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catnipkdodowrites · 2 years ago

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Clint Barton and Midoriya Izuku deserve good things, and here’s why.

Look, I may have an agenda in saying this but in Marvel x MHA crossovers I fully believe Clint Barton and/or Kate Bishop should get to interact with Midoriya at any opportunity, because there is so much narrative potential! (But especially Clint because he’s my favorite. Did I mention I might have an agenda?) Have them interact please, I am begging you! Even if it’s just for one scene and has no real influence on the plot, or if it’s just Midoriya finding out about Hawkeye's existence and getting excited! Midoriya deserves to have quirkless role models, okay!? (The same goes for Iron Man and other characters who rely on their skills and intellect, but I am the Ultimate Hawkeye Fangirl, alright?)

If you took these characters and stayed true to their canon personalities (or as true as you can with Marvel comic continuities), had these two characters meet, and wrote out a scene with them in it, both characters could benefit from each other and would have a good relationship if their canon characters ever got to interact. Conversely, if you tweaked their characters a bit or just one of those characters or went with a different canon version of one of those characters they would make excellent foils to each other. They have a lot in common, and there’s so much untapped potential between these two. So much untapped potential there are like five fics on Ao3 tagged as the two of them having an interaction significant enough to be worth tagging. FIVE.

Disclaimer, I believe you can and should write whatever you want for the most part, opinions be damned, but some of the phrasing I use in this post may seem like I’m trying to dictate how others should write MHA x Marvel crossovers. Please understand I am not trying to sound like an asshole, I am just very autistic about both these pieces of media and I express my opinions in very specific language.

I’m going to focus on Clint for the purposes of this rant because… look at my icon for Christ’s sake. Plus, I may or may not have an agenda. Well, okay, the actual reason is that I think Clint and Midoriya interactions have more potential than Kate and Midoriya, but it’s like comparing the value of platinum to gold. Both are extremely valuable, but one is more valuable than the other. Now, please, allow me to explain. (Significant word vomit incoming, 4700+ words, there are footnotes at the end plus a TL;DR.)

Look, Clint is literally just a guy who works his ass off. Sure, he’s a super-talented marksman but that talent would be meaningless if he didn’t constantly work for it! Midoriya and Hawkeye are both surrounded by people with extraordinary/supernatural abilities for significant parts of their stories even if Midoriya does get superpowers. Both of them get to where they are in their stories through sheer determination and hard work, even if it was for wildly different purposes. This applies even more so in fics where Midoriya stays quirkless! They are the powerless heroes in worlds filled with heroes who have powers! Characters like Black Widow, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Falcon are way closer to having powers than Hawkeye. Widow was enhanced by the Red Room program, Iron Man and Ant-Man are defined by their gear, and Falcon... it changes from media to media. Sometimes he has a psychic connection to an actual falcon named Redwing, other times his gear is a lot more advanced, and sometimes both. Iron Man has infected himself with nanites to gain a form of technopathy in multiple stories! (1) Hell, Spider-Man was originally Marvel’s “Everyman” character but Clint sniped that title right out from under him. Few things highlight how defining Normalcy is for Clint better than the opening panels from Hawkeye 2012 Issue #1 (also I will take any and every excuse to promo Matt Faction and David Aja’s Hawkeye it’s just so good.)

No matter what, Hawkeye has always been the normal guy on a roster of people with superpowers, super-intellect, fancy weaponry, and magic, and I love it! Ironically, that’s what makes him and Kate stand out, their normalcy.

Side note, have you ever fired a bow? I have. (Did I mention I have autism and am obsessed with Clint?) It’s fucking hard. Forget aiming and hitting your target, have you considered repeatedly pulling back and holding the bow steady for an entire battle? Ouch ouch owie owie ow, my fucking muscles. The human body was not designed to handle that kind of constant repetitive motion, Clint and Kate have arm muscles for days, not to mention the dedication it takes to have aim that good. Aiming with a bow is hard. Sometimes Clint is depicted as being such an excellent marksman he uses the bow and arrow specifically to flex how good his aim is. There are other reasons (Versatility of trick arrows, non-lethality, having been an archer since he was very, very young) but this is objectively the funniest one. He’s also used coins and pebbles when he needs to make a shot that an arrow is unsuited for or when he doesn’t have his bow, i.e. in his civvies.

