Today, we look at how Hawkeye’s brief infatuation with the Scarlet Witch almost broke up Scarlet Witch and Vision before they ever even actually dated!
This is “Love In Vain,” a feature where I spotlight “near miss” romances. You know what I mean, cases where two characters seem poised to become a couple but never quite get together. A few dates don’t count! I mean a serious relationship.
Of course, in terms of “seem poised” in comic book terms, that typically means one or the other character express any interest whatsoever in another character romantically, because there just isn’t much room in comic books to just toss out “I’m interesting character X” and not have it actually be setting up a plot where that character and Character X attempt to pursue a relationship.
The notable exception, of course, was in Stan Lee-scripted comic books of the mid-1960s when he wasn’t doing much of the plotting and thus was throwing in plot points willy nilly whether he was actively planning on following up on the idea or not. A lot of comic books were done “on the fly” without a whole lot of attention paid to long-term plans, but some books were worse about long-term planning than others and Don Heck, in particular, did not seem like he was putting a whole lot of long term thought into the Avenger when he was plotting the book with Stan Lee scripting (unlike some other Marvel artists of the era, Heck had never plotted a comic book before Stan Lee did an overall change to the way Marvel books were plotted circa late 1963/early 1964). So let’s see how that played out in real time…
HAWKEYE’S INITIAL FEELINGS FOR THE SCARLET WITCH
Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch became teammates in Avengers #16 as part of the period now known as “Cap’s Kooky Quartet,” where Captain America led an Avengers team made up of himself and three reformed supervillains. Hawkeye had only become a supervillain because he had been manipulated by the Soviet agent, Black Widow. After she was seemingly killed, Hawkeye decided to redeem himself and join the Avengers.
Okay, in Avengers #21 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee and Wallace Wood), Lee and Heck have Scarlet Witch begin to moon over Captain America a little bit…
Wanda continues to moon over Captain America over the next few issues, which leads to the revelation in Avengers #25 (by Heck, Lee and Dick Ayers) that Hawkeye has a thing for Wanda…
He later blows up at Quicksilver and then curses himself, as he knows he needed Quicksilver’s help to become leader and get with Quicksilver’s sister…
THE BLACK WIDOW CHANGES EVERYTHING
However, as I noted before, it wasn’t like Heck and Lee were really thinking this through longeterm, and so they instead had Black Widow turn out to be alive in Avengers #29 (by Don Heck, Stan Lee and Frank Giacoia), just brainwashed and she teams up with Power Man and the Swordsman to destroy the Avengers, starting with Hawkeye. Luckily for Hawkeye, her love for him causes her to break free of the brainwashing in the following issue and she was back to the side of the angels. So Hawkeye and Black Widow are now a couple and that’s it for any possible Wanda/Clint relationship at the time.
Once she was free of the programming, Natasha wanted to try to show that she could be an asset to the good guys, so she brings the Sons of the Serpent to the Avengers’ attention. She then helps them take the Serpents down.
Roy Thomas then took over as writer of the series and he toys with the idea of her joining the Avengers, but the other Avengers are wary about her because she is still willing to kill. Hawkeye literally has to lie about the fact that she saves the day in Avengers #37 (by Thomas and Don Heck) by threatening to kill the bad guy…
Since the others weren’t present for that, Widow was all set to argue her way on to the team in Avengers #38 (by Thomas, Heck and George Roussos) when she was waylaid by Nick Fury while on the way to Avengers Mansion and Fury makes a pretty convincing argument that she should join S.H.I.E.L.D. instead and she does so. However, once that mission was over, the Avengers were totally prepared to make her a member of the team, but then she decided to retire as Black Widow in Avengers #45 (by Thomas, Heck and Vince Colletta)…
She then changes her mind, but it’s too late for her to be a member of the Avengers and she goes back to working for S.H.I.E.L.D.
HAWKEYE’S FEELINGS RETURN AT AN INORPORTUNE TIME
Eventually, though, Hawkeye (now known as Goliath, as he adopted Hank Pym’s size-growing abilities) and Black Widow break up in Avengers #76 (by Thomas, John Buscema and Tom Palmer)…
Their breakup was weird, as they meet again in Avengers #83 (by Thomas, Buscema and Palmer), when she is one of the female superheroes who are enchanted by the Enchantress as part of her scheme to create an all-female super-team known as the Lady Liberators. Once the heroes are free from their mind control, though, Clint and Black Widow don’t even really share a scene, as Clint is too busy yelling at the Scarlet Witch about how dumb women’s liberation is (boy, Black Widow sure missed out on a prince)…
Around this time, Clint suddenly decided he was into Scarlet Witch. She pops up into his head in Avengers #90 (by Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema and Sam Grainger)…
That was particularly bad timing by Clint because during that same storyline (in the next issue), Vision and Scarlet Witch are clearly into each other…
but Vision’s insecurities are keeping them from getting together…
This comes to a head a year later when Hawkeye (he had returned to archery) decides to make an unwanted advance on Scarlet Witch while the Vision was watching…
Luckily, Scarlet Witch and Vision work things out anyways and officially get together as a couple and Hawkeye handles the new relationship well….HA! As if! In actuality, he’s a big baby about it and storms off in Avengers #109 (by Steve Englehart, Don Heck and Frank McLaughlin) when he notes he really isn’t even INTO the Scarlet Witch, he’s just pissed about keeping on getting rejected by the Black Widow…
Hawkeye sure was a prince, huh?
Okay, folks, I’m sure you all have a lot of examples for this feature, so feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] with your suggestions!
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