Why Don’t We Care More About Hawkeye?

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 fanbase, and a codename

In the movies, he's just Clint Barton, and he's definitely not anyone's favorite Avenger

Why is that? Okay, look, the city is flying. We're fighting an army of robots

And I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense. 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 superhuman 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 Mav Archer. Yes, he had his own Disney Plus 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

I see the heart. 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, harshly 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

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 Bobby Morris. 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 Spartan is closer to unnamed G.I. 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 too far Yeah I didn write it You blame Joss that 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 A-Ha'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 Madam Mask 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 Ronan, 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

Okay, tiny dude is 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 A-Ha 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 A-Ha, all the magic was lost. The Disney Plus show is a fine

Disney Plus show but it 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 Do they make him hard of hearing Sure Do they

end the show with him having a costume? Yeah, kinda. 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

in this 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're 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 AHA created

Maybe they'll get it right when the Hawkeyes show up in the inevitable Young Avengers TV show

Don't give me hope