Today, we look at the reason behind Hawkeye's goofiest superhero costume.

This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

We go back to January 1972 for the introduction of Hawkeye's goofiest costume in Avengers #98 (by Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith and Sal Buscema. Windsor-Smith was just Barry Smith at the time).

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WHERE DID CLINT BARTON GO?

At the start of the Kree-Skrull War proper in Avengers #93 (by Roy Thomas, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer), the Avengers are trying to stop a Skrull ship when Goliath suddenly starts to shrink...

As it turns out, he hadn't used his growth serum that he got from Hank Pym in quite a while...

In the next issue, when they get back to the Avengers Mansion, Goliath uses up the very last of the serum, but he was so dejected at the Avengers' loss in the previous issue, he's not even all that interested in getting more....

That aspect, which isn't spelled out, is really key, because otherwise, Hank Pym literally guest-starred in the previous issue. He could obviously get you more, dude.

In Avengers #95, Goliath uses up pretty much the last of his growth powers...

This doesn't prevent him from still going on a major space adventure with his teammates in the next issue, although he obviously has to mostly stick with his spaceship considering, you know, no powers and no weapons...

However, when the other Avengers are fighting the Skrulls, one Skrull ship gets away with enough nukes to destroy Earth and since Clint is in his spaceship, he's the only member of the team who can possibly catch up to them...

We then later see that Clint DOES catch up to them, but he has, you know, no powers, so it is a precarious situation....

In the next issue (with John Buscema now on pencils), the Avengers save the day, but at the end of the issue, they all wonder the same thing...but whatever happened to Goliath?

THE RETURN OF HAKWEYE AND THE DEBUT OF HIS NEW COSTUME

Luckily for Hawkeye, his friends care enough about him to still be looking into him in the next issue (art by Barry Windsor-Smith and Sal Buscema), but then they get caught up in a mission...

During the mission, Ares uses one of his minions to hypnotize all of the humans into becoming basically evil (so everyone but Vision and Thor). Scarlet With uses one of her hex spheres on Thor's hammer and he's about to become Don Blake again when an arrow dislodges it, giving Thor a chance and then he and Vision fight there way to defeating the cause of the brainwashing and everyone retunrs to normal, only...who shot that arrow?

Obviously, it's Clint! He's back but he's Hawkeye again!

And he's brought former Avenger, Hercules, with him, and things look BLEAK!

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THE EXPLANATION BEHIND HAWKEYE'S NEW COSTUME

Okay, first off, Smith was working on Conan the Barbarian by now and so the REAL reason Hawkeye looks like he does now is that Smith asked Thomas if he could give Hawkeye a new costume and Thomas said okay and Smith, likely inspired by the fashion in the Hyborian Age, he came up with Hawkeye's new look.

But the "official" reason is that Hawkeye was cornered by the Skrulls back a few issues earlier...

He escaped using a makeshift bow and arrow to disable their ship...

But then he crash-landed back on Earth after he eacaped...

He was saved by a traveling circus...

He proved his worth to them and they agreed to let him join...

He then realized that the circus' strongman was actually the real Hercules!

The two heroes headed to New York to warn the Avengers about a terrible prophecy courtesy of Hercules and I guess this is Hawkeye's circus costume (you have to show a lot of skin to make money in the European countryside traveling circus game).

What amazes me is that when Smith left after Avengers #100, that the new costume lasted as long as it did, which was nine more issues before Hawkeye went back to his classic costume. The Smith design is not inherently bad, but it did not fit Hawkeye's personality at ALL.

EDITED TO ADD: My pal Sam noted to me that it was a shame that Hawkeye never got to wear this costume in a team-up with Angel during Angel's similar bare-chest costume days in the Champions (which were close in time to each other)...

So I asked longtime Line it is Drawn great, Nick Perks, if he could do something with the concept and he more than delivered...

Be sure to check out Nick's website here.

If you folks have any suggestions for February (or any other later months) 2012, 1997, 1972 and 1947 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.

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