A carnival archer turned costumed adventurer, Hawkeye was mistaken for a criminal by the police and became a fugitive, a situation worsened by his subsequent romance with the Black Widow, who was then a communist spy. 

     In an attempt to clear his name and salvage his crimefighting career, Hawkeye successfully applied for Avengers membership and soon became one of the team's most invaluable members. 

     The Avengers' second recruit (filling a vacancy in the ranks left by the departing founders), Hawkeye went on to serve one of the longest uninterrupted membership stints in the group's history. 

  
     At one point during this long membership stint, Hawkeye used Hank Pym's growth serum to become the new Goliath in an attempt to contribute more raw power to the team, but he soon realized that his archery abilities and fighting skills had been just as valuable to the group as any super-power, so he resumed his original Hawkeye identity. He revived his Goliath identity for several missions years later, but quickly returned to his Hawkeye guise. More recently, he lost his physical tolerance for size-changing in an encounter with the alien Kosmosians, so his alternate identity as Goliath seems permanently defunct.

     Hawkeye eventually took several leaves of absence of varying duration in an attempt to establish a reputation and livelihood outside the Avengers, with varying degrees of success. During the first of those leaves of absence, he briefly served as an early core member of the Defenders; during the second, he partnered for a time with the legendary Two-Gun Kid. He always returned to the Avengers, though, and came to be regarded as one of the group's mainstays, arguably second only to his friend and mentor, Captain America. Hawkeye even established himself as one of the group's foremost leaders after he was promoted to the post of chairman of the Avengers' new west coast division, whose members included his new wife and partner, Mockingbird (whom he had met and married after they teamed up to defeat Crossfire). Hawkeye built the new western team from the ground up and served capably as its leader for some time, but eventually resigned in anger after the U.S. government forced the team to accept the abrasive USAgent into their roster as their government supervisor.

     After briefly serving as mentor to the unofficial, midwestern would-be Avengers team known as the Great Lakes Avengers, Hawkeye soon returned to active duty with Avengers West and eventually resumed his post as chairman, though he resigned it after deciding that it conflicted with his marital responsibilities to Mockingbird. When Mockingbird was killed in action shortly thereafter, the heartbroken Hawkeye went on indefinite leave to mourn her death. He lived as a wilderness hermit, befriending the genetically mutated dog-being Rover, and making peace with USAgent. For a time, Hawkeye was duped into mentoring the unscrupulous revolutionaries known as The Shadows, but Hawkeye's friends War Machine (Jim Rhodes) and USAgent helped expose the Shadows as corrupt, convincing Hawkeye to abandon them.

     The Avengers West disbanded shortly after Hawkeye's departure and reorganized under Iron Man as an independent team called Force Works, but Hawkeye refused membership in this new group. He later rejoined the Avengers, but was soon among the many members of the team lost and presumed dead in their battle with Onslaught, prompting the group's disbanding. In actuality, Hawkeye and the other lost Avengers survived in an otherdimensional parallel world subconsciously created by the near-omnipotent mutant Franklin Richards, and they eventually returned to their own Earth. Hawkeye participated in the subsequent reorganization of the Avengers, rejoining the active roster and recruiting two new members, Firestar and Justice; however, after serving for so long as leader of the team's western roster, Hawkeye began to feel constrained and unsatisfied in a non-leadership role.

     Opportunity knocked in the form of the Thunderbolts, a new super-team which had emerged in the absence of the Avengers after Onslaught. The Thunderbolts had more or less taken the Avengers' place as beloved celebrity adventurers and New York's foremost superheroic force for good, but they had a dark secret: they were actually Baron Helmut Zemo's Masters of Evil in disguise, posing as heroes to win public trust and accumulate resources in preparation for an attempted global conquest. Shortly after the Avengers returned, Zemo put his world domination plan into action using a mass mind control device known as the bio-modem, even mentally enslaving the Avengers (including Hawkeye) and the Fantastic Four; but most of the Thunderbolts had grown fond of their heroic roles and turned against Zemo, thwarting his nearly successful world conquest and rescuing the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in the process. The Thunderbolts then split with Zemo and began operating as a roving team of outlaw superheroes, trying to win back the respect of the public through heroic deeds while evading the legal authorities.

     Sympathetic because of his own outlaw past, and eager for new challenges, Hawkeye offered to serve as the Thunderbolts' new leader if they would continue fighting crime and remain reformed. The Thunderbolts accepted, partly because Hawkeye told them the CSA (Commission on Superhuman Activities) had endorsed his plan and offered to pardon the group if they performed acceptably; in actuality, the CSA had rejected Hawkeye's plan, and he defied them by contacting the Thunderbolts anyway. During his stint as their leader, Hawkeye became a friend and mentor to the Thunderbolts, honing their skills and greatly enhancing their reputations. The Thunderbolts even became trusted allies of the Avengers, though Hawkeye formally resigned his membership in the latter group since he did not want his technically criminal association with the Thunderbolts to impact the Avengers negatively. Meanwhile, Hawkeye became romantically involved with one of the Thunderbolts, Moonstone.

