60 years ago, Hawkeye hit the mark with his comic book debut

In each look back, we examine a comic book issue from 10/25/50/75 years ago (plus a wildcard with a fifth week each month). Since this month has a fifth week, this time we go to June 1964, for the comic book debut of Hawkeye.

As you probably know, the Marvel Universe was shaped almost exclusively by two artists in the first half of the 1960s – Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. These two artists (both worked with Stan Lee and occasionally with Lee’s brother Larry Lieber) created pretty much all of Marvel’s most famous characters in the early 1960s, from the Fantastic Four to Spider-Man and Thor to Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and Wasp and Hulk.

However, there were still a few major characters that were not influenced by Ditko or Kirby (even two major characters that were not nominally created by Kirby or Ditko, Iron Man and Daredevil, were probably influenced by Kirby and/or Ditko), and one of them was Hawkeye, who made his debut in June 1964. Exciting stories #57, by Stan Lee and Don Heck.

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How did Don Heck deal with the “Marvel Method”?

As a refresher (which I previously shared in a post about Marvel writers depicting the Marvel Method in comics themselves), let’s recap what we mean when we talk about the “Marvel Method.” There are two notable ways to write a comic. Probably the most common (and ironically, this is the way most Marvel comics are written these days) is for the writer to write a script that, along with the dialogue, explains what’s happening on each page. The artist then draws the pages based on the script.

In the Marvel method, on the other hand, the layout of the pages is left to the discretion of the artists, who start from a more general plot. The plot is usually derived in a story conference between the screenwriter and the artist. After the pages are drawn, the screenwriter adds dialogue to the drawn pages.

The biggest disadvantage of this method is that if the artist didn’t do the pages well enough, the editor (at Marvel in the early 1960s, the editor was also the writer of the script) would have the artist redraw pages until the story was “right.” Joe Orlando once noted that he often had to draw 25 to 30 pages to get the 20 pages for the story. Marvel, of course, didn’t pay for those unused pages.

Another problem is how much plot is available to the artist. Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby famously started coming up with plots themselves at some point, without input from Stan Lee. That wasn’t what other artists wanted to do, especially since they weren’t getting paid for that extra work. They tried to get Lee to give them as much plot as possible.

Well, Don Heck was one of those artists who wasn’t a fan of having to plan out his comics, so it’s so impressive to see Lee and Heck create such a great character in Hawkeye. Exciting stories #57…

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How did Hawkeye make his comic book debut?

At the start of the issue, Tony Stark has accidentally asked Pepper Potts out on a date (which made Tony’s chauffeur and best friend Happy Hogan feel pretty bad about himself) and they go to a carnival. They are about to watch a marksman show off his skills with a bow and arrow when an accident occurs. Tony transforms into Iron Man and saves the day. The marksman is not happy about being exposed by Iron Man…

Well, in a typical supervillain origin, the Archer would decide to become a villain because he was exposed. However, Heck and Lee came up with a clever twist by giving the Archer a selfish origin that nevertheless makes him want to become a superhero!

However, after he prevents a robbery, the police arrive, believing that HAWKEYE was involved in the robbery! He is rescued by the mysterious Black Widow, who Heck and Lee had introduced a few issues earlier (another of the most notable characters of the early 1960s, created without the involvement of Kirby and Ditko). Hawkeye falls in love with Black Widow and vows to kill Iron Man for her.

The notable thing about this issue is that Hawkeye almost kills Iron Man! This is a pretty impressive debut for him in terms of his power, as he almost destroys Iron Man with an explosive arrow, but stops short of killing him because the explosion hurt the Black Widow and he obviously did all this FOR the Black Widow, so he freaks out and leaves with her, sparing Iron Man’s life (Hawkeye did really well in these early fights)…

Of course, Kirby and Lee later rehabilitated Hawkeye by having him join the Avengers and he became an iconic superhero, but that opening story was great too.

If you have suggestions for comics from 2014, 1999, 1974, and 1949 (or July or later) that you’d like me to spotlight, drop me a line at [email protected]! Here’s the guide for book cover dates, though, so you can suggest books that actually came out in the right month. Generally, the traditional time period between a comic’s cover date and release date in comics history was two months (sometimes it was three months, but not in the times we’re discussing here). So the comics have a cover date that’s two months before the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Of course, it’s easier to figure out when a book from 10 years ago came out because there was coverage of the books on the internet at the time.