“The archer is the true weapon; the bow is just a long piece of wood.” -Sebastien de Castell

Green Arrow, DC Comics’ emerald archer.

Hawkeye, Marvel’s mightiest marksman.

Across the unbelievable worlds of Marvel and DC, any sort of terror is possible. Cosmic horrors and scientific apocalypses everywhere. The last person you’d think would stand up to fight against threats of that level alongside the crime they see on their streets are two guys with bows and arrows of all things. But through all their struggles, not only have they proved themselves capable of fighting the hardest battles, but also of being worthy of being called a hero. Even by their own strict standards. But today might be their hardest battle yet, as the Avengers’ hawkeyes stare down the Justice League’s best shooter. Will Clint go two for two with this target, or is Ollie going to even the score? One way to find out. Ready. Aim. FIGHT!

In Case You Were Wondering…

As with our previous Marvel VS DC rematch blog, this match was predominantly researched by two main research leads, rather than a full team. Likewise, as with prior blogs we will be including a retrospective section before the verdict, covering both characters’ appearances on Death Battle.

Green Arrow

DC’s re-canonizing all of its eras somewhat recently means Green Arrow can be reasonably evaluated with Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, and Post-Flashpoint stories all in mind. G.A. also typically shares his arrows with the people he’s directly working with (main case being Roy Harper and Mia Dearden in their tenures as Speedy), so any arrows said people have used while serving as his partner should reasonably also be in Oliver’s arsenal.

Hawkeye

This analysis will include equipment during Clint’s tenure as Ronin, as he is shown to have kept the costume and equipment from it after the Dark Reign era, and even brings said weaponry as Hawkeye in case the situation calls for it. Trick arrows used by Kate Bishop will also be included, as many of her own were given to or built by Clint.

Green Arrow

Background

Full Name: Oliver Jonas Queen
Age: Roughly late 30s to early 40s
Height: 6’0” | 1.82 m
Weight: 185 lbs | 83.9 kg
Owner of Queen Industries (until they inevitably take it away again)
Teams: Seven Soldiers of Victory, Justice League, Outsiders, Checkmate
Likes: Woke, chili, the Arrow Family
Dislikes: Unwoke, Tom King, Hawkman
Weird spectrum of relationships with people with bird themed names

“Listen lady, so far I’ve survived wealth, substitute parenthood, and membership in the freaking Justice League– Give me a little time… and maybe we’ll see how great a man I really am!”

If there was one word to describe Oliver Queen, it would be hollow. Owner of Queen Industries, Ollie held a loose leash on his company as he indulged in a rich playboy lifestyle. It’s not that he was malicious or incompetent, he had his occasional friendships and definitely knew how to run things, but he was also… just there. None of his friendships were long lasting, his family had passed away when he was young, and an archery hobby didn’t exactly do too much at stockholder meetings or parties. His head was in the clouds, so whether it be through running into the wrong crowd or simply slipping off the rail, Oliver fell from his yacht and into the sea. Waking up on a mysterious island, he had no wealth or support. Just one goal: survive.

Days turned to weeks and then to months, but Oliver adapted. His archery talents developed to incredible levels as he worked day by day, honestly, for food, water, and shelter, forming into a deadly hunter. One day however, he found his chance off the island: some drug dealers setting up camp on shore. Putting his skills to use, Oliver took down the crooks and set sail home. Now back in Star City, he returned to Queen Industries and his former lifestyle. But it was after his survival that he understood just how mediocre his former lifestyle was. On the island, he had a goal. That just wasn’t here back home. But what was, was the story the criminals he took down had spread around after being arrested. A couple rumors, some saying a whole drug empire was toppled, others coming from high fools who could barely make out what was the sky and what was the ground. But the consistent trait in all of those stories was that the hero was a man dressed in a green hood, wielding a bow and firing arrows with expert accuracy. Oliver’s life before the island may have been hollow, but with his developed skills and this heroic status of the mystery figure, he finally found a purpose he enjoyed. It didn’t take long after a few criminals were stopped by emerald blurs taking them out: it was official, the Green Arrow was here to keep Star City safe.

Through the emerald archer’s early adventures, he made his name big, taking down crime after crime. It wasn’t long until his career would take him to meeting new people he’d never meet otherwise, would it be his sidekick Roy Harper, or joining the Justice League! Not bad for some spoiled rich kid. Or at least, former. Despite his advances in stopping crime, the business side of Ollie’s left wasn’t able to defend itself as well as Green Arrow could. One slip up later, and a cheapskate stole his whole business and fortune. Reduced to the level of the common man though, Oliver truly became whole. As nice as the money was for funding his shenanigans, losing it opened his eyes further to the troubles of the world. The companies charging double their product’s worth, to the factories dumping their waste in anywhere but a dump. He expanded from just taking down the villains, to taking down the scum. Even developing unbreakable bonds with people like Hal Jordan and Dinah Lance, truly showing just how much better of a person he was without the bills blinding his eyes.

But… was he really that good? Was he really? As he got older, him and Dinah’s love grew, until they moved together to Seattle. It was there where everything would get muddier, as Oliver crossed the line. In response to seeing a heavily tortured Dinah, he lashed out and killed her tormentor. It was worth pondering over later, was it necessary? Could he have saved her without killing? He brushed it off, because after all, Seattle had other people to save. But as time went on, he’d only sink deeper and deeper into darkness. He crossed paths with the former Yakuza archer Shado, and killed for her. He did jobs with the master hitman Eddie Fyres, and killed with him. For a time he even threw his secret identity away, not seeing the point in a mask if there wasn’t a good enough man worth hiding behind it. He still saved people, but he was becoming too hollow in a potentially worse way than he was before, too hollow to feel good about his good. It didn’t help that he had become so distant from his former Leaguers, had been backstabbed by his government, just generally spit on by the world. Him and Dinah separated after he had made one mistake too many, he left Seattle after thinking he was damaging it more than he was saving it, and after the clock struck an Emerald Twilight… an arrow through Hal Jordan’s corrupted heart was the shot that finally broke Oliver Queen’s.

Moving to the isolated monastery called the Ashram, Oliver took up the life of a quiet monk, distant from all his previous drama… until some assassins came to kill him, as they do. Oliver knew he had to leave the Ashram to handle this problem before it became someone else’s, but along with him came a skilled yet good-willed archer that wanted to learn everything about Ollie’s Emerald Archer days: Connor Hawke. Even when Ollie returned to dark parts of his life, even teaming up with Eddie Fyres again, he was beginning to act more like he did before Seattle. Eddie explained it well: Connor was reminding Oliver of how good he used to be, not how bad he was now. Though maybe he was still a reminder of the bad, as Connor revealed himself to be Oliver’s secret son from decades ago… and Oliver had known all along. He had held him as a baby, and his rich boy attitude made him think he was too good for the kid back then… How stupid. Almost as stupid as Oliver decided to be when he committed to an operation revolving around those previous assassins, sacrificing himself to save Metropolis, dying in a violent explosion and never getting a proper chance to fix his relationships with all the people he left behind…

…but you know, it’s comics. One Hal Jordan atonement arc later, and Ollie was back… as a soulless husk copy of him earlier in life, because his soul in Heaven only wanted a good Oliver to come back, yikes. But who better to tell you how much of a moron you’ve been but yourself? Soulless at his best Oliver talked some sense into soulful bum Oliver: why give a second chance to your better self, when the point of second chances is to better your worse self? One quick return to form, and the true soul of Oliver Queen was back. And no longer would he mess around and sink into failure. He properly spent time and bonded with Connor, fixed the distant mess that was his relationship with Roy, helped bring people up like Mia Deardan from the social issues that he used to fight against (to the point where she got to be the new Speedy, cool!), and when he met back up with Dinah… ok, that one would take some work. But after a run as Mayor of Star City, and collaboration with the Justice League, Ollie and Dinah finally tied the knot. Oliver put in the effort, and it paid off. Still struggled to pay the bills though, struggles of the common man and all that.

