Okay but, stick with me here, what if Clint Barton’s junker of a car (”Have you seen my life? Why the hell would I waste money on something that’ll be blown up before next tuesday??) finally craps out on him so he hits the local places to scout out a new car he can care for and become overly attached to. He finds this super cool looking (but dirty and dented in a few places, but it has great bones!) car. Yeah it’s yellow, but he can fix that later. It has these cool stripes that almost look like arrows.
Clint’s friends all generally lovingly mock his newest project, but it rolls of his back because who doesn’t mock the ones you love? And he’s really enjoying the new car,that puppy had an amazing engine under the hood and Clint is a huge fan of running away faster than the bad guys, when the time right anyway. The one thing he can’t quite get right is the radio, it’s finicky and jumpy but always manages to play exactly the music he’s in the mood for, so whatever.
The weekend before he starts the research into repainting a car (or just paying someone else to do it, believe it or not Clint doesn’t actually want to be completely purple, skin included, no matter WHAT Natasha or Kate might imply and let’s face it, his life has a way of… well, he’s probably gonna pay someone to paint the car, let’s leave it at that) and a Thing Happens.
Truthfully, being kidnapped by his own car who brings him to meet OTHER cars (and one really bitchin truck rig with awesome flames on its sides) that CAN SPEAK isn’t actually anywhere near the top ten of weird shit that happens to Clint. Optimus is a bit of a talker, sometimes, but Clint finds himself making a tank cry with laughter so it’s all good.
There’s a lost weekend (maybe week, it got blurry in the middle) but Clint reappears on a Tuesday, driving into the parking lot of Stark Tower. He’s got a nose bandage, an air cast, a black eye and maybe some bruised ribs. The car he’s driving (bumble bee and Clint may be planning on looking up those cool blue bees as part of the Purple Would Look Great On You argument) looking slightly worse for wear. The guy at the junkyard assured him that bumbles would heal himself as long as there was a high metallic diet and Clint plans on enticing stark for that particular meal, god knows what that man has hidden away. But currently Bumble bee is missing a headlight, has his bumper being held on with duct tape and a chain, one wheel is slightly deflated giving his driving the appearance of a sad limp and on the slightly dented hood, the black pattern now shows the front end of two arrows that follow the length of the car and end in fletching over the trunk.
As he pulls in past the the rest of the avengers, the car stereo starts blasting “Princes of the Universe” by queen and Clint just leans back in the seat, hands behind his head, thinking, ‘this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS THING I would watch the shit out of this.
Well, the problem begins (as problems often do) with comics.
See, comics are a sort of ‘soap opera with capes and tights.’ Comics are ‘fanfic but written by mostly straight white guys who are chosen by other straight white guys.’ Comics are a never ending arms race of suffering, and that’s the problem.
So it’s hard to pin down a character. Because it’s not one character.
Every writer wants to make their mark. They want THEIR version of the character to be the one that people point to and say, “THIS. THIS is the quintessential Hawkeye. THIS is the reason I love Hawkeye.”
Because they’re not going to write the character forever. That’s comics. There’s always someone right behind them, nipping at their heels, someone who wants nothing more, in most cases, then to sweep their careful work aside and make THEIR mark on the character.
There’s not much you can do to stop that from happening. You can write a really good book, you can be clever and creative and still not hit the readership the right way. You can write A GOOD BOOK and you’ll still end up in the trash heap of the 25 cent bin, because the promotion team or the movie schedule or the competitor’s event cycle screwed you over.
It’s much easier to make a lot of noise. To be remembered, rather than beloved. To get people tweeting and talking and protesting and fighting, because that means when you tossed off this book, there’ll be another one waiting for you.
Don’t believe me? I mean, someone keeps giving Nick Spencer new books. (shrug)
So there is no one Hawkeye. The Hawkeye of the early West Coast Avengers has little in common with the Hawkeye of Fraction and Aja’s solo book run. The Hawkeye of the most recent Secret Avengers by Ales Kot would be unrecognizable to the Hawkeye of the Ultimates verse. Movieverse Hawkeye is almost a mirror image of Hawkeye of Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
When you love a character, the question is, which one? Because even if you take fandom interpretation and fanon out of the equation, there’s a lot of them to choose from. And while canon feeds fanon, fanon bleeds back into canon.
Describing the character you love takes some effort, some cherrypicking.
For me, it’s this:
On the surface, he’s ordinary. And his awareness of his ordinariness is part of what makes him so extraordinary. He’s raised himself to his current position by sheer force of will and a refusal to stop. He’s bullheaded and snarky and has a chip on his shoulder the size of the island of Manhattan. He’s not as stupid as he thinks he is, and he’s not as good as he believes he is, and both of those facts are a little heartbreaking.
He’s a man who destroyed his own hearing, because he knew if he didn’t, he was going to hurt someone he loved. He’s also a man who entered canon trying to rob Tony Stark, which was universally regarded as a very bad idea, since that’s how a lot of people end up dead.
He’s not a god or a genius or a super soldier.
He is a man who looked at the end of the world, and said, fuck you, I’ve got a COUPLE OF STICKS AND A PIECE OF STRING and I’m still going to KICK YOUR ASS. There is something comforting about that, for most people.
We want to believe, after all, that if push came to shove, if things got bad, then we would stand up. With all the risk, and all the fear, and a very good chance that we would not win, we want to believe, that we would still stand.
So all the other stuff, the ragged ends and the bad choices, the stupid plots and the OOC moments, the embarrassing contradictions in canon and the writers who can’t figure him out or don’t want to bother trying, it melts down to one truth at the core of his character, every time.
He is a man that doesn’t feel too different from you or me. And he stands. He makes bad choices, he screws people over, he ruins relationships and cheats on partners and girlfriends, he does stupid, stupid things, because this is a soap opera, and half the writers don’t remember what the last one did and the other half don’t care.
For all the parts of him I don’t like, he’s still my favorite. Because he shouldn’t be there. He has no place there. He’s outgunned and outflanked. Everyone around him is smarter than him, better trained than him, better equipped than him.
Steel Phoenix Studios 