Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "envy"

The character Hawkeye has been a mainstay of the Marvel Universe for nearly 50 years. However, both his entrance and his beginning were quite rocky.

It all began in Tales of Suspense #57 (1964) when Clint Barton was working on the midway at Coney Island billed as the world's greatest archer marksman. In the middle of an exhibition, an emergency rose requiring Tony Stark to change into Iron Man. Everyone was impressed with Iron Man but Barton felt neglected. He thought, "I'm the greatest marksman the world has ever known! And yet they ignore me!! Why couldn't I do all the things Iron Man can do?? All it takes are a lot of mechanical gimmicks...and a colorful costume."

So that's the beginning of his career. However, he quickly got sidetracked when he foiled a robbery but the police mistakenly blamed him. Then he found himself attracted to the Black Widow and fell in with her even though the Black Widow as a sometime Soviet Agent at that point.

However, Iron Man showed he was not one to hold a grudge despite Hawkeye attempting to destroy him three times. He graciously let bygones be bygones and helped Hawkeye get into the Avengers.

At this point, the original team (Iron, Thor, Hulk, and Wasp) all took a powder leaving Captain America in charge of a team with Hawkeye, Scartet Witch, and Quicksilver.

The new team avoided continuity problems with characters in the Avengers title and their own series. In addition, it did seem to challenge some Justice League archetypes with Quicksilver providing speed like the Flash and Hawkeye having the powers of Green Arrow.

However, in one way, Hawkeye was several years ahead of Green Arrow in the sense that it would take another half decade for Green Arrow to become a more annoying character than Hawkeye.

Hawkeye's career began in envy and continued in envy. This time, the target became Captain America. Hawkeye thought, fresh off being a criminal, that he should be leader of the Avengers. While Quicksilver also wanted the position, Hawkeye made an effort at cutting down, annoying, and making life difficult for Captain America as the Avenger's leader, constantly mocking and ridiculing him.

As a reader, Hawkeye was easy to loathe. Even if you didn't know the history of Captain America in World War II or been following his solo adventures in Tales of Suspense, he'd proved himself a great teammate and a natural born leader in Avengers #4-17. Hawkeye couldn't see that. All he saw was that Captain America had something he wanted and Hawkeye despised him for it. His behavior was ugly.

However, in one way, reading Hawkeye's stories can be helpful because most of us have a little of that ugliness inside us. The difference between us and Hawkeye is that he let his ugliness hang out, while many will harbor ill will towards those who achieve more, have different gifts, or are in what we think is a better position that we are. Reading of Hawkeye's behavior in The Essential Avengers Vol. 1 served as a reminder as how ugly the green-eyed monster can be inside of me.