Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without explaining that the previous story was retconned away. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, based on a suggestion by reader Tom A., we see Hawkeye's widely different views on killing over the years...

Hawkeye debuted in Tales of Suspense #57 by Stan Lee and Don Heck. He first tried to be a costumed hero...



After the cops confuse him for a criminal, he meets the Black Widow, and he's all, "Man, I really want to be a superhero, but that ass! Okay, I'll be a criminal working for the Soviets."

He attacks Iron Man and he sure seems like he's ready to kill him, right?





In Tales of Suspense #64 (by Stan Lee, Don Heck and Chic Stone), once again Hawkeye looks primed to kill Iron Man...



But then he joins the Avengers and he's pretty much not a killer, as none of them really kill.

That is, until Avenger #229 (by Roger Stern, Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott), where Egghead is about to kill Hank Pym after Pym single-handedly defeated the Masters of Evil...









Hawkeye doesn't look TOO shaken up about the whole thing, right?

And check out Hawkeye defending himself when he has to go up for a disciplinary meeting to see if he used undue force...



But then the big one happened. In a long storyline in West Coast Avengers, Hawkeye's wife, Mockingbird, who was a trained SHIELD agent, is brainwashed by the Phantom Rider and essentially raped repeatedly. When she realizes what happened to her, she confronts the Phantom Rider. He falls from a cliff and she decides to let him die rather than save him (she would have been able to save him). She decides to not tell Hawkeye about it. Later, the ghost of the Phantom Rider reveals the truth to Hawkeye and he loses it. Note that yes, a good chunk of this is about the fact that she lied to him, but mostly it seems to be about the fact that his own wife let a guy die. Even his wife's rapist he isn't okay with letting die (not even ACTIVELY kill, but not save).











(I am not even sure if Wasp is right about the charter, but I presume that she is)

When Mockingbird quits, a couple of Avengers leave with her (Tigra and Moon Knight)...



So yeah, Hawkeye really hates killing.

Okay, there are a few more examples of Hawkeye's stance on killing before we see how that aspect was dropped. This is getting a bit too long on images, so we'll have to pick this up on the next page...

In Solo Avengers #12 (by Tom DeFalco, Ralph Macchio, Ron Lim and Jose Marzan), soon after the above story, Hawkeye tricks the Abomination into thinking that he was willing to kill him...



A few years later, during Operation Galactic Storm, the Supreme Intelligence wiped out billions of his own people. In Avengers #347 (by Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer), the Avengers decide that they should execute him over this for his war crime. Well, SOME of the Avengers think this. Hawkeye (who is in his Goliath outfit for this mission) is one of the dissenters...



I love that Starfox is a dissenter. So random. I don't think I know anything about his views on killing.

When they get back after having killed the Supreme Intelligence, Hawkeye lays on the guilt...



Years later, Hawkeye leaves the Avengers to take control of the Thunderbolts. The first thing he does in Thunderbolts #22 (by Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley and Scott Hanna) is insist that one of the team turn himself in because he killed a guy...







(I covered that issue here for all of its ironic goodness).

Anyhow, during Avengers Disassembled, Hawkeye is killed. During the House of M storyline, though, the mentally unstable Scarlet Witch alters reality so that mutants are now the dominant class on Earth. A few heroes fight through the altered timeline and try to take her down. One of those heroes is Hawkeye, who has been resurrected by Scarlet Witch.

He repays the favor by trying to kill her in House of M #7 (by Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel and Tim Townsend)...







Note that he says that he'd kill for her. Not for his wife, but Scarlet Witch? Sure, why not?

The now alive Clint gives up the Hawkeye name and becomes the hero known as Ronin for a while, re-joining the New Avengers. During Secret Invasion, the Skrulls screw with the heroes by showing up with a shuttle filled with alleged real life versions of their friends and family who had been replaced by Skrulls years earlier. One of them is Hawkeye's dead wife, Mockingbird. Mister Fantastic shows up, though, and reveals that they were all Skrulls in Secret Invasion #5 (by Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Francis Yu and Mark Morales). Clint does not take the news well...







And in Secret Invasion #7 (by Bendis, Yu and Morales), Clint (now armed with Kate Bishop's bow and arrow) does just that...





After Secret Invasion, Norman Osborn uses the paranoia surrounding the Skrull Invasion (plus the very public way that it seemed like Iron Man failed the world in defending the planet from the Skrulls) to take over SHIELD and become the most powerful guy in the United States. He basically outlawed the Avengers and was about ready to set his sights on the X-Men when Clint decides that it was time for him to kill Osborn, as elaborated upon in Dark Reign: The List - Avengers #1 (by Brian Michael Bendis, Marco Djurdjevic and Mark Morales)...













So now Hawkeye's SUPER into killing.

Go to the last page to see Matt Fraction's take on all of this in his Hawkeye series...

In his excellent Hawkeye series, Matt Fraction basically split the baby beautifully. His Hawkeye has a code against killing, but he's not against breaking it if he has to.

We see the code in effect in Hawkeye #2 (by Matt Fraction, David Aja and Matt Hollingsworth)...





He's not going to say that the bad guys are going to make it out okay, but he's not going to actively try to kill them.

This is a major plot point in the two-parter in Hawkeye #4-5 called "The Tape," by Matt Fraction, Javier Pulido and Matt Hollingsworth. It opens with Kate Bishop quizzing Clint if he ever killed anyone (a question he dodges)...



Then we learn that there is a criminal auction of a mysterious tape. Kate sees the tape - it of Clint assassinating a major terrorist!!!



When they meet up later in the story, she is concerned...



But you see, the tape is a phony, designed to hide the identity of the REAL Navy Seal who did the actual killing...



And during the story, we see Clint's disinclination to kill, as he tries to even save a freakin' NINJA from dying!





Very nice work by Fraction toeing that line beautifully. Hawkeye was a really great series.

That's it for this installment! Thanks for the suggestion, Tom! If anyone else has any suggestions, feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresourrces.com