by TomSiebert » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:57 am
A mid-day break in Cannes sends our advertising contingent to our hotel rooms to rest after a looooooong night, but I'm too coffeed-up to rest and instead do a bit of research to come up with a team named the:
[b:fd3fb21130]Great Lakes Hawkeyes[/b:fd3fb21130]
Hawkeye (secret identity: Clint Barton - orphan turned circus performer turned constumed villain, then hero) was always one of my favorite Marvel characters, a second tier superhero and obvious Green Arrow ripoff, but with wit and attitude to spare, plus a long and passionate affair with one of the comic world's hottest superchicks.
An expert archer with a quiver full of gimmicks like the "Bolo Arrow" and the "Smoke Bomb Arrow," Hawkeye also got his start, like Iron Man, in "Tales of Suspense," launching his career as a supervillain with a couple of third-banana bad guys Swordsman and the Trickster, but later branching off on his own with the sexy Russian spy Black Widow. The pair (and by that I mean Hawkeye and Black Widow, not Black Widow's fabulous frontal formations) often squared off vs. our Metal Hero himself.
After a few years of losing regularly and questioning the whole "I'm a Bad Guy" mentality, Hawkeye switched over to the side of good, and stepped up as a member of The Avengers at a desperate time for the superhero squad when it disbanded following a contentious period in the later 1960s, leaving Capt. America scrambling to field a team of replacements.
Later, as other heroes returned to The Avengers fold, the supergroup had enough members to split into three teams: East Coast, based in NYC; West Coast, based in L.A.; and Great Lakes, based in Chicago. This took place about the time Black Widow was dumping Hawkeye for Daredevil, and Hawkeye moved midwest to nurse his ego in lieu of nursing something far more fun. Black Widow stayed in New York and got bumped up to sharing title space with the lucky Daredevil, whose blindness-induced accentuated sense of touch probably made the whole "not seeing" trade-off worth it when she was around.
After several years, Avengers' budget cutbacks (!), caused the West Coast and Great Lakes Avengers to be folded back into the East Coast Avengers, which dropped its regional designation and so pissed off a few of the California based heroes (including Tony Stark/Iron Man) that they resigned (again) from The Avengers. These prima donna superheroes!!
In more recent years, after I stopped reading, Hawkeye got killed, but he soon came back from the dead with some help from Dr. Strange.
For more information on Hawkeye, there's always Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawkeye_(comics)
tws