A couple terrible events, a reboot, and a reboot of that reboot to basically undo that reboot later, and Green Arrow was back in action. Determined to never be split from his family again, never fail his city, and especially not sink back into his own despair. Always ready to fight the good fight. He’s the most grounded guy in the Justice League, the Emerald Archer, best shot in the world. Going to hit the mark against whatever crime he sees no matter what. After all, who would be better for that job than Oliver Queen? He takes pride in taking down social issues after all, and without a shadow of a doubt, took down the biggest social challenge any one of us can face. Through the blood and the money and every other struggle, Green Arrow saved himself.

Experience & Skill

Adaptation
(Experience & Skill)

Perhaps Oliver’s (second) greatest skill in action however is his ability to adapt to practically any situation. No matter what the enemy’s advantage seems to be, he can always figure out a winning path if it exists. He can deal with blindness through simple instruction, or simply remembering how everything was before he lost sight. One time where a distorted view made it impossible to see clearly, he simply looked at things through a reflection rather than the hazy illusion. But what about enemy tactics? He countered a super speed shot by splitting his arrow in two to sneak a shot past it, mind controlling sound by using his boxing glove arrow stuffing as earplugs, an impenetrable forcefield by ragebaiting, ally possession by pattern recognition, and so on. Even powers as complicated as Vertigo’s are able to be dealt with, would it be through simple quick thinking and acrobatics, or using his perception of things against him to shoot the Seattle Space Needle at him.

He’s good at picking up on details over time as well, not just in the moment. He used an animal group’s evolution machine to evolve them to the point of de-evolution for instance. Even against other big predictive fighters like Deathstroke, Oliver can simply throw logic out the window and fight so unpredictably that Slade was completely lost by his improvisation. But in regards to his adaptation, what does he do when having to handle his own arsenal lacking rather than opponents’ succeeding? Even better, interestingly enough. He’s remarked he’s not strictly a bow and arrow guy, and can work with other weapons if need be. Whether that be Batman’s costume plus utility belt, a stolen Yakuza gun, or even an alien ship with tech he’s never touched before. He’s also good at repurposing his own gear, being able to mix his bow with parachute arrows for a makeshift glider, and breaking apart said bow to use its bowstring as a lasso to swing from a flagpole onto a building.

Oliver is especially good at using whatever he can get his hands on to substitute other tools when he’s disarmed. He can just throw his arrows if he can’t reach for a bow, but he’s also used them as melee weapons outright. He can also throw knives or his own teeth from his mouth, or throw around kitchen utensils and baseball bats (somehow ricocheting the latter off of another baseball bat, the hell?). Even when left with pieces of the puzzle, he excels at putting them together. He could make custom water skis by attaching planks with arrowlines to an escaping boat, and even took a hint out of Flash’s book and made a dimension hopping physics breaking machine out of ruined city scraps. When it comes to his own arsenal, he’s been able to make improv bows and arrows out of a loose plank, coil wire, and a stick; silk, a broken crate, and a plunger; toy parts; bed parts, his own cap feather, and an explosive capsule; steel bar, wire, and metal rods, the list goes on and on. For replacing arrows specifically, he’s used porcupine quills, glass and water tubes, and even hollow reeds. He can also replace bows entirely, would it be with a large spider web, steel antenna wire, a jeep’s antenna, or an Elongated Man antenna… huh? Man, with how good he is at using bows and arrows, maybe he should take up Archery or something.

Archery

Speaking of the devil, Oliver Queen is a man that boasts a variety of skills and traits. But his talent when it comes to archery is by far his greatest ability as a super hero. A very complex topic with a lot of depth, warranting its own extensive section comparable to the coverage of all of his other skills.

Training & Status

Depending on the story, Oliver has either always been a genius at archery, or started as a novice. On the note of the former, in some stories, he could hit three consecutive headshots before he ever even practiced. Would it be to go on top of that or to establish his skill though, he’s had extensive training. New 52 mentioned how he was a great archery student as a kid, and Infinite Frontier elaborated on him learning from teachers like Merlyn (ironic), practicing all sorts of shots, and learning different archery stances (Oliver in particular uses a high anchor point). His anatomy studying was especially good for archery, as he studied hitting cadavers at medical schools to get practice for hitting and not hitting vital areas, knowing how to hit specific points like solar plexuses or tracheas. Also, he aced geometry.

His philosophy on archery has a lot to do with his success, with him saying he doesn’t aim and just puts the arrow in place, letting the shot happen. Or that “All you have to do is want to hit the target, but not try to. And not care whether you do or not.”. Or maybe he’s just really good at it and is talking some shit. He’s notched and aimed thousands of arrows by the earlier stages of his career, and has practiced specific techniques like shooting with his legs a hundred times. He’s also a good teacher, training fan clubs, Black Canary, and Batman in his field.

With so much practice and raw talent, it’s no surprise Oliver is an excellent archer. So much so to the point where he’s outright the greatest archer in all of DC Comics. Sure, he’s called by many titles, “wizard archers of the century” alongside Roy Harper in their debut, “foremost archer of our type” by non-heroes, “Master archer” in a brief intro bio, claimed to have “Mastered archery” in guides, but big number one? Yeah, and without a shadow of a doubt. Multiple guides and info pages call him the greatest archer in the world. And damn, has he made that clear. Legends from the past like Diana (not the one you’re thinking of) and Robin Hood are stated to be inferior to Oliver’s skill as an archer, and he stands just as high compared to modern masters.

He’s shot through the arrows of other top level archers as well as stalemated them in fights, but that’s the baby stuff. Merlyn has had his shots cleanly intercepted by Oliver, and admitted that he’s the world’s greatest archer. He’s won archery contests that included other top archers like Roy Harper, who would go on to be able to beat Peacemaker’s gun shot in both speed and accuracy. On the note of surpassing gunmen, he’s been stated to be a better marksman than Deadshot, AKA the guy who’s whole thing is accuracy. You know you’re good when Black Canary of all people says the only reason she’s been able to avoid multiple shots from you is because you’re fighting the mind control making you shoot to begin with, and casually hitting a shot that even Batman describes as “one in a million”. Hell, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, the warrior people who have trained in all things combat, considers Oliver Queen the best archer she’s ever fought alongside. Oh, she knows the ACTUAL GOD of archery Apollo by the way. You’d think he’d be considered superhuman at this point, but he’s too woke for that. And also old.

General Shooting Skills

But what’s the point of all the hype if Oliver can’t live up to it? What actual amazing shots has he pulled off? Several, and it helps that he’s absurdly precise. He and his sidekicks have been able to easily disarm guns, knives, and scalpels out of criminal hands plenty of times, as well as pin down criminals before they can put their hands on anything. What makes this notably impressive is Green Arrow and friends doing so without harming the criminals, only pinning them by their clothes. In line with how he’s able to make helpful shots for allies without hurting them, would it be jamming a guillotine about to hit Speedy, shooting off Speedy’s bonds mid-fight, boosting Speedy’s skis with well replaced rocket arrows, and shooting an arrow with Green Lantern’s Ring in a way that makes it perfectly slide into GL’s hand.

He’s just as precise at hitting enemy weak points, shooting off gas masks and breathing devices, hitting small rubber openings within robot suits, shooting specific parachute wires to reroute someone gliding down, and ruining a motorcycle by hitting in between the spokes of the wheel. Rings across the room, three grenades through the pins, an eagle in the sky, a rope in front of the moving car he’s in, a water droplet falling from a faucet, a weather vane’s tip on the tip top of a building, you get it. If it’s there, he can probably hit it. This precision is especially potent for striking critical points. It was mentioned before how Oliver has studied anatomy, and this applies to animals as well, killing a tiger in one shot and knowing exactly where to shoot to hit an elephant’s heart. He’s even precise enough to find and strike the exact critical stress point to shatter a diamond barrier. Hell, with proper timing, he’s even been able to hit a lightning bolt with an arrow. Though to emphasize, this is an archery feat, not a speed feat.

