The character first appears in Tales of Suspense #57 (Sept. 1964) as a misguided hero manipulated by the glamorous Black Widow into fighting Iron Man.

Clint Barton was born in Waverly, Iowa (the Hawkeye state!). At a young age, he lost both of his parents in a car accident and spent six years in an orphanage with his brother Barney.

After fleeing the orphanage, Clint and his brother join the Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders, where he trains as an archer and eventually becomes the carnival's star attraction, billing himself as "The World's Greatest Marksman".

The first major reboot of the Avengers came in issue #16 when every member but Captain America resigned. They were replaced by three former villains: Hawkeye and the Maximoff twins. Hawkeye quickly developed an attraction to the Scarlet Witch, though her overly protective brother did his best to put out the fire.

Hawkeye's bow has a 250-pound draw weight. That's more than three times the average draw-weight of even the strongest real-world archers.

As a child, abuse from his father left him partially deaf. Then, as an adult, he was rendered 80% deaf after using a sonic arrow to counter one of Crossfire's weapons. He tried to compensate by reading lips until Tony Stark provided him with specially designed hearing aids.

When Henry Peter Gyrich becomes the Avengers' liaison to the United States National Security Council, he demands that the active roster be trimmed down to seven members, and that the Falcon be admitted to the team to comply with affirmative action laws, which pushes Hawkeye off the seven-member roster.

In The Ultimates 2 #9 (2005), Hawkeye is taunted by a group of captors who have murdered his family. Suddenly they start grabbing their necks and dropping one by one. The next panel reveals that Clint is detaching his fingernails and using them as projectiles. "Now be smart and get me outta here," he tells the one remaining guard, "or this last one goes right between your eyeballs."

Hawkeye marries his West Coast Avengers teammate Mockingbird, a.k.a. former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbara "Bobbi" Morse. The couple are separated briefly, then reconcile, continuing to fight side by side until her death at the hands of the demonic supervillain Mephisto.

When the Scarlet Witch has her breakdown, Hawkeye dies on an exploding Kree ship created by her crazed subconscious. Reborn when she "resets" reality, he confronts her, bringing up their romantic history and demanding to know why she ended his life, but his anger triggers Wanda's mental instability, causing her to once again erase him from existence.