In fact, Hawkeye (2012) focuses almost exclusively on what Clint gets up to when he’s not superheroing. In the first issue, Clint gets out of the hospital and heads to his apartment. Clint can afford the rent jacks because of his Avengers and Shield pay, his neighbors cannot. We are explicitly shown the landlord mafioso Ivan evicting a single mother of two after tripling her rent. (2) We are shown Clint witnessing this. He knows that neighbor and she trusts him enough to have him double-check the lease to make sure that what the landlord is doing is legal. (It is.) Clint cares about his neighbors, enough that he regularly attends the semi-potluck grill night they have on the roof of the building. In fact, he doesn’t regularly eat except when he’s with the Avengers or on potluck night. So what does he do?

He puts on a cheap suit and tie, heads over to an underground casino, and he gives a slice of pizza to a dog on the street. This dog belongs to the guards of the underground casino. He convinces them to let him in and he hunts down the landlord. He drops a duffle bag and gives the mafia a shit-ton of money in a duffle bag to pay rent for all of his neighbors tax-free. The mafia refuse the deal because they are jacking up the rent so they can evict people for not paying rent on time. This is because they want to sell the building. Clint then beats up the mafia until they accept the money. (3) Well, okay, not exactly. The mafia attack him first, but Clint uses a playing card as a projectile to disorient one of the guards with a gun, and room devolves into chaos.

Clint gets thrown out the front window of the laundromat and runs for his life. As the outer guards fire on Clint, the dog he gave pizza attacks them for it. They then throw the dog into traffic and he turns around to beat the shit out of them because, and I quote “What kinda man throws a dog into traffic? *punches sunglasses off of tracksuit Mafioso* Seriously I ask you.” Clint takes a Nickle out of his pocket and throws it with enough force to shatter the door windows of the car that’s about to hit the dog in a desperate attempt to get the driver to swerve. The dog still gets hit.

Oh yeah, allow me to introduce you to Hawkeye 2012 Issue #1 page 4.

Unrelated note, Faction and Aja do a masterful job of storytelling in issue 1. The story is told out of order, but the proper context is given at the perfect moments so you can easily piece the story together, most of the flashbacks and flash-forwards are one-page long, when they aren’t things from one time period seamlessly blend with another, and the entire color pallet changes to signify what point in the timeline the panels are occurring... and that’s only issue 1! I am refraining from doing a keyboard smash here, as that is the only thing that can properly convey how much I love Hawkeye 2012.

Anyways, he takes the dog to the vet, and the tracksuit mafia show back up while he’s in the waiting room. He once again rocks their shit, and they take it outside. (4) We cut to Ivan sitting in a cab while Clint is outside. It’s raining. Ivan has a handkerchief to his bloody nose and- actually, I don’t think a cliff-notes does this justice. I’ll transcribe the dialogue below here because my attempts to do a scan of the page came out poorly and I’m unsure if there’s a high-quality scan online, just know you’re missing some of the pacing of the scene.

Ivan: “Bro, what kind of Avenger does this? I broke no laws, bro. Allowed to raise rents. Is touch luck for you and your friends but I know my rights.”

Clint: “Hold that thought, ya Tracksuit Dracula. You asked about the Avengers. Y’wanna know the best part about being an Avenger? having Captain America around you all the time He just-- the guy brings out the best in people. You... want to be good when he’s around. You really do.”

“Ivan, Look around you real quick. Because, right now? Captain America ain’t here. I’m going to pay you everything everyone in that building owes you and another 12.5 for the building outright. And that’s it. Negotiations’re over. You wanted to sell it? I want to buy it. I take care of my people and you get rich. The end.”

