This is Past Was Close Behind, a feature that spotlights moments, exchanges, etc. from older comics that take on a brand new light when read in concert with later comic books or events. Basically, stuff that looks hilarious in hindsight.

Today, we look at how Hawkeye had been thinking about putting the Hulk down for quite some time.

During the crossover event, Secret Wars, a bunch of superheroes were transported to an alien world and forced to fight against a collection of supervillains. Hawkeye and the Hulk both made the cut.

In Secret Wars #3 (by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck and John Beatty), the superhero's headquarters was almost destroyed by a gigantic boulder...

Thor luckily destroyed it before it could destroy the heroes. Hawkeye, though, adorably was prepared to save the heroes with a blast arrow.

Isn't he just precious?

Later, Doctor Doom took on the power of the being who brought the heroes to Battleworld and when Doom showed up (as a giant), Hawkeye was there, with his arrows all notched up and ready to go (he didn't even have any blast arrows anymore!)....

In the next issue, when the heroes had to vote on whether they would try to fight back against the seemingly omnipotent Doom, Hawkeye was on board, but just wanted better arrows...

This guy seriously seems to think that he can solve any problem with arrows, huh?

Finally, in the last issue of the series, with the heroes having won the day, they are all getting ready to be sent back home and Hawkeye notes that the Hulk (who had Bruce Banner's mind in control of the Hulk's body at the time) was getting more and more unhinged and Hawkeye thought to himself that he might have to get some more powerful arrows in case he needs to put the Hulk down in the future...

Well, guess what?

Decades later, in Civil War II #3 (by Brian Michael Bendis, David Marquez and Justin Ponsor), the world's superheroes all shared a precognitive vision of an Inhuman named Ulysses that showed Hulk killing them all. So they went to go check on Bruce Banner, who had seemingly rid himself of being the Hulk...

Banner was upset that they doubted him and suddenly, Banner was shot in the head and killed...

It was Hawkeye, of course...

When he went on trial for Banner's murder, Hawkeye explained that Banner had asked him to do it and had even given him a special Hulk-killer arrowhead...

It's funny to see Hawkeye say no when we know he had been planning on doing just that for years (and yes, Hawkeye doesn't specifically say that he was going to kill the Hulk back in Secret Wars, but it's still funny even if he just meant "take down" the Hulk)!

If anyone has a suggestion for some hilarious in hindsight stuff, let me know by dropping me a line at brianc@cbr.com!