Oliver’s precision is even more important when considering how quick of a draw he is. He’s said he can nock 29 arrows in a minute, which lines up with feats like shooting six arrows into Grundy in what seemed like an instant. He’s stated to be able to shoot an arrow faster than the eye can follow, which is consistent with him moving so fast a random citizen can barely see him prepare his arrows, pulling an arrow and shooting it in the time it took a hitman to pull a trigger, and being able to ready and fire an arrow point blank at Eddie Fyres before Fyres could even tell what Oliver was doing. Even when people like Black Canary are in the room, he can have an arrow flying through the air before anyone even hears the sound of his bow string. Also, someone once said he can shoot at machine gun-like speeds. Random criminal said it, so probably hyperbolic, but it’s ironic nonetheless. If you know you know.

His timing for arrow shots in general are incredible, being able to counter an almost point blank arrow after its fired, intercept Speedy’s to make a V-arrow zipline, and deflect high-speed sling shots that’d kill Goliath. Other inferior DC archers like Robin Hood have countered crossbow shots after they were fired, and Connor Hawke managed to strike two of Shado’s arrows at once, another high level DC archer. Put the precision and speed together, and Oliver can pull off some crazy stuff. Say, hitting 60/60 clay doves in a minute, or using several colored arrows to make a picture in the night sky before any of the arrows fall and disassemble the picture. He’s so fast when it comes to shooting, he can outspeed his own arrows after they’re fired. He can shoot them back to back to form an arrow chain, or outspeed his first shot to split it apart. He can even fire in two directions so quickly, that it looks like the arrows were fired simultaneously. Given they both hit walls at the exact same time, might as well have been. Hell, he can fire an arrow even faster than he thinks to beat Desparo’s mind control attempts.

If he wants to skip the nocking process entirely though, G.A. can just shoot multiple arrows at once. Other archers like Connor Hawke can manage four, but Oliver has done five more than once, and one time even fired seven. Yes, it’s very disappointing he’s never done six. He’s not that fond of wasting arrows like that anyways, preferring to be optimal about arrow usage in fights. Catching multiple pieces of jewelry, or hitting four cards with one shot each are good showings of this, as well as only targeting the problematic yellow letters hurting Green Lantern rather than wasting his shots on all of them.

Adaptation
(Archery)

What makes Oliver’s shooting skills even more impressive is how, regardless of the given situation, he still seems to be able to make any shot. He can hit a hookshot while falling from a cliff, shoot multiple trick arrows while dodging beam fire, fire arrows while on a tight rope, land multiple bullseyes while hanging upside down, and hit a faraway power cable while on a moving camera. Lesser archers like Speedy can even hit bullseyes while jumping from a horse through a hoop of fire. Whether it be in high–speed cars, or chaotic battles through the highest skies, Oliver seems to do just fine when it comes to finding time to shoot. Even the narrow spaces you’d think would be troublesome for an archer work for him, as his targets are more condensed and susceptible to hazards in the area.

Sometimes though, it’s Green Arrow himself who is limited, not the environment. Not that he’s actually limited though, just a bit annoyed. He’s pulled off shots while holding onto an elevator cable with his legs, as well as by using his feet when his hands were tied up. He’s also good at using his teeth for shots, or for holding onto an arrowline while making a shot. Even physical injury doesn’t slow him down too much. It was mentioned before how Oliver has excellent endurance, and that is especially true when it comes to shooting. He can hit shots while hampered by injury and sedatives, while being choked, use stuff around him like Elongated Man when an arm down, maintain his skills after weeks without practice, and hit three consecutive bullseyes even when bedridden for weeks.

But how does Oliver deal with the biggest issue an archer can face: lack of sight? After all, how can you hit what you can’t see? It was discussed before how Oliver could deal with blindness, but for archery in particular, that’s more of an issue than normal fighting. He’s been able to shoot criminals’ guns and hit bullseyes in the dark, used reflections to hit targets he couldn’t look at directly, and shot through gun openings since he’d know that’s where his enemies would be. He was able to shoot blind once in his Earth 2 days, but that was with Speedy giving him instructions. There was a time where Oliver seemed to take out some guy using invisible chameleon camo, but it’s not shown on panel, so for all we know that guy revealed himself with some noise for example.

However, Oliver interestingly has two statements about him being able to hit targets blind. “The day I have to see my target to hit it… –is the day I string my bow for a bass fiddle!”, and “I don’t aim with my eyes.”. He misses the second time however, but that seems to be due to the person he was shooting at having a surprise getaway. And that leads to the likely idea here, that Oliver can hit targets after being blinded, but probably needs a look at things first to get a mental image of how things appear. This makes sense given Oliver hitting bullseyes backwards on a target he practiced with, having blind shooting in his training routine with a target he himself placed, and still hitting a pre-planned shot even after being blinded. One of his blind shots directly has someone mention he probably memorized where the target was. This is consistent with other archers like Shado shooting arrows through small rings for practice with a blindfold. It’s not like Oliver is limited to what he remembers seeing though. On the topic of Shado, she shot people through a gas cloud likely by hearing them, and Oliver once shot a boss through a wall by seemingly listening to him running.

Range

It wouldn’t be a good ranged weapon if it couldn’t hit people that were far away, right? Eh, the bow doesn’t have the long range of a rifle, its range can’t be that good. Ha, haha, hahahahahaha. Green Arrow has hit people from across hallways, ten times pointblank distance, buildings, several stories, ground level to above cities, ravines, and as far as the human eye can make out. Last one for practice by the way. But what about more specific numbers? Connor Hawke hit a bullseye from 200 meters, and could hit multiple bullseyes from 40 yards. Oliver’s implied he can thread a needle from 50 yards, and Oliver has hit multiple shots from 100 yard distances.

While Oliver once needed to build a special bow to hit a 200 yard shot, Connor has managed to hit 10 out of 10 targets all from a 200 yard distance. But can we go higher? Oliver mentioned calling him up for shooting Titano from 2000 yards away, but there’s no direct showing, and the tone implies he could be exaggerating. Connor hit a shot from two miles, but it was in space which meant no gravity or friction to effect the arrow (still insane aim though). A comparison page between Aquaman’s trident and G.A.’s bow did state he could kill someone with it from 900 yards, but it’s hard to know if it’s credible. But who is credible is Connor Hawke, who stated that Oliver managed a perfect one mile shot down a narrow ravine. To make things consistent, Connor would later go on to pull off the exact same shot. Meaning that a one mile range is a consistent feat amongst the Green Arrow family. Like father, like son.

Ricochet Shots

Even for an archer as good as Oliver though, there’s some occasions where even he can’t hit a shot. Except of course if he hits a shot that makes that impossible shot anyways via ricochet. Green Arrow and friends have shot clubs and gravel to redirect them towards foes before, but their arrows have been shot with such precision on occasion to where they can ricochet off of things to hit people. Would it be off of walls, wooden polls, doors, rocks, floors, barrels, you get it. He’s also able to manage with alternate trick arrows, quickly adjust to hit specific points on enemies, and use ricochet shots as a tactic for when normal shooting is off the table. While he has specifically used rubber arrows before to pull off ricochet shots, he’s also shown to be just as good at ricochets with ordinary arrows bouncing around whole rooms before hitting their targets. On that note, he’s good at having arrows do multiple ricochets before they hit the target, even pulling off shots off of people to hit other people as early as his island days. His ricochet skills are so impressive, that he once shot at a train door, causing the arrow to spin over the train, and land on the other end to catch some criminals.

The Absurd

Being frank, a shot like that mentioned just now is absolutely nonsense; Oliver Queen’s favorite type of shot. So let’s go over some of his highlights! For starters, Ollie and friends have managed to, on multiple occasions, manage vehicles and machinery with long range arrow shots in the exact way they need things to work. He can tell from where to shoot a sniper across a giant distance just based off of their glint and nothing else, or fire an arrow shot that moves through everything else on a super cluttered Justice League battlefield to hit his target. He can shoot an arrow perfectly despite wind conditions to both catch Dinah as well as land on the other side of an archway, shoot an arrow upwards into a chimney perfectly to get a perfect noiseless landing, and make a normal arrow spin around a Christmas tree.

