Super heroes have become extremely popular over the past decade thanks very much to the explosion of quality comic book movies that have arisen.  But comic books themselves have also seen a rise in sales.  Because of both these factors, many heroes have become instruments of social activism. One such character is Hawkeye, a title usually held by Clint Barton, a member of the Avengers more often than not.  Hawkeye has been used, mostly in recent years, as a method of social activism both in official capacities and fan activities due to his relatively minor ranking among the Avengers and powered heroes of Marvel, his newly strengthened resolve to fight for the common man, and his codependent attitude toward women.

Hawkeye (Clint Barton) was first introduced in 1964 in Tales of Suspense number 57 as an accidental villain to Iron Man.  Hawkeye first appears as a man trying to become a superhero- or at least do some good- but when he takes down his first criminal, he becomes mistaken for a criminal himself.  He goes on the run to avoid capture where he falls in love with Black Widow.  Even here, in his first appearance, he is only a villain working for Black Widow, only her love interest.  Iron Man is the real focus of the issue. His next noteworthy appearance isn't until he joins the Avengers.  Avengers #16 (1965) sees Hawkeye join under the leadership of Captain America and Scarlet Witch.  Here we see Hawkeye again taking orders from a woman, in this case Scarlet Witch instead of Black Widow.  Even more intriguing, we see Hawkeye become Scarlet Witch's lover, and he leaves the Avengers in Avengers #109 (1973) as Scarlet Witch takes a new lover in Vision. It's almost as if he's dependent on being a woman's lover in the Avengers.

While he eventually does rejoin the Avengers in Avengers no. 172 (1978), his first solo title is actually a combination of him and his new lover Mockingbird starting in 1983 with Hawkeye #1.  The series chronicles their adventures together fighting the villainous Crossfire.  Crossfire planned to mind control the two superheroes, specifically choosing Hawkeye because "Hawkeye was prominent enough in the super hero community to attract [other superheroes] en masse at his funeral and weak enough to be an easy target".  Again, Hawkeye is presented as weak compared to the other heroes in the Marvel Universe.  Indeed, he lacks superpowers of any kind which even his sometimes partners Mockingbird and Black Widow both have.

The most important event of the Hawkeye solo title came in issue #4, the final one.  In this issue, Hawkeye is rendered deaf by a detonation of one of his sonic arrows in order to prevent Crossfire from being able to mind control him any longer.  By doing this he saves his lover and future (ex) wife Mockingbird as well as himself.  However he also damages his hearing seemingly permanently.  This important event is retconned away in 2004 during Avengers #502 (Chaos part 3).  Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye's former lover, has gone insane and spawns a Kree warship over the city.  Hawkeye ends up sacrificing himself to save the world and when he is finally brought back about a year later, he is no longer deaf.  

In 2012, a new Hawkeye solo title was released.  Hawkeye (2012) was written by Matt Fraction and drawn by David Aja. It won critical acclaim with four Eisner awards and two Harvey awards over the course of its run.  According to an article written by the A.V. Club, "Spider-Man has long been considered Marvel's superhero everyman, but Hawkeye has stolen that title with this series". Hawkeye has become the symbol for the every man, much like Spider-Man has done for decades. Hawkeye fights for the little people, the down trodden. Ever since the character of Clint Barton was just a child, he was fighting for the little guy, though he himself was one.

All-New Hawkeye was a series beginning in 2015 that is running through April of 2016. In this, the artists and writers explicitly deal with Clint's backstory as an abused child who runs away around age nine with his brother and join a circus after his father beats them one too many times. Barney Barton, Clint's brother, urges him to "Get your bike!" and they ride until they hit a circus. This new version of Hawkeye's backstory leaves out the earlier detail of them being orphans after their parents die while driving drunk. Either way, the fact that Clint's life begins with abuse helped the character become the strong everyman he developed into in the later, more modern versions of his story. The everyman attitude that allowed Clint to become a social activist was highlighted through his deafness.

Hawkeye was of course deaf in the 1980s and 1990s, but due to the retcon that brought his hearing back, not many young people were aware. This was the case with Anthony Smith, a four year old boy born with Mosaic Trisomy 22 that gave him hearing impairment. His mother wrote in to Marvel saying that her son refused to wear hearing aids because superheroes didn't wear them. Marvel responded immediately. According to CBS News, "[Marvel editor Rosemann] decided to send [his mom] a note and an image of Hawkeye, a hero best known for being on the Avengers. He told her to say to her son that the character lost his hearing at one point of his career and was still a hero." By letting the world know that Hawkeye had been deaf, Marvel opened the door for returning him to that state.

Hawkeye Vol 4. Issue 18 sees Hawkeye go deaf once more, and the after effects are seen in Issue 19. Issue 19 was written in a way that put the most emphasis on his deafness over everything else. Within the panels, speech bubbles were empty as Clint was unable to hear them. The reader had to cope with this as well. In other panels, speech was in the form of American Sign Language. It very much made reading the pictures all the more important in the comic. Reactions were very positive. Deaf culture was being represented in media in a largely accurate way.

Another issue that dealt very well with Clint's deafness was All-New Hawkeye Issue 2. In issue two, Clint is fighting HYDRA agents. In the process, his hearing aid gets knocked out and suddenly the panels and artwork go grey. There is only very muted color shown, most of it grey, black, and white. The speech bubbles are empty just like Matt Fraction's number 19. Clint jokes ruefully while getting beat up, "I'm sure whatever you're saying is like, Reed Richards-level smart there big guy, but I can't hear you!" When he does eventually get his hearing aid back in, the colors resume their normal tones.

