Clinton Barton (Earth-616)

From Marvel Database

Ronin

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Real Name

Clinton Francis Barton

Current Alias

Ronin

Aliases

Hawkeye, Goliath, Golden Archer, the Marksman, Father Time, Longbow, Dreadknight

Identity

Secret

Alignment

Good

Affiliation

New Avengers. Formerly Avengers, Thunderbolts, Avengers West Coast, Great Lakes Avengers, Shadows, Chain Gang, Defenders, Tiboldt Circus, aka "Circus of Crime", former partner of the Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) "Brothers in Arms", joined Justice League in Avengers vs JLA #3.

Relatives

Harold Barton (father, deceased), Edith Barton (mother, deceased), Bernard Barton (brother, deceased), Barbara Morse (Mockingbird) (wife, deceased).

Universe

Earth-616

Base Of Operations

Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, Greenwich Village. Formerly Avengers Mansion, Avengers Compound, Mount Charteris

Characteristics

Gender

Male

Height

6' 3"

Weight

230 lbs (105 kg)

Eyes

Blue

Hair

Blonde

Status

Citizenship

American

Marital Status

Widower

Occupation

Adventurer, formerly thief, circus roustabout

Education

No formal education

Origin

Origin

Trained by Swordsman and Trick Shot; inspired to fight crime after witnessing Iron Man in action.

Place of Birth

Waverly, Iowa

Creators

Stan Lee, Don Heck

First appearance

• (as Hawkeye) Tales of Suspense #57
• (as Goliath) Avengers Vol 1 #64
• (as Golden Archer) Captain America Vol 1 #179
• (identified as Ronin) New Avengers #30

History

Orphaned at an early age, Clint Barton was sent to a children's home with his brother Bernard. Running away to join a traveling circus, the pair worked as roustabouts. While a member of the circus, Clint was trained by the original Swordsman and by Trick Shot.

Witnessing Iron Man in action, Barton attempted to emulate him by donning a colorful costume and employing his archery skills to fight crime. However, during his first public appearance, Hawkeye was mistaken for a thief by police and found himself actually fighting Iron Man.

Soon, the Black Widow enlisted him as her partner. Although he became romantically involved with her, he was unhappy being a criminal. When he approached the Avengers and told them of his desire to reform, Iron Man sponsored his membership on the team.

Barton formed, along with Captain America, Scarlet Witch and her brother Quicksilver, an incarnation of the Avengers known as "Cap's Kooky Quartet." This was the lineup that succeeded the original after the four remaining founders all took indefinite leaves of absence. This team was at first regarded as less formidable than the previous roster, but soon proved themselves against the likes of such as Kang the Conqueror and Doctor Doom. Hawkeye was an active member of the Avengers for years, with his archery skills and inventive trick arrows augmenting the superhuman powers of his associates. His carefree and rebellious personality meant that he sometimes argued with Captain America, but their teamwork never faltered when faced by outside threats.

For a short time, Barton abandoned his Hawkeye identity, and taking Hank Pym's growth serum, operated under the name Goliath. He resumed his Hawkeye identity after briefly being the Golden Archer soon after. He has taken several extended leaves of absence from the Avengers, trying to establish a career for himself outside of the group.

During one of his leaves of absence from the Avengers, Barton was security chief for Cross Technological Enterprises. He met and eloped with Bobbi Morse, a.k.a. fellow crimefighter Mockingbird at this time. Another person he met while at Cross was Jorge Latham, who would design his Sky-Cycle. It was also during this time that he and Mockingbird were kidnapped by Crossfire, a villain who wanted to use hypnotic ultrasounds to force superheroes to kill each other. Hawkeye and Mockingbird defeated Crossfire, but Barton suffered permanent hearing damage due to the ultrasounds, and for a long time was forced to wear a hearing aid. Eventually Franklin Richards cured him of this injury.

Upon his return to the Avengers, Barton was appointed to chair a new second team of Avengers based on the West Coast by then-chairman, the Vision. The team Hawkeye chose consisted of Mockingbird, his original inspiration Iron Man, Wonder Man, and Tigra. Hawkeye and Mockingbird acted as the guiding force behind the team. Barton hired his old friend from Cross Technologies, Jorge Latham, to act as the on-staff mechanic and to build a new fleet of sky-cycles. Hank Pym helped the team in a civilian capacity as the resident scientist.