I’ve seen enough, let’s go to space. As in, with Green Lantern providing the machine, aim a giant construct arrow into space to hit a giant space alien thing. Sure, and while we’re here, here’s a communication drone that could move between a satellite in orbit, and one on the dark side of the moon. Anyways, Ollie hit it. In space. Where Hal Jordan of all people says shooting projectiles is hard. Cool! And yet, his most impressive feat of all, triumphing over all other shots across his career: intercepting Hawkeye’s shot. Jokes aside, when Oliver says he has the best aim on DC’s planet Earth, you better believe him. Doesn’t matter where you put the target, he’s getting a bullseye.

Traditional Equipment

Green Arrow Costumes

The first thing you’ll see when you meet the guy (unless you got shot first anyways) is going to be the iconic green hat. Or hood. Depends on the costume, he’s had a couple. His original is the classic Robin Hood outfit with the feather on the cap, but there’s also his iconic vest design, an upgraded one Dinah made with a raised collar, a simpler sleeker one like Connor Hawke’s, his New 52 one which fucking sucks, his slightly bulkier Rebirth era costume, his Flight Squadron Delta one which also fucking sucks, a specialized winter suit for having important Fantacist conversations on Mount Everest, and his current one that has a cape and mask (as seen in the Background image). He’s not too picky with his exact appearance though, willing to wear what’s basically trash (second of the seven above) as long as crooks can tell who’s shooting them down. Different costumes have had different perks, but it’s not like any of said perks are restricted to any specific costume necessarily (except for if Robin Hood Oliver wants to add his hat plume to an arrow). Thus, there’s no real issue with basically combining them all into one super suit.

Let’s go from the bottom to the top. His boots are insulated to protect from electric attacks plus can walk through sticky glue adhesive no problem, and going up you’ll find his belt container; it can help carry supplies like oil and cloth. Notably he has extra armor on his shins and forearms, with his gloves and other cosmetics also helping keep his arms safe. Said gloves can tightly grab onto small cables while falling as well as hold on to burning arrows, and the armor on his hands can be used to parry flurries of arrows. He’s not just defensive though, as he also has a hookshot gauntlet he can use to swing around. In general, Ollie does prefer not to overload on armor, as even the slightest bit too much can slow his shooting down by crucial miliseconds. That said, the kevlar he has stuffed around lets him no-sell tranquilizers and even get up from gunshots, with extra kevlar being stuffed into the hood (though less around the stomach area). His costume can also endure being lit on fire, and comes packed with sensors for getting info on enemy biology if he has a man in the chair to report it to. His mask also has some good utility, packing both thermal and night vision. It also protects Ollie from blinding light thanks to Waynetech provided next-gen polarized lenses, even no-selling flashes from a villain literally named Bright.

Other Wearable Gear

Oliver has plenty of additional gear to use as add ons alongside his primary costume. He has several different gas masks, along with multiple items for vision. Infra-red and smoke bypassing goggles; sun glasses, a polaroid glare protector, or protective eyeglasses to defend against bright lights; even a fake face mask for protecting his identity if his normal mask ever slips, as well as Question’s face lotion to have a blank face mask that doubles as an invisible gas mask. For defending his hearing rather than his seeing, he has earplugs for defending against Vertigo’s inner ear attacks or Black Canary’s screams. On that note, he also has some headphones for when he’s hanging out with her. When he wants to listen instead of blocking out noise, he also has a pair of a bug and ear piece for listening in on conversations, as well as communication earpieces from Roy that also have the benefit of helping block Vertigo’s powers.

For more environmental ordeals, Oliver’s got it covered. Need to get underwater? He has had a couple underwater breathing gadgets prepared, along with specific suits. Diving gear, gear meant to let them stay down there for up to 24 hours, lighter gear with fins that helps with underwater combat, power diver suits for better mobility, and even a special Queen Industries suit able to fire harpoons and survive roughly 9.5 thousand feet underwater. How about going upwards? In space, he has a JLA space suit (that is only a helmet, because Silver Age), as well as his own space suit that comes with magnetic boots to help deal with zero gravity. On the topic of boots, he’s also worn custom arrow snowshoes, spiked arrow climbing boots, turtle shell climbing boots, and gravity boots that’ll slow you down fifteen feet from the ground for comfortable landings.

He has plenty of options to go upwards instead though (like, without going all the way to space). He has some simpler stuff like a gliding suit, basic parachutes, an arrow-chute that can go off near the ground and still save him from an over 7,000 foot drop, and a hang glider. But he’s also experimented with a couple jetpacks as well. Earlier variations relied on rocket arrow jumpstarts (along with anti-pollution tech!) or couldn’t make precise turns. Though his more recent ones have been more successful, such as the one pictured above, or a Quiver Jetpack that could make precise turns and has a communicator for reaching allies. From here, his miscellaneous equipment is more specific. He has an Arrow Ring that can seemingly make objects look slightly different, and a Flash Ring for easy costume carrying. Go up his sleeve from there and you’ll find a slide projector that can shoot fake arrow projections. He also has some JLA communication gear, including a signaler and a belt buckle that work for connecting to JLA headquarters for fast travel warps. And to finish things up, we have body armor from frenemy Eddie Fyres for living sniper shots, a brown coat for looking cool and cozy while crime fighting, and reading glasses because he’s an unc.

Bows

The signature weapon of the Emerald Archer, Oliver’s arsenal is filled with different bows. He carries spare bows, though he also has quite the variety. Makes sense given he has hundreds of different bows back at home base. He has an easily concealable small bow, as well as a giant bow with giant arrows (though it requires two people to use). He has an aqua-bow for underwater combat, a special bow built for a 200 yard shot, Howard Hill’s long bow, a compound bow that lets him tag someone previously catching his longbow arrows, and a seasoned ash bow. He’s mentioned that he prefers using the long bow, but he isn’t exactly picky, and has shown mastery with different bow types in different situations. There is also a good couple collapsible bows that he’s used as well for easy storage, which is nice if his current bow ever breaks. Though he can still restring his bow mid-combat if he finds an opening. His current signature bow at the time of writing has a 103 pound draw weight (which he pulls effortlessly day by day), has bow type size switching which can also be used for surprise hits, and has a grappling hook device installed.

Looking back at his older bows, it’s good to look at the different draw weights he’s handled before. We’ve seen his bow string support his weight, and even as a younger sidekick, the recoil force from Speedy’s bow string being pulled back pushed a criminal back into a wall. As mentioned before, his current bow has a draw weight of 103 pounds that he handles effortlessly, but he’s used other bows with that much weight before. There have also been periods where he’s used bows with draw weights of 80, 125, 150 and even 200 pounds before. Hell, one time he even practiced with a 750 pound draw weight bow, though he never used it in combat. Not like he showed any strain at that moment though.

Oliver and his allies are clever enough to use their bows for more than just firing arrows however. They’ve been used for ziplining, held on to as a brace on top of train cars to stop falls, grabbed on to to help gain upwards momentum when jumping, and stabbing alien robots in the eye. Much bigger move than just bonking your random alleyway crook with it. There’s also been a lot of different attachments added to Ollie’s bows over the years as well. He has a fake bow-sight which can auto fire an attached arrow with no pull required, mirrors to see things coming from behind and catch sneak attacks, and a scope that can see through alien illusions. His bow is also specially tied to him and his fingerprint, as other people trying to grab it will result in it springing out to him, or worse, a bad shock.

Quivers

What’s an archer without his quiver? Well, an idiot with just a bow, which is why Ollie has had multiple top of the line quivers over the course of his career. His best quivers are made for optimal comfort and storage, using cell foam to store irregular arrows while being as small as they can be so as to not weigh Oliver down. The quiver can also be useful in battle apart from just being a supply, able to block arrows from Merlyn as a back-shield and be used in a last ditch gamble by just throwing the whole thing and letting his array of trick arrows go boom. On this note, he’s only losing his quiver when he wants to, as other people trying to grab it will result in a nasty shock.