Ivan: “I had buyer.”

Clint: “I don’t care.”

He turns to the cab driver, hands him a wad of cash, and tells him to take Ivan to JFK. Fast. The vet tech calls Clint back inside. The dog has a broken pelvis, broken leg, two broken ribs, and lost an eye, but will recover fairly well with proper care and rest. Clint pets the dog while he’s laying on the table after surgery. Clint keeps the dog after this. The name on the collar says “Arrow,” but Clint decides to come up with something better.

This whole story is really just Clint trying to do the right thing as best he can. At first, he’s just going for the first solution to the problem that he thinks of, but he adapts once Ivan turns him down. He saves Lucky because A. he likes dogs. and B. the dog saved him. Hell, the whole reason Lucky tried to save him was that he gave Lucky a piece of pizza because, again, he likes dogs and Lucky just happened to be standing there, looking cute. He cares about his neighbors. In later issues of Hawkeye 2012 Clint repeatedly is shown helping out his neighbors or just providing entertainment at the potluck.

Clint also had a really, really rough childhood. His dad was an alcoholic, his parents died in a car crash because of that, before they died his dad beat both him and his older brother Barney, he and his brother ran away to join the circus, Clint was beaten and left for dead by one of his parental figures after he caught him stealing money from the ticket box, his relationship with his brother really fell apart after that- and that's the cliff-notes version! It varies somewhat based on continuity but the most consistent part is runaway orphan joining the circus. Personally, when writing Marvel stuff, I adapt it to “Foster care was shitty and my brother and I wanted to stay together, so we ran away, and the circus happened to take us in,” to modernize it a bit.

So in short, Clint is kind, determined, and has had a lot of hardship in his life, particularly his childhood. Hmm, kind, determined, a lot of hardship during childhood? Now, who does this remind me of? Oh yeah, fucking Midoriya!

A huge part of what I think makes MHA so interesting is that its main character is fairly untraditional as far as Shonen protagonists go. Hell, he’s kinda untraditional as far as superhero protagonists go in general. Midoriya is defined by his kindness, he is emotional, he wants to save people above almost everything else. The most iconic battles Midoriya has been involved in thus far are motivated heavily by his drive to save. Think Muscular, Overhaul, and Gentle. (Kouta, Eri, and Eri’s chance to smile again.) (I’ve only seen up to Season Four, although I’ve seen manga spoilers. Don’t ask.) Funnily enough, this all reminds me somewhat of Hawkeye’s traditional origin story. I shall now give you the cliff-notes version that spans multiple years of comics. (At least I think it does, I’d have to double-check and I only have so much time, y’know.)

Clint is inspired by Iron Man to use his skills to fight crime instead of just being a circus entertainer. Unfortunately for Clint, on his first outing after he stops a thief and picks up the money they stole to return it, he gets mistaken for the original thief. Then Iron Man shows up and beats him up. Clint is forced to go on the run, falls in with Black Widow, becomes a recurring Iron Man villain with Widow, falls in love with Widow, gets kind of depressed when Widow disappears (actually recalled to Moscow and reprogrammed), saves Jarvis (the Avenger’s butler, originally just Stark’s Alfred) from a muggers, gets Jarvis’s help to demonstrate to the Avengers that he’s trying to change, and has been an Avengers mainstay ever since. Clint later played a significant part in breaking through Black Widow’s programming and helping her defect to Shield, saving her.

It’s a very unconventional origin story. Redemption arcs have been done, but not many involve wanting to do the right thing from the beginning of a character’s story. My personal favorite adaptation of this backstory is from the cartoon Avengers Assemble, where Clint was a member of the Circus of Crime, but never felt good about it. He triggered the alarm on their biggest heist ever, getting them arrested by Shield, but Fury saw something in him and gave him a chance to make amends, becoming Hawkeye. I understand I am very biased on this though, so I will not argue for it being the best. That aside, it’s unconventional mainly because of how integral to the Avengers Hawkeye later became to the point where the Avengers have very few adaptions without him. So many story arcs involving Clint are based in his desire to do the right thing. All of Hawkeye 2012. His backstory. Widow’s defection. His near divorce over his wife killing someone. (It was justified and accidental.)