     Things began to fall apart through the actions of Hawkeye's old nemesis, CSA agent and former Avengers government liaison Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich targeted the Thunderbolts for assassination as part of a larger scheme to eradicate superhumans, but Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts exposed and thwarted Gyrich's conspiracy, freeing Gyrich himself from the mind-controlling technology Baron Wolfgang von Strucker had used to make Gyrich act out his anti-superhuman fantasies. Hawkeye agreed to keep the entire affair a secret in exchange for a full federal pardon for the other Thunderbolts, but a spiteful Gyrich refused to go along with concealing the incident unless Hawkeye went to prison for operating as an illegal vigilante with the Thunderbolts. Hawkeye agreed and was placed in federal custody.

     Shortly after he began to serve his prison term at Seagate, Hawkeye was contacted by agent Timothy "Dum-Dum" Dugan of the intelligence agency SHIELD and recruited into an unofficial covert operation. Over the course of this operation, Hawkeye escaped prison, teaming with fellow escapee Plantman and Thunderbolts veteran Songbird to track down an ultimate weapon developed by the late criminal industrialist Justin Hammer. Hawkeye and his partners soon confronted the Crimson Cowl's Masters of Evil, who also sought Hammer's legacy. Hawkeye managed to defuse the situation by explaining that Hammer's legacy was a biotoxin which had already infected all of Hammer's past operatives, including many of the Masters, and that the Cowl intended to exploit this toxin for her own purposes. For the sake of their own safety, Masters of Evil members Cardinal (now calling himself Harrier), Cyclone, Gypsy Moth (now calling herself Skein) and Man-Killer (now calling herself Amazon) agreed to join forces with Hawkeye, Songbird and Plantman (now calling himself Blackheath). Under Hawkeye's leadership, this new team of Thunderbolts defeated the Crimson Cowl's Masters of Evil and finally captured the Cowl herself, exposing her as Justin Hammer's daughter Justine and neutralizing the Hammer-created biotoxin she had hoped to control. Along the way, most of the new Thunderbolts developed a grudging admiration for Hawkeye & Songbird and tried to emulate them to some extent, finding courage they never knew they had.

     After the Cowl's defeat, Hawkeye and Songbird resisted SHIELD's efforts to take their new teammates into custody, despite the risk of losing their own SHIELD-sponsored pardons (though Cyclone was quickly turned over to SHIELD after trying to desert his teammates). Before the matter could be settled, the group was recruited by the V Battalion to help contain an all-consuming void emanating from the V Battalion's flagship, the Vanguard. Teamed with Silver Sable and Citizen V, the new Thunderbolts managed to slow the expanse of the void, then sealed it off completely with the unexpected aid of the reportedly deceased original Thunderbolts, who had been trapped on the alternate world Counter-Earth for months and were now led by a supposedly reformed Baron Helmut Zemo.

     The combined Thunderbolts forces retreated to the Canary Islands to consider their collective future. Hawkeye was reunited with his lover, Moonstone, but she could not bring herself to admit that she loved him. Also, while she credited Hawkeye with helping her see the folly of her criminal life and inspiring her to change, she felt she had to continue her quest for redemption without him or she would never know if she was doing it for the right reasons rather than merely trying to please him. Despite this, Hawkeye was reluctant to consider leaving the group since he did not trust Zemo, but Moonstone and Zemo managed to convince Hawkeye that Zemo had changed for the better, and that Zemo at least had the potential to reform. Confident in the character of the Thunderbolts he had trained, and grudgingly willing to give Zemo a second chance, Hawkeye soon announced his resignation from the group. Bidding his teammates a fond farewell, he told them he was certain they would do the right thing--and that if they didn't, the Avengers would stop them. Only after Hawkeye's departure was Moonstone able to admit to herself that she loved him.

     As for Hawkeye, his new SHIELD-sponsored pardon apparently remained valid despite his clashes with the organization, and he soon renewed his Avengers credentials once his legal troubles and Thunderbolts affiliation were both behind him. After playing a key role in the Avengers' Idaho battle with a rampaging Hulk and She-Hulk, Hawkeye rejoined the active Avengers roster in time to play mediator in a clash between the Avengers and the Thunderbolts over the latter team's Liberator project. This conflict resulted in Zemo's Thunderbolts disbanding, but the team soon regrouped under the new leadership of Abe Jenkins (MACH-4). Meanwhile, the Avengers faced a crisis all their own when longtime team member Scarlet Witch went mad, apparently killing Hawkeye and several other Avengers and wrecking Avengers Mansion. The traumatized Avengers disbanded, but a new Avengers team soon came together under Captain America's leadership. When a still-mad Scarlet Witch warped the entire world to create the "House of M" alternate reality she resurrected Hawkeye in her remade world, though she apparently unmade him after he turned against her; however, when reality was restored to normal, the Avengers found a discarded Hawkeye costume indicating that Clint Barton might still be alive.