Swords

While not as iconic, there was a period where Oliver wielded a sword in battle as a primary weapon alongside the bow, so it’s a tool worth singling out. As mentioned previously, he’s extensively trained in swordsmanship, with the primary sword he used even impressing Deathstroke in terms of quality. As a fun side note, his Earth Two incarnation once used a special green sword to fight crime, even being skilled enough to lasso the weapon and toss it through a car. Though this was a one time thing, and he was obviously less efficient with the weapon than his later Post-Crisis version.

Alternative Weapons

Alongside his primary weapons, Ollie has also shown off an assortment of miscellaneous ones across his history. Some are niche, or simply not as iconic, but all are useful in their own ways. He’s stolen guns for usage on multiple occasions, with special variations including a trick pellet gun with an attachable grenade launcher, and a gas gun which melts unstable metals like the ones used in Thanagarian Armor. He has multiple tossable projectiles, like throwing discs that can expand binding tape to trap foes, or inflatable balloons to bury people or stopping incoming attacks. Some of his weapons operate as traps, such as a timed automatic arrow firing machine or a remote activated mechanical arm attached to a catapult. Though of course, he wouldn’t be Green Arrow if he didn’t have a lot of arrow themed miscellaneous weapons too. A bow that actually operates as a gun in the way it fires arrows mechanically, an arrow machine gun, two arrow handguns, and a mini vest pocket bow for a surprise one-handed shot if he’s disarmed.

From there, his arsenal just has some pretty basic miscellaneous tools. A wooden staff, sonic attachment that could put Green Lantern and the Atom on their knees to the point Hal couldn’t even think of his name that for some reason only showed up in Cry for Justice and never again, laser cutter, and taser fill out his roster. Hey, what was that second one?

Arrowcar

Batman inspired Oliver a lot in his early days, so it makes sense he’d have his own personal super car: the Arrowcar. And Ollie definitely made sure it wouldn’t be a lacking vehicle in comparison to the Batmobile. It was fast enough to the point of being described as “the fastest car on wheels”, showcasing said speed in feats like jumping over canyon gaps. The car has good maneuverability in other areas besides speed as well. It can shrink down and slightly hover for a bit to get through tight gaps, produce no noise while driving through streets, activate jets for temporary flight jumps, use a half hour of air supply to submerge, and enhance its water travel via an attachable amphibious rig. Alongside this maneuverability though, the car is also super durable. It can ram through concrete and lumber, as well as endure falling boulders to the point of barely denting; and that was before it got enhanced with armor plating. Becoming fully bullet proof and being able to withstand grenades, though special piercing bullets were able to damage it.

The Arrowcar is more than just a fast armored car though. It’s hooked up to police radio and has a phone for communication, can locate signal origins via a radio detection finder, and store things in its trunk that’s openable by a button on Oliver’s bow. Notably, it also can provide giant bursts of mobility through its signature catapult. The catapult fires Green Arrow faster than it itself drives, and has immense range on how far it can send him. It can send him to the top of multi-story buildings, and even to cloud level. Oliver is consistently able to manage perfect landings when launched, with him being stated to be as accurate with the catapult as he is with his bow.

It can also be used defensively, launching intruders off the car. Though it’s not like the catapult is the Arrowcar’s only offensive measure. It can pull off walls it’s connected to, provide gasoline for flammable attacks (though nowadays he implies the car’s gone electric), release smoke for anyone caught behind, as well as oil for slip ups alongside blindness. And of course, it has a truckload of arrow weapons. Arrows through the exhaust pipe, a power bow through the hood, net arrows through the headlights, a release superbow bow through a touch of a button, the whole deal. If push comes to shove, Green Arrow can also have the Arrowcar self-destruct.

As a final note, some earlier comics called the vehicle the “Arrowplane” during Earth 2 Ollie’s adventures. However, the name seems to have been changed roughly around More Fun Comics Issue 107, being repeated in narrator statements even through visual changes. This is probably due to Green Arrow and Speedy’s arsenal expanding over the years, with the plane name being more fitting for a different vehicle.

Arrowplane

When crime takes to the skies, it’s the Arrowplane’s time to shine. It can fly across the Atlantic Ocean, and also from America to Belgravia (which is normally a district in London but in DC it’s a country, I guess) in a short time frame. It comes packed with a radio, can be followed via radio signal (which also lets Oliver operate the plane via remote control through a special mechanism), and can communicate with other aircrafts via comms. It’s seen multiple upgrades over the years, sometimes being yellow and sometimes being green. There was also a variant that doubled as a car, which is confusing given the Arrowplane and Arrowcar’s separation in later Earth 2 comics. Given Ollie has been shown to have owned multiple Arrowplanes however, it’s probably not something worth having a headache over.

The Arrowplane is more than just a vehicle however, being similar to the Arrowcar in that it boasts an arsenal of its own. It can deploy life rafts and rope ladders, and have jet skis and suction cup arrows attached for arctic travel and dragging along enemies respectively. It can even deploy Oliver himself, either throw an ejection seat with a parachute, or through releasing him into the Arrow Life Rocket (essentially a flying sentient torpedo that can pierce through giant monsters). It can play offense too, having different arrow-firing mechanisms (though some require someone else to take the pilot’s seat). Whenever it wants to stay out of battle, it can also use cloaking technology through bending light to avoid sight and radar detection. Though people with eyes as good as Deathstroke’s have been able to see through it.

Arrowboat

Boat? Boat. Seriously, you want an Arrowboat to ride to town in? The “swiftest boat afloat”, it has a couple appearances here and there. More recently showing off a green code of paint, but power crept as well by upgrades to other vehicles. It used to be important.

Arrow Jet

For heading to the final frontier, the Arrow Jet can be used to fly into space via catapult launching. It can move at hypersonic speeds, and somehow cause Green Arrow and Speedy to dream up being sent to medieval France. Pre-Crisis comics.

Arrow Satellite Ship

For further space travel, there’s the Satellite Arrow. It can fly up there properly, and go up to 18,000 miles per hour.

Arrow Sub

Our last arrow-themed vehicle, and for going down rather than up, there’s the Arrow Sub. Fit for deep sea traversal, it comes packed with lights for dark underwater areas.

Other Vehicles

Alongside his themed machines, he has a good amount of simpler vehicles for simpler situations. Sleds, skis, snow mobiles, and motorcycles fit different environments. He’s also made special use of the Justice League airship, attaching his own green tipped rockets called sidewinder arrows, which pack enough power to shave Lincoln’s face off of Mount Rushmore.

Grenades & Explosives

When the typical gear doesn’t cut it, Green Arrow can simply just blow stuff up! Dynamite, explosive caps, smaller than pin head sized remotely activated bombs, and LED bombs work well for quick to set up detonations. Though he of course has less lethal options, including knockout gas and flash grenades that can come out of his quiver, as well as a lockpick that can be used as a surprise gas grenade.

Fake Green Arrow Dummies

A weirdly common tool of Oliver’s has been his fake Green Arrow dummies. He has a less convincing straw dummy, but also multiple inflatable dummies that can be quickly deployed. He has some more autonomous dummies, including a wax dummy that other people can hide inside, or dummies of him and Speedy attached to a fake arrowcar that can be controlled via radio.

Miscellaneous Tools

A bunch of miscellaneous gear used only once or twice. Some are useful, some aren’t, so there’ll be two lists of stuff that are and aren’t useful depending on their functions or if G.A. has other stuff that does the job better.

Useless

Flashlight: Nahhhhh wait you look tuff I’m taking a photo.
Two-Way Radio Device: For communicating with other people at different frequencies.
Knapsack: For carrying things.
Wet Handkerchiefs: For covering your mouth to deal with gas.
Chunk of Wood: For keeping a door closed.
Gags: For shutting up crooks.
Loudspeaker: For talking really loudly.
Remotely Controlled Remote Bows: A device that lets him control hooked up bows from a distance… from the safety of his home.
Recording Machine: For grabbing audio from planted locations.
Arrow-Kite: A kite made of thin sheet metal to attract lightning.
Infra-Red Light Camera: To try and take pictures that see past light tricks.
Self-Sealing Plastic Balloon: For carrying small objects into the air while being invisible.
Camera: For taking pictures for his old public relations job.
Lock Pick: It’s arrow-shaped!
Credit Card: For getting past locked doors. When he’s rich he won’t have the money in person, and when he’s broke, what else do you expect him to use his card for?
Dollar Bills: To make fun of Hawkman, and clearly nothing else.
Untraceable Signal Device: For contacting G.A. when he’s needed, which would be weird considering him and Clint are going to try and kill each other.
Compressed Treehouse: A gift from Bruce and Barry, for manifesting a giant treehouse whenever he needs an emergency base.

