Today's Fact
Clint Barton held 'Avengers don't kill' as sacred law — right up until the person who bent it was his wife, and the dead man was the one who had drugged and wronged her.
Stranded in the year 1876 during a time-lost West Coast Avengers mission, Mockingbird was abducted by the Phantom Rider, Lincoln Slade, who drugged her into forgetting her life and her husband. When Bobbi Morse fought free of the haze, she tracked Slade to a cliff edge; he slipped, dangled by his fingertips, begged — and she chose not to pull him up. Back in the present she told Clint a merciful fiction: that the Rider had taken his own life (West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #17–24, 1987).
The truth reached Clint the cruelest way available — from the Phantom Rider's ghost, in West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #35 (1988). Hawkeye's verdict was instant and absolute: Avengers don't kill, not even by standing still, and he could not condone death as an answer for anything. That Bobbi had neither struck nor pushed the man who assaulted her — that she had simply withheld a rescue — bought her no ground at all.
By West Coast Avengers Vol. 2 #37 (1988) the argument had broken furniture bigger than a marriage. Clint forced the issue as team leader, Bobbi walked out, and Tigra and Moon Knight sided with her, judging the chairman's absolutism unreasonable. The West Coast branch fractured in public, and the Bartons' marriage cracked along precisely the same line — a code Clint would enforce against the person it hurt most.
Why It's Obscure
Other Avengers collected headquarters and statues; Clint's tenure as chairman is remembered for the day his own rulebook outranked his wife.
Gallery
Clint Barton at the draw with Bobbi Morse behind him, Mockingbird in her own right, and the West Coast roster from the years the code held — and then didn't.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.
Bullpen Bulletins
- 10 Times Hawkeye Ironically Said Superheroes Shouldn't Kill — CBRCBR's issue-by-issue record: West Coast Avengers #35 for the revelation, #37 for Hawkeye's 'I can't condone death as an answer for anything' and the team fracture.
- Mockingbird Biography — Mighty AvengersDetailed biography of the 1876 abduction, the cliff at Spirit Peak, the sanitized story Bobbi told Clint, and her fear of the Avengers' no-killing code.
- What Is Hawkeye's Code When It Comes to Killing? — CBRCBR's analysis of Hawkeye's hardline stance, the ghost's revelation, and the years Mockingbird, Tigra and Moon Knight spent on the far side of the split.