Particles long enough to control his size at will, and thus had to use gas capsules infused with the Particles to shrink, grow, or revert to normal size.

Abilities

Master Archer: Barton has trained himself to become a master archer specializing in the use of regular bows, longbows, compound bows, and crossbows with near-perfect accuracy. He is capable of firing multiple arrows at a single target in a few seconds, hitting multiple targets in a few quick strokes, and and directly hit small targets in the greatest of distances. As Hawkeye, he practiced a minimum of two hours per day to keep his skills honed.

Expert Marksman: He possesses very keen eyesight, and his accuracy is virtually unerring; he was trained in his youth by Trick Shot with throwing blades, balls, bolas, and boomerangs. He now has near-perfect precision with any aimed or thrown weapon. He can hurl objects with extreme speed and accuracy, both in direct aim and complicated rebounds/interactions.

Master Acrobat: Barton possesses exceptional strength, endurance, and stamina. He is a peak athlete, with his reflexes and agility near the absolute pinnacle of human perfection. This, combined with extensive training as an aerialist and acrobat, makes him capable of acrobatic maneuvers that could put an Olympic gold medalist to shame.

Master Martial Artist: Barton is an excellent martial artist, having been trained in various forms by Captain America, who was perhaps the world's greatest hand-to-hand combatant. On his his first mission with Luke Cage's band of renegade New Avengers, Ronin proved to have come a long way from his old days of rarely ever using his martial arts skills. Throughout the battle against Elektra and The Hand, he demonstrated great skill in his overall martial ability, holding his own against nearly endless hordes of ninjas. This earned him a very respecting compliment from his teammate Iron Fist, one of the world's top martial artists.

Skilled Tactician: As shown in his leadership of the West Coast Avengers and the Thunderbolts, Barton is a highly competent strategist, tactician, and field commander.

Weapons Proficiency: Although as Hawkeye he was not known to use the martial arts style weapons he now uses in his Ronin identity (usually katana or nunchaku), Barton's incredible reflexes and hand-eye coordination allow him to easily master most weapons. He also received training in swordsmanship during his youth from the original Swordsman, who was considered one of the greatest experts in sword-fighting the world has ever known. Barton is one of the few people to be able to properly handle Captain America's shield.

Strength level

As Hawkeye or Ronin, Barton possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in intense regular exercise and is considered a peak-athlete. As Goliath, strength varied according to the height he achieved: at 10 feet tall, Barton could lift (press) 1000 pounds, at 25 feet tall he could lift (press) 10 tons, and at 100 feet tall, Barton could lift (press) 50 tons. The higher Barton grew past 25 feet, the more of his strength he had to use simply to support his own enormous mass. While shrinking as Goliath, Barton retained his normal strength.

Weaknesses

He was once 80% deaf due to an injury, but his hearing was restored during his rebirth on Franklin Richards' Counter-Earth.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

The Ronin armor provides protection and allows the user to blend in with the shadows. formerly Specially padded armor, Avengers Identicard, briefly wore a suit of armor built by Tony Stark that provided protection from bullets.

Transportation

Formerly Avengers Quinjets, sky-cycles, Atomic Steed

Weapons

As Ronin, Barton uses katana, nunchaku which can also extend into a bo (a nod to Mockingbird's staves) ^[5], and shuriken. formerly (as Hawkeye) custom-made bow, quick-release quiver, and a number of specialty arrows, briefly wielded Captain America's Shield.

Notes

• Clint Barton first appeared as Hawkeye in Tales of Suspense #57, as Goliath in Avengers Vol 1 #64, as Golden Archer in Captain America Vol 1 #179, and was identified as Ronin in New Avengers #30
• The term Ronin means "Masterless Samurai".
• First Marvel hero to join the Justice League of America from DC Comics. Joined in Avengers vs JLA #3.

• In Other Media = Barton appears (as Hawkeye) as a playable character in "Captain America and the Avengers" (a plat former for the NES), a beat-'em-up game of the same name for SNES and arcade, in the beat-'em-up arcade game "Spider-Man: The Video Game", and (as a downloadable character), in the multi-platform action RPG, "Marvel: Ultimate Alliance."

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