Useful

Binoculars: Ollie has both standard and cool looking red binoculars to help see things from a distance. Even his eyesight can use the help.
Sound Destroyer: A device he stole from a crook called The Voice, the belt can be used to block off sound and leave an area totally silent.
Oil and Cloth: Useful for making flaming arrows in a pinch.
Pocket Torch: A small tool for cutting things like cuffs.
Inflammable Fluid: Useful for lighting things on fire, such as arrows to make flaming arrows.
Super-Magnetized Shaft: An item he can stick to arrows to help them fly towards magnetic things.
Hooks: For setting up ziplines for climbing over treacherous terrain.
Glue-Dissolving Spray: For undoing sticky situations for even the most undeserving of glued together criminals.
Glue Adhesive: Speaking of sticky situations, he has a bunch of goop lying around to use to set up traps to slow opponents down.
Grappling Hook: For flying around the place one wire at a time.
Pickpocket Grappler: For stealing items off of people one wire at a time.
Hologram Tech: Ollie has access to a hologram projector, letting him manifest holograms to confuse foes. He’s made a fake woman and fake giant guns, but weirdly, the holograms seemed to be capable of firing actual arrows. No clue how that works.
Hoverloid Reloaders: Oliver has access to summonable hoveroid re-loaders. They can deliver ammo, as well as unleash a giant flurry of arrows that can stab into and/or zap a Thanagarian squad.
Beer: Easily the most important thing in his arsenal. You don’t see his bow being refreshing, now do you?

Lantern Rings

To be clear, these probably shouldn’t be standard to give to Oliver. The Green Lantern Ring he was lent by Hal was taken back during Green Lantern Rebirth, and his White Lantern form was seen for a single page. Still, considering he had the former for a considerable amount of time as a failsafe, and his history working with Hal Jordan over the years, the topic is still worth mentioning. Not that he was good at using the green ring though, as he wasn’t even sure he could use it until the time came to pull it out. Even when he did, he could only make one construct before feeling like he hadn’t slept in days. Though that one usage did send an arrow construct through Sinestro of all people. And if Ollie’s good at anything, it’s making those single chances count.

Trick Arrows

Initial Overview

When normal arrows don’t cut it, Oliver is able to upgrade to special trick arrows with special built-in properties. But how does he work with all that extra supply? Oliver is able to tell what trick arrow he’s holding both based off of touch thanks to raised dots on the arrows serving as a sort of code, and their weight. Feeling the weight on his back also works for him to know exactly how many arrows he has left in his quiver. As for an overview on how his arrows function, his arrows use speed nocks so that he can put the arrow on the bowstring by feel, and are slightly off balance compared to normal ones so that only Oliver can use them. A given considering how he develops his arrows himself for perfect balance and accuracy, which is also the case for his trick arrows.

While he’s had arrow shafts made of wood, he typically uses aluminum, which works for extra durability as well as being able to be bent for torturing criminals for information. Though metal tips and steel shafts also exist, being durable enough to hold people’s weight. His arrows are also fireproof, and have the ability to disappear randomly after a vague period of time to prevent them from being obtained by criminals. On a final note, if Oliver ever needs to adapt to CQC, he can also just break arrowheads off of his arrows to use as throwable projectiles.

Now for some necessary exposition. Green Arrow has used hundreds of different trick arrows, so we’d be here all day if we tried listing them one by one. Instead, they will be split into categories that go over arrows in groups based on their functions. You can probably argue an arrow or two that shows up in one section should really be another, but it’s not worth it to think too hard on that. All arrows will be mentioned somewhere regardless.

Traditional Arrows

While G.A. has made a name for himself with wacky, over the top arrows, he’s still just as dangerous with the ordinary variants. That’s not to say he hasn’t spiced them up by using different materials for his arrowheads. The Arrow family’s normal arrows are still sharp enough to cut through heavy kemp cables or break through cinderblocks, but it makes sense to upgrade given the shenanigans you’ll see on an average DC afternoon. There’s steel (which he especially likes using for climbing like he’s Plunger Man), aluminum, ruby, silver, armor-piercing, spiked, titanium, and diamond arrowheads. Diamond in particular for the longest time could be seen as his toughest arrow, with Oliver only having one in his supply. However, Oliver eventually gained access to a special arrowhead, which also worked as a battery that could start a chain reaction, leading to a satellite explosion visible from Earth. During DC’s Death Metal event, he’d find more arrows with the same type of arrowhead, which would be revealed to be Nth Metal, one of the toughest metals in DC Comics. While the event ending with all its events being retconned out of existence means you can argue against Oliver having the major supply of Nth Metal arrows, he should still have the original one he obtained prior to the event.

For weaker materials, he’s also used bamboo tipped arrows, wooden tipped arrows for countering vampires, White Lantern tree wooden tipped arrows for countering Black Lantern zombies, and yellow wooden tipped arrows for spite towards both old and new age Green Lanterns. But even with Oliver’s traditional arrows, he likes to put spins on them for nasty surprises. An arrow with a bent feather for curve shots or loops mid-flight, a backwards arrow with the feather at the tip instead, speed arrows too fast to time with a stopwatch or be seen with the human eye, accelerator arrows which go twice as fast as normal shots, tank trap arrows which slide under vehicle tires to burst them, camouflaged arrows to stay hidden until impact, telescope arrows for extra length and mid-flight extension, a double arrow which fires another arrow in the opposite direction when fired (that also contains knockout gas), a needle arrow with a smaller tip, and scattershot arrows which release a flurry of standard arrows around someone. For maximum piercing power, he also has drill arrows, able to go through giant cheese buildings and even one inch thick steel like its butter.

Blunt Force Arrows

Sometimes Ollie doesn’t want to send a criminal to the ER, and only just a normal hospital room. For that, he has plenty of arrows that specialize in blunt force instead of piercing. The most iconic method of blunt force is the boxing glove arrow, which can appear like a normal arrow at first before rapidly expanding, which also fixes the weight issue for accuracy. Weaker variants also exist for harmless sparring sessions, and the stuffing can be repurposed for clogging up his ears to deal with sonic attacks. To stay on the simple side, there’s more basic blunt force arrows. Typical blunt ones, rubber tipped ones that’re good for ricochets, buffers to knock people over, compressed air releases for harder hits, grapeshots that release a flurry of smaller blunt force pellets, you get it.

There’s also a lot of arrows that while they focus on blunt force, have additional benefits. Jack-in-the-box arrows can hit someone who thinks they dodged the shot, asbestos boxing gloves can clog up flaming engines, antler arrows can uh, stop mooses? At some point it just turns into hitting people with random objects. Or maybe even nothing at all, as Oliver has a couple blunt force arrows that simply just release force in the form of shockwaves to knock people away or take out robots or hordes, with a lack of shrapnel or other items.

If Ollie wants to maximize the damage though, he has some arrows with dangerous levels of blunt force. Stun arrows can give concussions, and concussion arrows can drop water buffalos, sure. But then there’s wall-smasher arrows that can knock out an alien strong enough to throw Aquaman around, hammer arrows that can bust through car doors, billiard arrows that can propel giant cue balls, and battering ram arrows which can dent metal doors. Given the amount of force, Oliver only uses these against the non-living, the crooks he wants to make non-living, or super-powered foes. Not like paper-mache is going to do much at that stage after all.

Line Arrows

What better to get from point A to B than by swinging across an arrowline? He’s used a lot of them over the years, calling them his trustiest gimmick arrow, though it’s not like they can stretch a full hundred feet. He can use them as a tight-rope across buildings, set up zip-lining, and to swing around the place across the sky, but they’re especially good for disruption in fights. Arrowlines can be used to pull objects over, to catch people falling, trip foes, and block their path after a good ricochet. It excels at binding criminals, grabbing them mid-air or being able to ensnare multiple foes with just a single shot.