One of the western team's adventures scattered them across time. Hawkeye and most of the team were stranded in ancient Egypt, but Mockingbird was in the Old West, held captive and rendered an amnesiac by Phantom Rider (Lincoln Slade), who posed as her lover. In a mountaintop battle between the two after her escape, Barbara allowed Slade to fall to his death. The couple separated after Clint learned of this (through the Rider's spirit); the rift was exacerbated when she proved instrumental in a plot by several world governments to abduct and dismantle the Vision for his near takeover of the world (although he had aborted the plan before anyone was truly harmed.) Mockingbird, along with Tigra and Moon Knight, left the team and with Bill Foster briefly formed a splinter group. Tigra and later Mockingbird returned to the AWC.

The West Coast team operated both independently and in conjunction with the senior East Coast team. One mission they were involved on was Operation Galactic Storm. Barton was initially relegated to remain on Earth as part of the "rear guard" team due to a "lack of raw power." With some timely aid from Hank Pym, he re-assumed his old Goliath identity, and took USAgent's place on Captain America's team bound for the Kree Empire. After Iron Man, against orders, led a group of Avengers to execute the Kree Supreme Intelligence, Barton was important in helping Captain America regain confidence in his leadership. Briefly maintaining the Goliath identity, Clint and Bobbi managed to reconcile during this time.

On the AWC's last mission, the team began an otherworldy trek to rescue the captured Mockingbird from the hands of Satannish The Supreme and Mephisto. During their escape, Mockingbird was tragically killed by Mephisto. Shortly thereafter, Vision began the vote that disbanded the West Coast team.

After Mockingbird's death, Hawkeye became a solo agent for a considerable amount of time. During this time, Barton was commissioned to train a group of rebels known as the Shadows along with Sundance and Striker. He attempted to keep them from killing, but on one raid Striker killed a woman and injured her fiancee, a friend of James Rhodes.

As War Machine, Rhodes investigated and was surprised to see Hawkeye among the rebels, A government-backed group led by USAgent also arrived adding further confusion between the "Brothers in Arms". The three were able to stop the conflict and were confronted by the mysterious Advisor.

Hawkeye

After years of fighting alongside the Avengers, Hawkeye offered to lead the Thunderbolts. Sympathetic to their plight as criminals trying to redeem their past actions, he decided to help them become a legitimate superhero team. They briefly assumed new identities to try and start over, with Hawkeye calling himself the new Dreadknight. He also became romantically involved with Moonstone.

Eventually rejoining the Avengers, Clint began a dallying affair with The Wasp, causing tension with her sometime lover, Hank Pym. When the Scarlet Witch had her breakdown that resulted in the breakup of the Avengers, Barton was thought to have perished on an exploding Kree ship created by her crazed state. However, after reality shifted after the "House of M" incident, an old Hawkeye costume was found at the ruined Avengers Mansion amidst newspaper clippings of his death, having been used for archery practice. Barton looked to confront the Scarlet Witch and learned of her location from Doctor Strange. He found that Wanda had apparently lost her powers as well as her memories, content to live as a simple gypsy.

Barton recently revealed himself as the current user of the Ronin guise, joining the New Avengers. During World War Hulk, he was defeated by two of the Hulk's Warbound while trying to defend Rick Jones.

During the Secret Invasion, Barton headed to the Savage Land with the New Avengers. In the Savage Land, both they and the Mighty Avengers came across a Skrull ship that contained many heroes from years past including a "Hawkeye" and a "Mockingbird". The "Hawkeye" was shown to be a Skrull, but after Clint questioned "Mockingbird" of the date that they would have had a child, he believes that she is truly his late wife.

Hawkeye #005 cover

Powers and Abilities

Powers

As Hawkeye or Ronin, no superhuman powers. Thanks to the works of Hank Pym, however, Barton had the abilities as Goliath to use Pym Particles to grow to immense size or shrink to tiny proportions. The Particles would interact with the electrical impulses of his brain, creating an organism-wide "growth field" or "reducing field."

The growth process required the rapid acquisition of bodily mass, presumably from an extradimensional source. This extradimensional mass fortified all of his cellular tissue, including his bones and muscles, enabling him to support his increased weight, and giving him superhuman strength.

