We haven't met yet.
I'm Clint.
I don't care.
This is Clint Barton.
He's a world class marksman, super spy,
and a member of the Avengers.
However, nobody seems to care about him.
In the comics, Hawkeye has a near 60 year history,
a dedicated fan base, and a code name.
In the movies, he's just Clint Barton,
and he's definitely not anyone's favorite Avenger.
Why is that?
OK, look.
The city is flying.
We're fighting an army of robots.
And I have a bow and arrow.
None of this makes sense.
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First appearing in Marvel's Thor and sporadically
appearing in the MCU ever since, you'd
think that Clint Barton would be a fan favorite.
He's the everyman the mortal with feet of clay
surrounded by super human beings and literal gods.
And yet, it doesn't quite feel like there's
a stalwart fanbase who are clamoring for more of Jeremy
Renner's mauve archer.
Yes, he had his own Disney+ show and has appeared in six feature
film outings.
However, he never seems to have much to do or get
much development.
So much so, in fact, that Jeremy Renner
was driven to publicly express his misgivings
that his character was under mind control
throughout most of his debut.
He went so far as to ruin multiple
takes by clasping his heart and falling to the ground.
When asked what he was doing, he said
he was acting like he was having a heart
attack so he could be killed off at any point in the movie.
I've done the whole mind control thing.
Not a fan.
In Age of Ultron, the Marvel creative committee
tried to fix this rocky start.
Clint was given a backstory of being a family man
and wanting to leave the S.H.I.E.L.D. life.
However, at the end of the day, the character
still just ended up being the badass
with a heart of gold cliche.
Hi, sweetheart.
Hey, buddy.
These are smaller agents.
In his most meaningful appearance in the MCU,
his family is killed, he reinvents himself
as a vengeful ninja, and is eventually pulled back
into the fold by Natasha.
This is the most development the character
has received over his cinematic existence
and is based exclusively on the least interesting time
of his comic book adventures.
In the comics, Clint Barton first
appears in Tales of Suspense number
57 from September of 1964.
The character was originally a villain, partially deaf,
and a circus performer.
The archer by trade ultimately took to a life of crime
to make ends meet.
He also looks much different than the black leather ensemble
that Barton usually sports.
The character that the MCU has attempted to develop
is more closely related to the Ultimates
version of Hawkeye than the traditional 616 version.
He's a spy, he's got a family, and he's
a badass, even going so far as to kill multiple adversaries
with his fingernails.
Starting to root for this guy.
By comparison, the MCU Barton is bland.
Very bland.
And there's a few reasons for this.
Hawkeye never got the shine that Cap or Tony or Thor got.
Thus, he was relegated to supporting
character in the continuing Avengers films.
They just don't have enough time or space
to fully flesh him out in those large ensemble action films.
You know, what would be interesting for Clint to do?
Wear his traditional purple costume,
use trick arrows like a boxing glove and a boomerang,
and have a relationship with Bobbi Morse.
But we'll get to that in a second.
That seems like how you would want to set up the character,
but Whedon and co just couldn't be bothered,
so Renner's Barton is closer to unnamed GI Joe background
character than to his four-colored counterpart.
The MCU is fine with literal dragons and aliens,
but a purple mask and a boxing glove arrow?
That's too far.
Yeah, I didn't write it.
You blame Joss, that's right.
However, there was a silver lining to all of this--
Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye.
This is the book that everyone was
clamoring for an adaptation of.
Running for 22 issues, this series
positioned Clint Barton as a broken man.
We follow him on his days off while he emotionally
attempts to recover from the high toll
being a superhero takes on you.
The book is equal parts Rockford Files and Columbo.
Before this, Hawkeye had only sustained a few solo
miniseries.
Fraction and Aja's Hawkeye proved
to be the breakout hit of 2012.
My kids would flip.
I mean, you're their absolute favorite.
It told low stakes stories about Clint
and the newly minted Young Avengers Hawkeye Kate Bishop
as they attempted to work through difficult problems
like what do we feed this dog, why
won't these local gangsters stop calling us bro,
and is Madame Masque actually scary.
The series redefined the character for the modern age.
Previous to this run, the character
had been a supporting ensemble member of Bendis' Avengers run,
and then he was killed off and brought back as Ronin,
a mysterious ninja with a dark past.
He had also been a recurring character
throughout the history of Avengers and West Coast
Avengers as Goliath, but let's be honest.
No one likes Goliath Clint.
He needs to have a bow, not be a bootleg Giant-Man.
OK, tiny dude is big now.
He's big now.
So in September of 2018 when Marvel Studios'
began developing a solo Hawkeye series,
there was only one viable option for a Clint show--
the Fraction and Aja work.
However, as is so often the case with these works
of genuine creative vision, when it
was adapted by people other than Fraction and Aja,
all the magic was lost.
The Disney+ show is a fine Disney+ show,
but it's a terrible Hawkeye show.
Are there the vestiges of their work?
The target graphic design motifs, the introduction
of Kate Bishop and Pizza Dog.
Yes.
Did they make him hard of hearing?
Sure.
Do they end the show with him having a costume?
Yeah, kina.
And that's the problem.
The show's greatest ambition is to give Hawkeye a costume.
She just outdid herself with this suit, right?
The elasticity and the fabric.
Stop.
He's appeared numerous times on screen,
specifically in one of the highest grossing films
of all time.
And yet, the creatives involved were more concerned
with giving him his Ronin costume, which
he's worn for a collective 15 issues,
than his standard iconic costume,
which he had worn for over 60 years.
It's not really the costume that we are complaining about.
It's the creative cowardice to refuse
to treat the characters with the respect they deserve.
You know what I've become.
I don't judge people on their worst mistakes.
Clint is a complex, interesting, and dynamic character
when you write him correctly.
The funny thing about this is that while it's not perfect,
the show Arrow handled many of the same archer
tropes that Hawkeye plays with and did them better for longer.
And it's really fun when it works.
Do you know anyone hiring ex-billionaires
with superior archery skills?
The real question that a Hawkeye show should have asked
is who is Hawkeye and why do we care about him.
What it really did was immediately
make us care about Kate Bishop more in the first five
minutes of her introduction than we have
in eight hours of Clint Barton.
In summary, the MCU is continuing to grow and evolve.
These supporting legacy characters
are being moved up to a-list status,
and they're being given the spotlight and opportunity
to grow.
Thus far, Hawkeye has not done that.
The TV show failed the brilliance and deeply human
approach that Fraction and Aja created.
Maybe they'll get it right when the Hawkeyes show up
in the inevitable Young Avengers TV show.
Don't give me hope.
What do you think?
Will we ever see Hawkeye in his trademark purple hood?
Comment down below.
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