Issue(s): Tales Of Suspense #57
Cover Date: Sep 64
Title: "Hawkeye, The Marksman!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Don Heck - Penciler
Don Heck - Inker

Review/plot: An archer named Hawkeye is ignored at a carnival...

...but Iron Man gets accolades for stopping an out of control amusement ride, so Hawkeye decides to become a costumed adventurer.

He designs some trick arrows (look at those powerful gloved hands)...

...and goes out looking for crimes in progress, but due to a misunderstanding he gets blamed for a jewelry robbery. He is rescued by the Black Widow, who convinces him to attack Iron Man.

He comes close to beating IM...

...but in the fight the Black Widow gets injured and he runs off with her.

I've never been a big fan of Hawkeye. Trick arrows are a stupid power. There's no way he should be in Iron Man's league.

I don't understand his longevity or how he came to be an Avenger.

Also in this issue,Tony Stark 'accidentally' goes on a date with Pepper Potts (he was trying to ask her out on a date for Happy, but she misunderstood). The date doesn't go well, so she agrees to go out with Happy to make Tony jealous. Ah, love triangles.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 8 - first Hawkeye

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Thunderbolts #39

The name Hawkeye and the bucksin ensemble seems a reference to Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye, from the Last of the Mohicans.

Hawkeye didn't become cool until avengers movie came out

Relooking at the early Black Widow pre-costumed period, I'm starting to see her a bit as an early model of the "corporate sabotage femme fatal" that would probably be better seen with the likes of Madam Masque and the ones who really show up once you get to the late 70s and 80s. You could perhaps wonder what would have happened if she did go down this path thus negating the need for someone like Whitney Frost.

Hawkeyer and Hank Pym must be the two characters we disagree about the most. I have always liked him - he's often so hopelessly outpowered and that doesn't stop him. He would develop into a great character in the 80's and was the reason I collected both West Coast Avengers and Solo Avengers.

A lot of DC characters have no superpowers but that has always seemed to be more rare among Marvel heroes and Hawkeye has always been one of the best of them. Being an Avenger seemed to define him - after all, look at how long he was an Avenger. No wonder he would be so pissed when Gyrich would bounce him.

I also like how his costume has changed so many times over the years, but it's almost always come back to some variation on this original Don Heck design.

the early version of the Black Widow does a better job of living up to her name. A seductress who uses her wiles to gain what she wants.

And Don Heck could draw one thing well: pretty girls.

"I don't understand [Hawkeye's] longevity or how he came to be an Avenger."

Hawkeye's early popularity might have been largely due to his association with the Black Widow, an association which still supports his character nowadays in the movies. Any character can last as a plaything of Natasha's; they could have used Jughead and few would have cared. He's a decent foe for Iron Man because they both use gimmicky technology and have no super-powers.

Post-Natasha, Hawkeye serves for many Avengers issues mainly as an arguing partner for Captain America.

He became an Avenger partly (mainly?) because he fit the same anti-hero character mold used for the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, in a story where all of the original Avengers left, leaving only Captain America and three anti-heroes. The Avengers became a book in which Marvel tried to breathe new life into its second-string characters, sometimes more successfully than others. At one point, in the 70s I think, they took Hawkeye's name and bow away, gave him some Pym particles, and made him into a successor of Goliath (Giant-Man). This period lasted for quite a while. Apparently the Hawkeye persona wasn't too popular at the time. Hawkeye didn't really seem to get popular until the 80s, circa the West Coast Avengers era.

@James Holt: Clint became Goliath in Avengers 63 in 1969 and remained in that guise until the Kree/Skrull War in '71, more or less becoming Hawkeye again after that.

Thanks Ataru320. I wasn't a big fan of Roy Thomas' work on the Avengers. I liked his later stuff in DC's All-Star Squadron but most of his Marvel stuff sort of left me cold and was part of what led me into a long comicless period in the 70s.

I liked Hawkeye more than my comic-reading contemporaries did when I was a kid growing up in the 60s. They called him a copy of Green Arrow but to me he was a different character altogether. Green Arrow was a rich guy like Batman with an Arrowcave, but Hawkeye was a circus performer who flirted with crime, fell hard for the Widow, and eventually wound up being a full-time superhero. I could relate to Hawkeye.

Hawkeye had a spin-off character of his own: the Swordsman. Stan Lee and Don Heck spent a lot of time on Hawkeye.

Hawkeye's popularity is hardly a mystery; he was, for years, the smartass Avenger, the one who got to be salty and down-to-Earth and a bit of a raffish outsider even within the respectable institution the team becomes. On a team that includes a god, a billionaire, ad a living legend, that stands out. He's also one of the few Avengers in the team's early years who's a blue-collar type.

There's a reason Denny O'Neil essentially cribbed his personality for Green Arrow.

I have always liked Hawkeye because of his personality. I disagree that he was not cool until the movies. He was around for almost 50 years before the movie. I disagree however that Denny O'Neill cribbed his personality for Green Arrow. Hawkeye is a smartass but is not mean about it. Green Arrow turned into a belligerent liberal activist which is not the same thing at all.

Oh, boy, let's not go there...

To clarify my earlier comments, prior to Denny O'Neil's work on Green Arrow, the main reason why my then-young contemporaries regarded Hawkeye as a copy of Green Arrow was simply because they both used gimmick arrows and a bow. We were all aware that the Green Arrow character predated the Hawkeye character, so they argued that Hawkeye was just a copycat, while I argued in favor of his uniqueness, but we all liked both characters. My point at that time was that, prior to O'Neil, Green Arrow was a copycat, basically a Batman knock-off with a bow.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that Hawkeye wasn't cool prior to the movies, only that he benefited from his association with the Black Widow then, in the the comics, as he does now, in the movies. The movie Hawkeye's okay but I personally like the comic version better.

Interesting side note: There were some late 50s Green Arrow stories that were drawn by Jack Kirby and published in Adventure Comics.

I agree with your comments, James. I also prefer the comic version of Hawkeye. I have the collected Kirby Green Arrows in a single volume. I find it interesting that Jack came up with the origin of the silver age Green Arrow i.e., that he was stranded on an island and learned his archery skills to survive as opposed the golden age version who had been stranded atop a plateau in the American West and was trained by a lost tribe of Native Americans.

"...No one takes me by surprise twice!..."

I always thought Hawkeye's greatest "powers" were obstinance and ingenuity.

"I feel as though the destiny of the entire city below me is in my powerful gloved hands!" ...except you're not wearing gloves, Hawkeye.

“The City is flying, we’re fighting an Army of robots and i’ve got a Bow” Hawkeye is awesome because all his SUPERHERO skills were hard work earnings.