Via the shrinking process, Barton could shrink down to a size as low as one half-inch in height. Usually, he did not compress his mass into his smaller size. Instead his mass was extended into an extra-physical dimension that is opened by the activating of the Pym Particles, from which the mass could later be reclaimed. Strangely, because his mass was extended extra-dimensionally when he was at reduced size, Barton retained full human-size strength at that size.

Unlike Pym or the Wasp, he was never exposed to Pym Particles long enough to control his size at will, and thus had to use gas capsules infused with the Particles to shrink, grow, or revert to normal size.

Abilities

Expert Marksman: Barton has trained himself to become a master archer expertizing in the use of regular bows, longbows, compound bows, and crossbows with near-perfect accuracy. As Hawkeye, he practiced a minimum of two hours per day to keep his skills honed. He possesses very keen eyesight, and his accuracy is virtually unerring; he was trained in his youth by Trick Shot with throwing blades, balls, bolas, and boomerangs. He now has near-perfect precision with any aimed or thrown weapon. He can hurl objects with extreme speed and accuracy, both in direct aim and complicated rebounds/interactions.

Master Acrobat: Barton possesses exceptional strength, endurance, and stamina. He is a peak athlete, with his reflexes and agility near the absolute pinnacle of human perfection. This, combined with extensive training as an aerialist and acrobat, makes him capable of acrobatic maneuvers that could put an Olympic gold medalist to shame.

Master Martial Artist: Barton is an excellent martial artist, having been trained in various forms by Captain America, who was perhaps the world's greatest hand-to-hand combatant. On his his first mission with Luke Cage's band of renegade New Avengers, Ronin proved to have come a long way from his old days of rarely ever using his martial arts skills. Throughout the battle against Elektra and The Hand, he demonstrated great skill in his overall martial ability, holding his own against nearly endless hordes of ninjas. This earned him a very respecting compliment from his teammate Iron Fist, one of the world's top martial artists.

Skilled Tactician: As shown in his leadership of the West Coast Avengers and the Thunderbolts, Barton is a highly competent strategist, tactician, and field commander.

Weapons Proficiency: Although as Hawkeye he was not known to use the martial arts style weapons he now uses in his Ronin identity (usually katana or nunchaku), Barton's incredible reflexes and hand-eye coordination allow him to easily master most weapons. He also received training in swordsmanship during his youth from the original Swordsman, who was considered one of the greatest experts in sword-fighting the world has ever known. Barton is one of the few people to be able to properly handle Captain America's shield.

Strength level

As Hawkeye or Ronin, Barton possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in intense regular exercise and is considered a peak-athlete. As Goliath, strength varied according to the height he achieved: at 10 feet tall, Barton could lift (press) 1000 pounds, at 25 feet tall he could lift (press) 10 tons, and at 100 feet tall, Barton could lift (press) 50 tons. The higher Barton grew past 25 feet, the more of his strength he had to use simply to support his own enormous mass. While shrinking as Goliath, Barton retained his normal strength.

Weaknesses

Hawkeye was rendered 80% deaf in both ears, due to injuries sustained fighting Crossfire. After this he wore specially-designed miniature hearing aids. However, this injury was cured by Franklin Richards.

Paraphernalia

Equipment: Specially padded armor, formerly Avengers Identicard, briefly wore a suit of armor built by Tony Stark that provided protection from bullets.
Transportation: Formerly Avengers Quinjets, sky-cycles, Atomic Steed
Weapons: Nunchaku, katana, occasionally other martial arts weapons (as Ronin), formerly (as Hawkeye) custom-made bow, quick-release quiver, and a number of specialty arrows, briefly wielded Captain America's Shield.

Notes

The term Ronin means "Masterless Samurai". First Marvel hero to join the Justice League of America from DC Comics. Joined in Avengers vs JLA #3.

Trivia

• No trivia.

See Also

• Appearances of Clinton Barton (Earth-616)
• Character Gallery: Clinton Barton (Earth-616)
• Fan-Art Gallery: Clinton Barton (Earth-616)
• Quotations by Clinton Barton (Earth-616)
• Images that include Clinton Barton (Earth-616)

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