HAWKEYE QUIT ARCHERY TO BECOME THE GIANT GOLIATH
In Avengers #63 (April 1969), Clint Barton's bow snapped during an emergency landing on the flight home from Wakanda — and a mortified archer decided he was finished being the team's weakest link.
The timing handed him an exit. Henry Pym had just sworn off the Goliath identity for good, and word arrived that the Black Widow had been captured on Coney Island. Ordered to sit the rescue out because his feelings made him a liability, Clint instead helped himself to Pym's growth serum and the abandoned Goliath costume hanging in the mansion.
He stormed the fairground at giant size, smashed the enormous robot guarding his captive, and kept the borrowed name for years. The archer most readers picture spent a long stretch of Avengers history as a building-sized brawler who never touched a bow.
WHY IT'S OBSCURE
Gene Colan's cover for the issue plants the newly giant Clint over his own teammates, which makes the switch read like a publicity stunt — yet he stayed Goliath well into the Kree-Skrull War era.
Standing between a synthezoid and a king left Clint convinced that marksmanship was not enough, so the most human Avenger solved his problem by borrowing somebody else's superpower wholesale.
His first outing at giant size was an act of disobedience — headquarters had benched him precisely because the hostage was the woman he loved.
GALLERY
BULLPEN BULLETINS — SOURCES
- Avengers Vol. 1 #63 (1969), Marvel Comics — "And in This Corner... Goliath!"
- Marvel Database — Avengers Vol. 1 #63
- CBR — Avengers: Hawkeye as Goliath (story background)
- Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.