There’s another parallel between Midoriya and Clint one could draw, although it depends somewhat on your interpretation of quirklessness in the MHA world. If you think about it, both Clint and Midoriya are disabled. Clint is Deaf. Depending on the continuity, he had progressive hearing loss as a child, had surgery to fix his hearing when he was older (11?), then his ears are injured in a fight, making him lose about 80% of his hearing. Most depictions of Clint’s deafness that I’ve seen stem from Fraction’s Hawkeye Issue #19 but Clint being deaf and wearing hearing aids dates back to 1983 and there’s some comic history after that as to why it didn’t become a frequent part of Hawkeye’s depictions until Fraction but we’re not getting into that right now. (5)

Ignoring Red Shoe theory, (I don’t subscribe to it but it’s still an interesting premise) the interpretation of being quirkless as a disability is a completely valid reading of the text! The pity Midoriya gets after his diagnosis, people treating him as lesser and weaker, his mother apologizing to him, these are all things people in the disabled community have dealt with! I’m not even pulling from fanon, that’s all canon stuff there. Clint has frequently used ASL and lipreading in comics since 2015! He’s worn hearing aids in various depictions on and off since 1983, when he first became a deaf character! He is disabled and a total badass! If you’re doing a story where Midoriya becomes a quirkless hero, well there’s a hero in the public eye whose main thing is trick arrows, i.e. support gear! In addition, the disability interpretation of Quirklessness would be an excellent parallel to utilize in a story that mentions or features disability advocacy.. And this is ignoring the possibility of them both being quirkless in a blended reality crossover. They could bond over having to grow up with quirklessness in a world that discriminates against the quirkless! Midoriya could have grown up idolizing the world-famous archer!

On the other hand, if your Midoriya has OfA, Clint becomes a foil to Midoriya and a great one at that. Clint is a badass member of the Avengers who doesn’t have powers but rather kicks ass with trick arrows and a weapon from the Paleolithic era, plus some martial arts training. He’s what Midoriya could have been. Hell, Hawkeye showing up in the MHA dimension asking for help and hanging out with the next generation to give them some pointers while he’s there could lead to Midoriya doing some serious soul-searching. This isn’t a very far-fetched idea, he mentored Kate Bishop and has led several branches of the Avengers over the years, primarily the West Coast Avengers.

Another way Clint serves as a foil to Midoriya is his impulsiveness and brashness. Clint is generally trying to do the right thing, but he doesn’t always think it through. Again, the mafia thing. His origin story. The serious clashes he had with Cap when he first joined the Avengers. The times he’s been seriously tempted to kill his abusive father figure Swordsmaster. His tendency to flirt with every woman he meets. (6) The shotgun wedding with Mockingbird in the eighties comics (the issue he marries her in is also the issue he is deafened in.) I could go on. To contrast he’s also insanely loyal, once you've earned his respect. (Cap, but Widow as well. And Mockingbird. Kate Bishop.)

On the subject of Ronin, that gives you a pretty good excuse to put Clint n Japan, he could be taking care of unfinished business for the previous holder of the Ronin moniker. (7) This works best in a blended universe of course, but could be tied into a dimension travel fic as well.

But back to the foil thing, Clint does tend to act on his anger as well. This is an excellent contrast to Midoriya. When Midoriya is emotional and expressive, it’s generally his sadness and stress, or his excitement. When Clint is expressive, it’s anger or self-loathing. Parallels, people! Parallels!

