Hawkeye #4
Till Death Do Us Part
Hawkeye and Mockingbird have been captured by the mastermind behind an illegal mind control project being developed by Cross Technological Enterprises. The pair wake up and finds themselves shackled up to a wall in the basement room of a mortuary where they store coffins.
It is here they they are confronted by their captors, Oddball and Bombshell, and their boss, the mercenary known as Crossfire. Crossfire decides to take this opportunity to lay out his master plan as he intends to kill the two heroes once everything is said and done.
Crossfire explains that he was once an agent for the CIA. However, when his interests conflicted with that of the agency, he quit and became a mercenary for hire. He then focused his attention on a scheme to eliminate all of America’s superheroes. His first attempt to do so was foiled by the Thing and Moon Knight.[1] However, Crossfire managed to escape and continue developing his scheme, using CTE as a front for his criminal operations. He explains that he has finally developed a sonic device that will make those subjected to it to become homicidal and attack anyone in the vicinity. He is now planning to murder Hawkeye and manipulated events that the archer’s funeral will be held in the funereal home that Crossfire operates. Knowing many of the city’s heroes will attend the funeral, the villain intends to expose them to his sonic mind control device so they slaughter each other. If there are any survivors the fallout from such a horrific massacre would consume them with so much guilt that they would no longer be a problem.
Crossfire then has Oddball and Bombshell take Mockingbird and Hawkeye into a sealed room where he has set up his sonic device. The mercenary intends to run a final test on them, as Hawkeye will surely be killed in the process.
Having no real plan, Hawkeye and Mockingbird try to fight the influence of the sonic device, but can’t stop themselves from fighting one another. Hawkeye finds himself at a distinct disadvantage without his bow and arrows, allowing Mockingbird to easily trounce him with her SHIELD combat training. Clint resists the best he can and discovers that while he can’t stop himself from fighting, he can at least influence the way the battle goes. He intentionally tosses Mockingbird around to take out the security cameras that Crossfire is using to watch the battle. Then, in a ditch effort to try and overcome the sonic device, Clint pops a sonic arrow head in his mouth hoping its frequency will counteract the effects of Crossfire’s device.
Although this causes serious damage to his hearing, the gambit pays off and Hawkeye is able to incapacitate Mockingbird.[2] He then pretends to pass out and waits for Bombshell and Oddball to come recover their bodies. When they are taken out of the room, Hawkeye springs to action and knocks out both Oddball and Bombshell. He then makes his way to the control room where Crossfire is waiting with Clint’s bow and arrow. The villain tries to shoot Hawkeye with his own weapon, but isn’t strong enough to pull back the bowstring far enough. Instead of firing a concussion arrow across the room, it falls flat and goes off at Crossfire’s feet, knocking him out.
Racing back to Mockingbird, Clint strips off her mask and sees how badly beaten she is and begins to cry. Bobbi wakes up and she is deeply touched by his concern and the two finally kiss. Later, when the authorities come to take Crossfire and his minions away, Hawkeye discovers that he has been deafened by his sonic arrow and pretends that he is hearing things just fine. When Mockingbird suggest they team up and fight crime together from now on, Clint doesn’t hear what she is saying. Assuming she is saying goodbye, Clint tells her that he’ll see her around and walks away, much to Bobbi’s shock and dismay.
Epilogue
Luckily, Mockingbird went after Hawkeye and straightened things out. The pair realized they had strong feelings for one another. They get Clint a hearing aid and then quickly elope. The married couple then have a honeymoon at a secluded cabin. There, they are glad that Mockingbird didn’t let Clint walk away or they would never have gotten married.
Recurring Characters
Hawkeye, Mockingbird, Crossfire, Oddball, Bombshell,
Continuity Notes
The Thing and Moon Knight fought Crossfire in Marvel Two-In-One #52.
Up until this point, past stories have presented Hawkeye as though he has always had normal hearing. However, years later, a flashback story in Hawkeye (vol. 4) #19 reveals that Clint had actually been hard of hearing since he was a child due to the abuse he suffered from his alcoholic father. As of this writing (March, 2022) there is no explanation as to how to reconcile these conflicting stories. I have a theory, see below for more details.
Hawkeye’s Hearing
As stated above, stories up to this point have depicted Hawkeye as having, or at least pretending to have normal hearing. Moving forward from this story, Hawkeye is depicted as having lost 80% of his hearing due to the events of this story and needed a hearing aid. This was the status quo until after the Onslaught and Heroes Reborn events of the late 90s. In Avengers Annual 2001 it is later explained that when Franklin Richards sent the Avengers and Fantastic Four to his Counter-Earth dimension and brought them back, Clint’s hearing was restored to normal.
This would not last forever, as in Hawkeye (vol. 4) #15, Clint is deafened again when a villain called the Clown stabs him in the ears with his own arrows. Issue #19 of that series then goes on to reveal that Clint was actually hard of hearing since a kid. This was due to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father.
As of this writing (March, 2022) Marvel has yet to explain this apparent contradiction since, as I’ve said, up until Hawkeye #4, Clint was always depicted as someone without any hearing problems.
There are two possibilities:
The first possibility, is that while Clint’s childhood hearing problems were severe, but not severe enough that they couldn’t be reversed by some breakthrough in medicine that exists entirely in the realm of fiction (Remember these are comics that featured stories in the 1960s that had cures for blindness, as seen in Daredevil #9 and Fantastic Four #19), this idea is not outlandish.
Another, more likely possibility is that Clint always wore a hearing aid, which was small enough that it could not be visibly seen while he was wearing it and kept his handicap a secret. Modern advances in hearing aid technology has made the devices almost invisible to the naked eye. Hawkeye could have easily been wearing hearing aids this entire time and just didn’t mention it.
Given Hawkeye’s pride in being an Avenger and his various insecurities over the years, it would not be impossible that Clint developed a fear of some kind of stigma over his disability that could have impacted his membership on the team. By the time of Hawkeye #4, Clint had more than proven himself as an Avenger, perhaps after the Crossfire incident he decided not to hide his disability anymore.
With this theory in mind, one could assume that rather than damaging his hearing, Hawkeye damaged the hearing aids he was wearing, or the act of putting a sonic arrow in his mouth to counteract the sonic device was more for show. We’re talking about a guy who rage quit the Avengers after getting cock-blocked by an android, the guy is all about theatrics.
