Previously: We’ve been talking of late about Hawkeye the marksman, the Marvel Universe’s resident archer extraordinaire, longtime Avenger and seemingly full-time member of the lonely hearts club. Brother has no luck with the ladies. When we left off last time, Hawkeye was finding his way on an Avengers team increasingly populated with much more powerful teammates, and was beginning to feel outclassed…

As of AVENGERS #49, with founding members Goliath and the Wasp returned and new member Hercules frequently underfoot (although momentarily missing at the time), ol’ Hawkeye was beginning to have serious doubts about his worth as an Avenger.

These feelings would come to a head in AVENGERS #63, in “And In This Corner…Goliath!”, written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Gene Colan.

Returning from Wakanda with their newest recruits the Black Panther and the Vision, Hawkeye finds himself hurtling toward Avengers Mansion when the Panther’s ship loses control just as the craft is coming in for a landing. Hawkeye quickly assesses the situation and leaps to action, preparing to fire a series of electromagnetic arrows at the roof to bring the ship to a halt once it nears the building. Unfortunately, there’s a slight technical malfunction:

The Vision manages to save the day by stopping the ship by hand, thanks to his ability to increase his mass, but Hawkeye takes his failure hard:

Back in the Mansion, Hawkeye and company greet Hank Pym and his wife the Wasp freshly returned from their honeymoon. Pym has a startling announcement, though: his days as Goliath are over. Feeling that his body is unable to handle the strains that come with growing to colossal size (and blaming that strain for his recent schizophrenic episode, which had led to his creating the Yellowjacket identity in the first place), Pym had abandoned his gigantic identity in favor of continuing to operate full-time as Yellowjacket. Unfortunately, it meant that both the new Goliath costume Wasp had designed and Pym’s own brand-new extra-strength growth serum would have to go unused.

Before he can destroy the serum, news hits from Nick Fury that ex-Avenger Black Widow (and Hawkeye’s longtime love interest, if you recall), had gone missing while on a top-secret SHIELD mission, and was last seen in the Caribbean. The Avengers race off to her rescue, leaving Hawkeye behind, declaring him to be too personally involved to be of any use.

Before long, the abandoned Hawkeye receives another phone call, this time from the Widow herself, letting the Avengers know that she’s actually being held captive in New York, at an unknown location that the sharp-eared Hawkeye manages to recognize as Coney Island. Still bruised from his failure in the plane and feeling outclassed, Hawkeye swipes Pym’s unused costume and growth serum and chugs it down:

And in short order, Hawkeye the Marksman is no longer in the picture, replaced by the all-new Goliath:

As it turns out, the Widow had been kidnapped by frequent FF antagonists the Puppet Master and the Mad Thinker and Egghead, Hank Pym’s longtime foe, and when they spot Goliath approaching atop an oncoming subway train, they unleash their own colossal android, prepared by Egghead for the express purpose of defeating Pym in combat. At least, I guess that was the purpose. The precise motivation of the larger fiendish plan is never quite made clear…

The new Goliath has some trouble adjusting to his new abilities, but quickly gets the hang of the whole size-changing thing, putting it to good use in defeating the android and saving the Widow.

So was Hawkeye’s experiment with Pym’s Goliath serum a one-time deal, or a permanent change? Goliath answers the question for Black Panther with a simple gesture:

Hawkeye’s transformation to Goliath also came along with a another rare look back to Hawkeye’s past in AVENGERS #64, as an old acquaintance of his, criminal racketeer Barney Barton, shows up on the Avengers’ doorstep looking for Hawkeye. Barton had been recruited by the aforementioned criminal scientist Egghead, looking for some extra help in his latest scheme, involving an orbiting satellite death-ray, which is about to fire on several American cities. Barton refused, and decided to tip off the Avengers instead, with Hawkeye none too pleased at Barton’s presence:

The Avengers head into space to take out Egghead’s death-ray, with Barney Barton even coming along at his insistence. The Avengers swiftly make mincemeat of Egghead’s robot army, until he uses the materials left over from his alliance with the Puppet Master to completely immobilize the Avengers.