Hawkeye is about doing good not because it's fun, but because it's the right thing to do. Clint Barton goes through rough patches even to the point of being almost completely deaf, but he always comes out to do the right thing. His popularity in the movies highlight this as well and have allowed fans to latch onto him as a favorite. He's just a normal guy, albeit very much in shape, with a bow and arrow who has to grapple with superhuman issues alongside his powered friends. This struggle has led to his popularity in fan culture. A whole social activism movement has arisen alongside him, called The Hawkeye Initiative.

The Hawkeye Initiative is a social activist campaign that strives to use Hawkeye to fix female poses in comics. "How to fix every Strong Female Character pose in superhero comics: replace the character with Hawkeye doing the same thing." Originating on Tumblr, the Hawkeye Initiative uses Hawkeye and other male comic characters, places them in the contorted, unrealistic poses of female characters, and thus highlights the absurdity of the artwork.  The topic of "why Hawkeye" has come up multiple times in discussion of the Initiative.  The Hawkeye Initiative founders claim it was an arbitrary choice, citing multiple fan-art pieces that inspired them, but I believe there are multiple reasons way the Hawkeye character lends itself well to the movement, several of which have been touched on above.

First, Hawkeye's preexisting codependence on women has made it easy for fans to associate him with the opposite sex. Contributors to the Hawkeye Initiative often joke that he's a strong female character. This was made even easier through the fact that in the Avengers movie, Hawkeye becomes a pawn for Loki and is forced to do whatever the mad god said.  According to scholar Susan Scott, "it is easy to suggest that he presents a "marginalized," or comparatively "feminized," member of the team." Hawkeye is doing the opposite of what a typical "male superhero" is expected to do. In fact, he mocks his own power set in the second Avengers movie, saying "We're fighting an army of robots, and I have a bow and arrow." This mocking of his own power set leads into the second reason- Hawkeye as a low-stakes target.

Hawkeye is an Avenger.  He's in the Avengers movies.  But he's also the only male Avenger who lacks his own franchise or even his own set of merchandise.  Hawkeye is not Thor, he's not Iron Man. With Hawkeye, the fans either very much like him, or don't care what happens, there seems to be no in between. This allows for fans to satirize him without too much fear of being reprimanded from the mother-company, Marvel.  This especially would have been important in the beginning, as regular fan artists may have been less inclined to satirize the big names right off the bat.

His fight for the common man, especially in the comics, also lends itself well to the Initiative. In Hawkeye (2012), Clint, in the very first issue, fights to save a dog's life and the tenants in the building he lives in.  The villains he fights aren't super. They don't have x-ray vision, flight, or super strength. They are referred to as the "Tracksuit Mafia" and are a group of Russian mobsters who say "bro" all the time and don't quite understand English.  Clint fights for the rights of his fellow tenants, eventually using his bow and his money to wrestle the building from the mafia and own it himself. As for the dog, he rescues him after he gets hit by a car and then adopts him.

Lucky, the dog, is in fact another way Hawkeye has become a social activist.  As stated, the very first issue of the Hawkeye story finds Lucky, then named Arrow, fighting for his life after getting thrown into traffic by his former owners, the Tracksuit Mafia. "What kind of man throws a dog into traffic?" demands Hawkeye as he fights the mafia. After the dog gets hit, he picks him up and carries him inside a veterinary practice for treatment. He renames the dog Lucky and takes him home, caring for him, despite the loss of the dog's eye.  Issue 11 of Hawkeye is written entirely from Lucky's perspective, lacking most words and drawn in a web of images for thoughts.  "Pizza Dog" as he's become known to fans has highlighted the struggle of animals and quickly become a fan favorite, highlighting the social activism of Hawkeye.

Finally, a way that Hawkeye's codependence on women has created social activism is through Clint Barton's partner and fellow Hawkeye, Kate Bishop. Kate Bishop is a woman who became Hawkeye as a teenager while Clint Barton was dead in the comics, or masquerading as different hero, Ronin. Kate took over the mantle after being inspired by Hawkeye as he rescued her from Matador, a villain. "I only caught of glimpse of him. But he was amazing," she says in All-New Hawkeye issue 6.  Later she takes that admiration and turns to her own pursuit of being a hero. She takes up the mantle of Hawkeye not to replace him, but to honor him.  Yet when Clint Barton becomes Hawkeye again, he doesn't take the name back, he shares is.  Both he and Kate are equally Hawkeye, neither is more Hawkeye that the other. This very much appeals to the third wave feminism of equality for women in the workplace.  Kate has reached the point where she is Hawkeye just as much as the male, Clint Barton is.  The social activism has come full circle.

Hawkeye has been a proponent of social activism mostly in recent decades because of his ability to connect with women through codependence on them, his less high profile in popular culture, and his strong resolve to fight for the common man as evidenced by his actions in the comics. Through animal activism via Pizza Dog, feminist movements like the Hawkeye Initiative or the use of Kate Bishop as Hawkeye, and Deaf Culture being prominent in Hawkeye comics, Hawkeye as a character has worked to promote social causes for many years now.  This is important because it has demonstrated that comic heroes, even ones without powers, might be fictional, but are still strong in the world, strong enough to make real impacts despite their fictional beginnings.