Another parallel/way they foil each other is how unhinged they can be. Look, Midoriya grabbed onto All Might’s leg, he rushed the Slime Villain to save Bakugo, he counteracted Eri’s rewind by breaking his bones faster than she could erase him. But Clint is his own brand of crazy. I mean, you have to be pretty nuts to fight superhumans with a bow and arrow, but sometimes Clint takes it to another level. One of the craziest things he’s done, though, is use a combination of a Life Model Decoy, a small-scale time machine, and careful planning to masquerade as his alternate persona Ronin while leaving most of his coworkers and friends under the impression that he was not, in fact doing that. He has on several occasions and in across several media fired a shrunk-down Ant-Man on an arrow (Pym and Lang, although this originated with Lang), in one incarnation had a distraction arrow that when triggered unfurled a “Bang!” flag, frequently utilizes boomerang arrows, and well, you read my summary of Hawkeye Issue 1.

Listen, if you don’t want to write Hawkeye into your story that’s completely valid but the opportunity is right there! It just- it’s just a pet peeve when someone does a hybrid universe and just writes Clint as having a “Perfect Aim” quirk. It’s not a deal-breaker for reading a fic if the rest of the story is interesting enough but it always hurts my heart because that’s just such a disservice to his character. I would take him having literally any other quirk over that. Because his whole deal is that he’s just a guy who’s really, really, good with a bow. That’s what makes him such a badass to me. He’s got a good head for tactics, some martial arts training, and perfect aim that he has cultivated his entire life. If you give him perfect aim as an actual power you have proven to me that you fundamentally do not understand the character you are working with. (Related note, I have mixed feelings about the version of him that appears in the Ultimate universe. Not a point I wish to delve into at this time, but worth mentioning nevertheless.) And you don’t have to understand him write a good story, I just… it’s just a waste of potential. And comics are so vast and the MCU version is so bland I don’t blame anyone for not knowing his character that well! It’s understandable! I’ve long since expected it since I became a Hawkeye fan!

I have read fics where the author is doing perfectly, I am completely engaged by and loving whatever universe they have set up, they have written these characters in such a way that it feels like a totally believable version of how their stories could have gone, and then BAM! Marksmanship quirk for Clint and I just... have to take a break and come back later. I understand this is not a normal reaction, but I am incapable of being normal about him, so here we fucking are. It’s just such a waste of potential.

Listen, you have every right to do what you want with your fic, but I promise you your story will be more interesting if you just let Clint’s character exist in the way he was meant to, as a guy who’s super dedicated to his training and very skilled. I would be happy if there was just a moment, particularly in fics where dimension travel is involved, if whoever Midoriya’s mentor-figure-of-the-day is was thinking about how to deal with Midoriya’s frankly abysmal self-esteem, and essentially went “Hm, my favorite sunshine green bean really needs some encouragement and positive quirkless role model. What if I told him about the quirkless badasses from my reality who, to my knowledge, haven’t been enhanced by magic/genetic modification/cybernetics and still go toe-to-toe with people who have those things! Frequently! I bet he’d think they’re really cool and would maybe be able to hold his head a little higher knowing there are people like him out there who are heroes. He’d really start to believe that he can be a hero too and that he’s just as capable as his peers!”

Or, or, or! in blended reality fics, if Clint had a quirk that was just something kinda dumb like, I dunno, Binocular Eyes, and Clint just uses the bow instead, (Or he’s openly quirkless, IDGAF, just not Perfect Aim please for the love of god) and mentor-figure-of-the-day has a similar train of thought but instead of just telling Midoriya about them they cash in a favor or two that Clint owes them to have Clint meet with Midoriya. And Clint, being the somewhat kind-hearted person that he is, would absolutely be a good sport about it! He would encourage Midoriya! He’s been a mentor and leader before and encouraged other members of the Avengers to guide the Young Avengers rather than try to shut them down!