The only one still free, Barney Barton throws himself into the death ray projector, but not without a cost, being critically injured by the explosion.

Now free, Hawkeye makes his way to Barton, and the two have a final conversation (in which we for the first time learn Hawkeye’s real name). As Barton dies, Hawkeye reveals just how he and Barney knew each other:

A solid offering from Roy Thomas and Gene Colan here, with a long-overdue look into Hawkeye’s background. Even more light was shed on Hawkeye’s past in the next issue, with the return of the Swordsman, who’s used by Egghead in a plot to destroy his old foe Hank Pym. Here we learn that Barney and Clint both worked at the carnival back when young Clint was trained in archery by the Swordsman, and that it was Barney who found Clint’s broken body after the Swordsman cut the high wire on which the young archer was standing, after having discovered the Swordsman’s criminal tendencies. When Barney learns that Clint turned down the Swordsman’s offer to split the take from the robbery, he’s disgusted that Clint passesd on the easy money, and turned to a full-time life of crime. Disgusted by his brother’s actions, Hawkeye stopped using their surname, which explains why so many years had gone by before revealing his real name.

When the Swordsman eventually infiltrates the Mansion and attacks the Avengers, he and Hawkeye (or, rather, Goliath) meet once more, and the Swordsman uses his high-tech sword to knock Clint out, so as to deliver him to Egghead. Egghead, however, isn’t pleased that Swordsman has brought the wrong Goliath, and turns on the Swordsman, sending him hurtling out the window.

With a makeshift bow and arrow, Goliath manages to save his former mentor, while at the same time capturing Egghead, the man responsible for the death of his brother.

For all his bravado, Clint was never really effective in his role as Goliath, whether it was due to overconfidence, such as here, when he’s schooled by Ultron:

Or here, during the Kree-Skrull War, when he simply forgets to take his growth serum.

Regardless, when you’re on a team with folks like Hercules, the Vision and Thor, even at 15 feet tall you’re not going to be the strongest guy in the room, and soon enough, we’d see Br’er Hawkeye’s inferiority complex creeping back.

For Those Who Came In Late: Last week, we introduced you to Marvel Comics’ resident archer and malcontent, Hawkeye the Marksman. As we saw then, Hawkeye got his start as a misunderstood supervillain, repeatedly finding himself in conflict with Iron Man thanks to Hawkeye’s romantic fixation on the Soviet femme fatale the Black Widow. However, Hawkeye’s fortunes were about to take a turn for the better…

By May of 1965, Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief (and sole writer) Stan Lee must have been feeling that his company’s second-most-popular team book, THE AVENGERS, was in something of a rut. Because unexpectedly, with issue #16, “The Old Order Changeth!”, Lee and artist Don Heck shook up the team roster like nobody’s business, dropping founding members Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man and the Wasp, and teaming up the lone remaining member Captain America with three reformed supervillains: Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from the pages of X-MEN, and — you guessed it — good ol’ Hawkeye from his appearances in Iron Man’s book TALES OF SUSPENSE.

Hawkeye probably wins the award for “best way to earn a spot on the team”: he busted into Avengers Mansion, and tied up Jarvis the butler. Let’s take a look.

So the Avengers are sitting around the meeting table one day complaining about how overworked they are, when they suddenly notice smoke billowing under the door from elsewhere in the mansion. Running to investigate, Iron Man notices an arrow stuck to the door, and realizes who they’re dealing with: his old sparring partner Hawkeye.

Hawkeye, however, isn’t looking for a fight, despite the bound and gagged butler slumped in the corner. Quite the contrary, he wants to join up, telling the Avengers that a life of crime was never his intention. Hawkeye explains that it was his love for the Communist spy the Black Widow that had led him into conflict with Iron Man, and that she had recently been critically wounded by her Red masters when she tried to betray them and desert to the West. Determined to make amends for their criminal deeds, Hawkeye elected to offer his services to the Avengers.

