Warning! Spoilers ahead for Heroes Reborn: Siege Society #1
In the latest one-shot comic set in the remade Marvel Universe of Heroes Reborn, a corrupted Hawkeye just had a hilarious battle with Marvel’s Green Arrow. This new reality has seen the Avengers never assembling, and as a result this new issue reveals that Black Widow, Hawkeye, and more never became heroes either. Instead, they’ve all fallen in league with Baron Zemo in Siege Society #1, determined to take down Nighthawk’s European arm of the Squadron Supreme. This includes the Golden Archer, who serves as Marvel’s pastiche of DC’s Green Arrow.
In this changed reality, the Squadron Supreme of America became Earth’s Mightiest Heroes instead of the Avengers, though Siege Society #1 from writer Cody Ziglar and artist Paco Medina reveals that there was still a superhero civil war. After Hyperion and Nighthawk (Marvel’s analogs for Superman and Batman) had a falling out, Nighthawk took his team of heroes and formed a Secret Squadron in Europe along with The Blur (Marvel’s Flash). However, this was something that Baron Zemo couldn’t tolerate, forming his own team to kill the Secret Squadron and draw out Nighthawk. Members of Zemo’s Siege Society include Sabretooth, Silver Witch, Soviet Agent, Fire-Ant, Black Widow, and Hawkeye himself. With the exception of Zemo and Sabretooth, all of these mercenaries and villains are meant to be heroes in the normal Marvel Universe.
While the two teams battle it out, Hawkeye in particular comes face-to-face with none other than the Golden Archer. Seeing as how heroes of the Squadron Supreme are all analogs for DC superheroes, Golden Archer is clearly inspired by Green Arrow. In past Marvel Comics, his girlfriend is even named Lady Lark, a hero with hypersonic vocal cords not unlike those of Green Arrow’s on and off again love Black Canary. In any case, what follows is a hilarious battle of back and forth duel of trick arrows between the two formidable archers.
Hawkeye ended up being the victor when all was said and done, using the classic move of shooting a shrunken Fire-Ant on the head of one of his arrows to take the Golden Archer down. However, the brutal and lethal twist was that Scott Lang grew really big once he got close enough to squash the Archer under his boot. Regardless, Nighthawk and Blur arrived to save the day and those who were left, though Hawkeye and Black Widow managed to escape before they showed up to find Golden Archer and many others who were killed.
While Hawkeye and Green Arrow did actually fight and team up in the 2003 JLA/Avengers crossover, this new issue provides another fun example of Hawkeye battling with the closet Marvel approximation of Green Arrow there is. While using Fire-Ant didn’t exactly make it a fair fight, Hawkeye is a villain in the new Heroes Reborn reality. He can hardly be expected to follow the rules of engagement. In any case, trumping one another with trick arrows made perfect sense and was absolutely hilarious all the same in the new issue.