It’s worth noting that he has several other line-based arrows though that work for similar functions as mentioned above. Stitch and rope arrows work for binding, and several different grappling hook styled arrows for quick bursts of mobility. There are also some line-based arrows for specific purposes, like aluminum and rubber for electrical targets, but also cable arrows to hold together structures and stop speeding trucks. At the end of the line, there’s fly casting arrows for item stealing, anchor arrows for vehicle related situations in place of rope arrows, and a titanium trip-wire arrow for trip-wire things that titanium’s absolutely necessary for.

Trapping Arrows

A good way to get out of a bind is typically to get your opponent into one, so Oliver carries several arrows focused around trapping the enemy. The most iconic of this variant of arrow is his net arrows, able to catch groups of criminals and objects. He carries multiple, and they’ve been able to catch a man and his motorcycle, groups of four, and a decently sized monster. The biggest catch being a large horde of monks, with Oliver stating the net arrow can stretch to the size of a circus tent to contain whatever it catches. Different materials have made up net arrows over the years, including steel meshes, titanium meshes, and chainmail that can contain 500 mile per hour Thanagarians, with some variants having automatic or manual shocking capabilities.

Apart from nets, there’s plenty of other trap based arrows to put opponents or their gear in a bind. Silk threads, lariats, normal and piercing handcuffs, strange V-shaped points, prongs, snares, mesh wires, falcon hoods, bandages, mummy bandages, adhesive bandages, cocoons with epoxy glue, hoops, steel webbing, cobwebs (that can even catch small guided missiles), jellyfish glue, clamps, tri-clamps, tri-whatever this arrow is supposed be-arrows, heavy sticky trained plastics, glues, high level glue adhesives, glue bombs, knucklebomb glue bombs, glop made of plastic and yeast, yoke loops, steel chains, epoxy monofilament lassos stronger than a herd of rhinos, cages, putty tipped arrows, pastes, sleeping bags, and straight jackets. Phew. Oh he can also just paralyze you and skip the gear part of the trapping process.

Weapon & Tool Arrows

Oliver likes doubling down, so he made his main weapons have weapons in them. Or tools, depending on what he wants to be doing. The most common weapon arrow would be the boomerang arrow, more efficient than the original boomerang and able to hit curve shots with ease. Able to get in front of people to stop escapes, steal people’s items, mess with vehicles, and of course, hit people really hard. G.A. can break the boomerang off of the arrow to use it by itself, or use supersonic speed super boomerangs if the need arises (though he’ll need to be careful of its return). The second most common weapon arrow is the bolo arrows, able to wrap around guns, multiple criminals, vehicle controls, Christmas Trees, and even moving helicopter motors to stop a helicopter’s ascent. The wires’ mono-filament composition makes them strong enough to pull stuff like that off, and also do things like connect runaway train cars or wrap around arms so tightly it blocks off blood circulation. The similar lariat arrows have similar wrapping capabilities to the bolo, and have been used to hold up statues, stop helicopter blades, and use a sharp tip to limit criminal mobility.

To be clear, again, this section is going over tools based arrows, not just weapons. Obviously, there are harpoon and hook arrows that can be used as weapons, but they’re more typically used for climbing, pulling, makeshift ladders, stealing, you get it. The best example of a pure “tool” arrow would have to be the suction cup arrow. It works for grabbing onto vehicles and surface climbing, which is especially useful for surfaces like glass that can’t be hooked onto. The suction cup can also have a delayed release, in case something first needs to be cut by an ordinary arrow. The suction cup arrow also works for spelling things out and item stealing. On the flipside for pure offense, Oliver has plenty of weapon arrows fit for cutting. A couple knife, cutlass, scissor, ice-cutting, sai, and buzzsaw arrows will do the trick there, with keen saw arrows with more automatic movement for cutting around the place. From there there’s some more miscellaneous arrows, including kites for keeping objects in the air, ball and chains to try and weigh things down, safecrackers that I’ll let you guess what they do, pincers to pin things down, and a laser emitting arrow to cut things open with burning precision.

Rocket Arrows

Oliver’s rocket boosted arrows are highly dangerous, with a multitude of functions. They can work underwater, with specific underwater versions of the jet arrows working for stunning with damaging solid lead, sticking with leech properties, shocking with eel properties, and blinding with squid ink. There’s also rocket arrows for blinding with magnesium flares, making light signals, slowing down criminals, lifting heavy objects, and speeding up allies or arrows. These arrows are also very fast, able to travel longer distances than ordinary shots. There’s special two-stage rocket arrows to amplify this, and ordinary ones can still catch up to rocket ships. Tracking variants also work for more evasive targets, with heat seeking smart missiles that are able to go across a city. They can still work fine at close range though, having manual or delayed reactions if needed. Most notably though, rocket make big boom. With traditional rocket arrows or torpedo arrows, these arrows are great for sheer damage, able to blow apart a fake submarine. Even the force of their impact by itself can deflect the trajectory of giant arrows.

Electric Arrows

Oliver has access to several electric arrows, fit for different needs. The most obvious of course is zapping criminals with strong electric shocks (also able to be delayed, and even working if the arrow is damaged), but there’s some versatility with these arrows. They can work off of conductive materials to shock nearby people, shock multiple people at once, and even work on enemies like OMACs, or alien wood monsters. They can make entire theme park gates dangerously conductive, as well as metal roofs, and even people somehow. They can also blow up generators, which correlates with how well they are against tech-based enemies.

Some electrical arrows can blow out electrical currents or short-circuit tech. He also has plenty of EMP arrows to shut off machines (though they can still shock people). Ones that work directly against what they hit, but a lot more that release typical large omni-directional pulses. He has one with a 50 yard radius range, but also a jammer arrow for specifically comms, having a 2 mile radius range with a 15 minute long shutdown effect. Lastly for miscellaneous ones, there’s an arrow for changing the positivity of charged cells, one that additionally releases binding tape, and a lightning rod arrow to draw away opposing electrical attacks.

Fire & Heat Arrows

Bringing the burn, G.A. has plenty of fire based arrows packed into his quiver. Most are automatically on fire when shot, though other incendiary arrows need to be manually ignited, while some have delayed activation for surprise burns. The strongest flaming arrows would be his array of Greek Fire arrows, which create a fire that gets worse when exposed to water instead of weaker. They work for fiery damage of course, but there’s plenty of other uses for heat within Oliver’s quiver. There’s distraction, burning binding goop, redirection of heat seeking attacks, light across the area or just using a flaming arrow like a torch, sunburns, blinding, heat-releasing thermal pellets, heating in-use objects, and melting in–use objects. He can also counter opposing fire/heat attacks with heat absorption arrows, working faster than Flash can vacuum the heat out of a burning atomic plant. Also, green fire arrows. It’s important to stay on brand.

Ice Arrows

What better way to cool the tension than with some ice arrows? There’s some lamer cold themed ones, like a dry-ice arrow, or an avalanche arrow for picking up snow (how this is not the name for an expansive snow arrow is beyond me). But for the big stuff, Ollie’s ice arrows can weigh people down and shut off explosives, encase people in ice by freezing water around them, or just freezing them entirely to where they’re still frozen by night time. We’ve also seen icy themed arrows used by sidekick Mia Deardan, including a liquid nitrogen arrow which can encase someone’s head in snow (ok there we go), or a cryonic arrow which can completely freeze and take out Cyborg.

Liquid & Aquatic Arrows

Oliver has several liquid focused arrows for miscellaneous purposes. The primary one would be slipping people up though, with oil spills (which also work for blinding people), grease spreads, and weird watery sludge. On the note of water, he also has several arrows focused on it specifically. Watery squirt guns blasts, miniature waterfalls, and miniature rain storms. He also has plenty of arrows using extinguisher foam, quelling away strong flames, slip up locks to open them up, and even choking the likes of Etrigan.