To prove his worth to the team, Hawkeye fires a volley of arrows at the bound and gagged Jarvis, severing his bonds in a needlessly hazardous fashion.

Surprisingly, the Avengers jump right on board, immediately offering him a spot on the team, with Iron Man even offering to fetch him an AVENGERS’ MANUAL so Hawkeye can study up on the by-laws.

Hawkeye’s membership in the team is swiftly announced to the press, and even more surprisingly, it’s announced that Hawkeye has been “thoroughly investigated and approved by the federal security agency,” this despite the months he spent actively engaging in acts of treason alongside a known Communist spy. He must have done really well on the interview…

With everyone but Cap soon gone, Hawkeye finds himself on a completely unproven and significantly smaller Avengers team alongside Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, and even he finds himself having doubts:

Of course, Hawkeye didn’t exactly make an easy adjustment to working in a team environment. In what would become a long-running character trait for him, Hawkeye bristled at taking orders and immediately felt that the reins of leadership should go to him, not Captain America:

The first glimpse we got into Hawkeye’s backstory came in AVENGERS #19, “The Coming of … the Swordsman!”, by Lee and Heck, in which the Avengers must contend with the rogue adventurer known as the Swordsman, who, like Hawkeye, tries to earn Avengers membership by busting into Avengers Mansion. He’s not quite as successful as Hawkeye, though, and ends up kayoed by the Scarlet Witch and running away with his tail between his legs. At the news of the Swordsman’s break-in, Hawkeye freaks out, and tells his story.

It turns out it had been the Swordsman who trained him in archery as a young boy traveling with the carnival. (Why exactly a master of swordplay would train the kid in archery wouldn’t make sense for years, until a later writer thought about that and made a slight revision to the origin. More on that later.)

Young Clint Barton worshipped the Swordsman, until the day he discovered that the Swordsman had robbed the paymaster.

When young Clint refused to come in on the Swordsman’s criminal schemes, the Swordsman came after him, chasing up the circus’ highwire and then slicing it with his blade, sending the boy hurtling to the ground below, leaving Clint for dead.

The strange thing was, this backstory wasn’t really utilized much in the Swordman’s first appearance, and if I recall correctly, never played a huge part in his AVENGERS storyline, winding up as little more than an abandoned subplot.

As Cap tried to train and hone his new team, Hawkeye’s temper remained an issue, with the archer often flirting with out-and-out insubordination:

Hawkeye’s weakness for a pretty face also re-emerges, as he finds himself beginning to have feelings for the Scarlet Witch, who herself is carrying a torch for Cap, which doesn’t sit too well with Hawkeye…

As Hawkeye’s tenure with the team grows, we also begin to see the first inklings of what would become his long-running inferiority complex, brought to the surface by the return of Hank Pym to the team, in his new identity of Goliath.

Along with this new insecurity came a bit of maturity, as Hawkeye began to show his respect for Captain America as a leader, as seen in this moment from AVENGERS #29…

…and this one from AVENGERS #32:

Hawkeye’s issues with Goliath came to a head only four months later, when Pym expresses his disapproval of inviting Hawkeye’s recently returned girlfriend the Black Widow onto the team. Hawkeye delivers a particularly wicked zinger to the often-absent Goliath: “You talk pretty big, for a guy who spends most of his time takin’ vacations!”

The question of Black Widow’s membership quickly becomes moot when the Widow disappears once more, accused of treason (although she was in actuality working as a double-agent for SHIELD, in one of the first of many examples of Nick Fury peeing in the Avengers’ Cheerios every chance he gets). However, Hawkeye’s inferiority complex and his issues with Hank “Goliath” Pym would come together in a very unexpected way in the next stage of his AVENGERS career, when he would steal Hank’s size-changing formula and find out for himself that being a Goliath might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

But that’s a story for another time…