Alternatively, and this is only something you could pull off in a fic where Clint is a central focus and not part of the backdrop, Clint is faking having a “Perfect Aim” quirk. Or several of his colleagues are aware of it in order to help him conceal it, and mentor-figure-of-the-day spills it in while swearing Midoriya to absolute secrecy. Clint himself telling Midoriya would be really cute though, and perfect for a Mentor fic! Or Clint stumbling onto Bakugo (8) and co harrassing Midoriya and telling them off/threatening them! He would do that, he’s impulsive enough! Clint makes bad jokes, Midoriya is kind and sunshine incarnate, they would get along!

There’s so much, I could go on and on and just- Oh goddammit, I was saving Clint and Midoriya interactions for my long fic that eventually devolves into has dimension travel as a part of the plot but I guess I’m adding a fic where Clint properly mentors Midoriya to my fucking to-do list. I only have myself to blame. Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

This is a cross-media thing too! It happened in Iron Man: Armored Adventures. Y’know, the one where he, Rhodey, and Pepper are all teens at the same high school and Tony is basically this world’s Spider-Man! Actually this is on brand for Armored Adventures, having watched that show. Very chaotic storylines, condenses like decades of comic books storylines into two seasons while staying unquestionably rated TV-Y7. It was actually pretty good, was the first animated series to feature Pepper Potts as Rescue, and also contains one of the best modern adaptions of Hawkeye’s original introduction. I’m not kidding. Oh, and the Avengers are formed at the end of the series, in a sense. I think they just wanted to leave themselves with some potential future storylines in case they got renewed past a second season while still having a satisfying ending. They did not get renewed.

Her name is Simone, in issue #12 of Fraction’s Hawkeye Clint watches cartoons with her kids while she uses Lucky as a pillow. He falls asleep watching the cartoons with them and Simone pulls a blanket over him as she takes her kids back to their apartment. Oh yeah and the whole thing takes place during Kwanzaa because the issue is a winter holiday special that uses the cartoon to tell a story that’s an allegory for Clint’s role in the superhero community. Very wholesome moment, I love Simone.

This marks the point part-way through writing the first draft of that paragraph, I went upstairs to grab my Hawkeye volumes to reread issue 1 and brought all four of them back to my desk to keep them on hand for easy reference. I also wished to make the point I was writing at that time more articulate. I also brought down my Hawkeye vs Deadpool volume and Marvel-verse Hawkeye volume. I had no intention of referencing either of them I just like having all my Hawkeye comics in one place.

This is quite possibly one of the hottest Clint Barton moments ever. I’ll probably upload a scan of it sometime in the future but it ends with him pinning Ivan to the wall by the throat. The next page where he threatens Ivan into selling him the building is also pretty hot, but you’ve already seen the dialogue for that. Ah great, now I’m tempted to a make post ranking the hottest Clint Barton moments across all his different incarnations, for fucks sake.

I can talk comic history of Hawkeye and how Hawkeye has evolved as a character all fucking day. I vibrate with joy when I get to info-dump about this shit and vibrate with stress when I have to dial it back. When I am both talking about it and dialing back, I cease to vibrate as all of my focus goes into scientifically measuring out the maximum amount of info dumping I can get away with. Please ask me questions about Hawkeye, I beg you. I know so much about his many incarnations across different media and I am waiting for any excuse to talk about them or do more research.

His character evolves out of this but classic comics Hawkeye is all about the ladies, and he frequently has minor storylines involving his romantic endeavors. I can’t say I blame him, I’ve seen the women he rolls with. Unfortunately for him they never seem to go well.

The previous holder of the name was Kingpin’s daughter. It’s a long story.

I wanted to talk about using Clint as a foil to Bakugo and/or Todoroki with his impulsiveness/anger issues but having better control over it and being quirkless but I just did not have the energy or the time. Could also be a foil to Eraser or All Might as a mentor figure but I would have to think on that some more and my cats are getting between me and the keyboard. :/

TL;DR: Clint and Midoriya are both characters defined by their determination, their kindness, their lack of power in a world full of powers, and I just think that’s neat.

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