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Ronin/Hawkeye
Ronin versus Elektra
Gender	Male
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Origin	Waverly, Iowa
First Appearance	(Hawkeye) Tales of Suspense #57 (September, 1964), (Ronin) New Avengers #27 (2007)
Creator(s)	Stan Lee and Don Heck
Alter ego	Clint Barton
Aliases	Hawkeye the Marksman, Goliath, Golden Archer, The Hawkeye Kid
Abilities	archer, knife thrower, swordsman, unarmed combat, low tech weapons designer.
Affiliations	The Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Thunderbolts, Defenders, Cross Technological Enterprises, Great Lakes Avengers, Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders

Hawkeye and Ronin are fictional comic book superheroes, owned by Marvel Comics. Both persona, used by Clint Barton, are most famous for their association with the group The Avengers, for whom Clint was an early member.

Clint Barton was raised in a carnival, where he acquired skills as a knife thrower, swordsman, and archer. He has also worked with darts, balls, bolas, and boomerangs. As Hawkeye, he designs and builds “trick’ arrows that perform a number of special functions, though they are sometimes designed by other technically gifted individuals, such as the Tinkerer, Tony Stark, and the Black Panther. He has had extensive combat training by Captain America, and is an accomplished aerialist and acrobat. He has an instinctive genius for calculating angles, velocity, and likely impact of objects in motion. In other words, he can hit anyone with anything. He routinely calculates and executes complex ricochet shots with a variety of objects. As Ronin, he uses swords, throwing stars and ninchakus. He has phenomenal eyesight, hand-eye coordination, dexterity, and reflexes which help make him a natural with any weapon. It has been shown that he is one of the few people that can wield and throw Captain America’s shield like its original owner. As Ronin, he currently functions as part of the underground New Avengers.

Character Origin

Clint Barton’s alcoholic abusive father, along with his mother, is killed in a drunk driving accident. After running away from an orphanage, Clint and his brother Barney join a traveling carnival. There Clint is trained work by skilled carnival performers like the Swordsman and Trick Shot in knife throwing, blade work, and archery.

The Swordsman and Trick Shot are both drawn to criminal activities, but Clint always resists this. His brother, Barney, tries to get Clint to leave the carnival work, being afraid that the shady characters he sometimes ran with would have a negative affect. Barney eventually leaves the carnival without Clint. Barney seems to enter a life of crime himself, but turns out to be an undercover FBI agent. He is killed in the line of duty years later while saving the Avengers.

Leaving the carnival, Clint is performing in a side show in Coney Island when he sees Iron Man in action. This inspires Clint to create the Hawkeye identity to fight crime as well, but is mistaken for a criminal, so has limited success. He meets and falls in love with the Black Widow, then a foreign spy out to sabotage Stark Industries, which was then a big munitions maker for the federal government. Working with the Black Widow, Hawkeye fights Iron Man on her behalf. He also fights Spider-Man, who, sensing a kindred spirit, encourages him to give up crime and go back to using his skills to help people.

When the Black Widow tries to reform and leave her employers, she is injured and hospitalized. Taking Spider-Man’s advice, Hawkeye takes to catching criminals and financing himself with their loot. When he rescues butler Edwin Jarvis from a mugging, he is soon introduced to the Avengers. When Iron Man, Thor, Giant-Man (formerly Ant-Man), and the Wasp decide to take a leave of absence from the Avengers, Captain America is placed in charge with three new recruits. They were the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye.

As an Avenger, Clint goes from authority-questioning neophyte, to a respected colleague with true leadership skills. With the help of former Ant-Man Hank Pym, Clint tries working as Goliath with growth powers for awhile, but soon goes back to his Hawkeye identity. He is placed in charge of the West Coast Avengers, and helps train the Great Lakes Avengers and the Thunderbolts. He has a number of romances, particularly with the Bobbi Morse, who was the free lance spy, Mockingbird. Their marriage has its ups and downs, but Mockingbird eventually joins the Avengers. Unfortunately, she is killed in action by the demon Mephisto.

Years pass. Clint’s old friend, The Scarlet Witch has a mental breakdown, and destroys Avengers Mansion and kills a number of Avengers including Hawkeye. Gaining almost unlimited power, Scarlet Witch remakes the world (in the crossover series, House of M) as a mutant dominated society, resurrecting Hawkeye in the process. She seems to kill Hawkeye again, but when the world was restored conventional reality, Hawkeye is again present in the world.

Disillusioned and confused, Clint discards his Hawkeye costume and paraphernalia, and decides to keep his return a secret for a while. When Captain America is killed at the conclusion of the crossover series Civil War, Clint decides to return to superhero work, partly to honor and avenge his late mentor and friend. He decides to join the New Avengers who are working underground in defiance of the new Superhero Registration Act. Finding that another young hero, believing him dead, has taken the Hawkeye name to honor him, he takes on the identity of Ronin, a disguise used and discarded by fellow New Avenger, Echo. His identity of Clint Barton, the former Hawkeye, is a secret kept to a select few in the superhero community, most of the world still believing him dead.