He has a good couple arrows that work within liquids too. Simpler ones follow water currents or simply are able to work underwater, with some even able to withstand strong currents. Special aquatic arrows also come packed with blinding octopus ink or revealing glow-fish light. Also, he has arrows he can attach to his face for breathing underwater. Why he has this when he has specialized aquatic gear, no clue.

Gas Arrows

No, that smell isn’t his overdue laundry, it’s Oliver’s various gas arrows, of which he has an extensive selection. Sometimes crime needs a nap, so Oliver brings along various knockout gas arrows. Some with enough kick to put rhinos to bed, take out the whole New Jersey Giants, and cause unconsciousness in mere seconds. Even when you have knockout gas strong enough to make Deathstroke take a snooze, it’s good to stay out of sight with various sorts of smoke arrows. He can elevate from hiding to blinding by using blackout arrows, or switch from blinding with darkness to blinding with light with illuminating gas from a sun arrow. The gas from his arrows can also become poisonous if released from his smog alert arrow, as it is filled with dust, ash, sulphur, and nitro-carbons. He also has more specific purpose gas arrows, including a D.D.T arrow to release insect attracting fumes, a CO₂ arrow to extinguish flame attacks, and a sulphur gas arrow for choking Green Lantern’s specifically (because it’s yellow).

Oliver also has several arrows for countering opposing gas and/or air attacks, or using it for more forceful purposes. Simpler tools like the valve arrow can slowly release air from punctured tires, but windmill and fan arrows can blow parachutes or poisonous gasses away respectively. On the flipside, suction and vacuum arrows can pull in and contain toxic smoke or flames to remove dangers altogether. Stronger variants include the dispelling smoke screen arrow to well, do what it says on the tin (with omnidirectional fans, that’s cool at least), and the tornado arrow to manifest a mini-tornado strong enough to beat Killer Moth’s air gun.

Toxic & Chemical Arrows

Again, it’s not overdue laundry, though this time it’s a bit worse than traditional knockout gas. If Oliver really wants to make someone suffer, he has various toxic arrows he can employ. Plenty of gas-based ones that are a step up from his normal gas arrows to start off, with tear gas, ammonia gas, a pain gas that makes mace seem like Channel Number Five, and some gasses that simply just smell and taste really, really bad. Though if his chemical warfare just amounted to gasses, this wouldn’t be its own trickarrow section. Itching powder, insecticides, mace (ignore Channel Number Five), and release tranquilizers are all packed into useful arrows. His strongest chemicals and poisons are extra dangerous however, lethally so if used correctly. There’s typical acid arrows, as well as waterproof chain-melting acetylene arrows and gun melting chemical foams. His most poisonous arrows include a low grade nerve toxin arrow, as well as a special poison arrow that can kill an elephant and end a man’s life before he even hits the ground.

Apart from strictly offensive use, he also has several chemical arrows with more general uses. Sprinkle arrows with flame dousing chemicals, salt arrows to melt ice, paint arrows with lead that can block off radioactive materials, silver nitrate rain arrows to help other heroes manufacture a thunderstorm, and silver iodide arrows to help clouds rain. There’s even some non-chemical arrows like the fake uranium arrow to trick radiation sensors. Stronger chemicals in Oliver’s arrow arsenal include a compound from Batman his sidekicks used to dissolve a large metal wall, a corrosive that sprays exclusively rubber eating goop everywhere, and a specialized acidic arrow that melted through a super toxic villain’s body.

Explosive Arrows

It was against Starro it was very warranted

Tick tick boom. Oliver carries around a ton of explosive arrows to deal with more high level opponents or obstacles in his path. With explosive arrows, he’s blown up iron bar gates, evil machines, glass containers, triceratops, other arrows, castle towers, large stone mallets, steel walls, giant monsters, and so on. He does pack some heavier artillery though. Giant ships, robot hordes, that loser Hawkman (oh and Shaggyman too I guess), large portions of buildings, and huge caverns have all been heavily damaged by his explosives. Some are even strong enough to blow up his own armored Arrowcar. He even has atomic warhead arrows!… that we never get to see go off. But hey, makes for a fun twitter post.

His explosives also do more than just well, explode. The missile arrow can use radar to fly after moving objects, and the anti-missile arrow can explode incoming projectiles. Several of his explosive arrows work off of timers (with altitude and proximity affecting the activation timing), with some having specific activation conditions like a remote detonator or his landmine arrows being stepped near. He can also use smaller explosives tactically for minimal hurt or distraction, or maximize hurt by sticking an explosive arrow to you, or skip the hurt altogether by having an explosive arrow release a knockout dart. When he doesn’t want his arrows to explode specifically, he can use one with a radio transmitter to instead activate other explosives, or just take apart an explosive arrow altogether for an emergency oxygen supply.

Magnetic Arrows

For metallic situations, Oliver has some strong magnet arrows to pull weapons from criminal hands as well as pull himself towards metallic surfaces. His magnet arrows can head towards anything metal within fifty feet, and are strong enough to force missile silo doors closed. His strongest magnetic arrows can even pull guns out of the hands of an entire small army.

Sound Arrows

To help with being the center of attention, Green Arrow has multiple sound-focused arrows he can utilize. Simpler ones like the siren arrow work for alerting allies and scaring away animals, with this effect being able to be replicated by shrill whistle and makeshift reed arrows. And while he has talking arrows for noise-based misdirection, the majority of his sound arrows focus on violently loud ear–drum shattering noise (which he weirdly seems to be unaffected by sometimes), with some also having inner ear distorting effects to ruin balance. Some achieve this by moving at supersonic speeds when shot, and are strong enough to shatter all the glass in a car. Some are so weak they can’t even be heard… but still produce force? I… what? No seriously, am, am I reading this right? Genuinely asking you reader. Help.

Uh, anyways, his strongest sonic arrows are especially dangerous. His tuning fork arrow can release ultra-frequency sound waves that shook a tank apart and left a nearby man deaf, his banshee arrow outright can knock someone out if used at point blank range, and his thunder clap arrow is suspect to copyright infringement. Oh and, can release a sonic shockwave that stunned some guards, that too. If Oliver runs into opposing sonic attacks, he has sound-absorption arrows to absorb said attacks, though they do seem to have a limit to how much power they can counter.

Light Arrows

To shine some lights on things, Oliver has multiple arrows focused on light. The primary usage of light arrows of course though are blinding people around Oliver with various intense lights. Would it be with normal lights, or rainbows, sunlight bursts, and magnesium flares. There’s different ways for these lights to go off, being able to be used as close range flashbangs, or for delayed activations. Some of his average light arrows can blind nearby people for a minute or two, but stronger modern day flashbang arrows can blind people for multiple hours. The light of his blinding strobe arrows are even strong enough to affect Justice League members like Superman and Martian Manhunter. These light based arrows are useful for more than just blinding people though. Oliver has used light from his arrows for different signals, revealing enemy locations, making drawings in the sky, and distorting the appearance of areas. He even has reflector signal arrows for deflecting sunlight and beam attacks to counter opposing light based offense.

Tracking Arrows

If an archer doesn’t know where their target is, they’re not going to hit it. Oliver obviously has great awareness, but arrows focused on tracking where people are don’t hurt to have. His earlier adventures featured several ink–based arrows for sticking to targets and making said targets leave an ink trail while moving, having magnetic tips to improve aim against metallic targets. These arrows also work for ruining mirrors and blocking out lights, but apart from that, the trail effect is replaceable by superior Trail-Blazer (hi Honkai fans) arrows that have a luminous paint trail. Soot from soot ball arrows also work as a similar identification and tracking method, and luminous paint, paint brush, buzzing bug, and dust arrows work for making someone stand out in a crowd.

Apart from marking individual targets, G.A. has several arrows that help for observation. More basic ones include telescopic arrows for getting a better view before taking shots, and the heli-spotter arrow to set up an all angle examining floating set of mirrors to be able to see any angle from any angle. But more advanced tech allows for more advanced observation methods. The TV and satellite arrows work as cameras Oliver can set up to view areas from the Arrowcar TV and a separate mini-screen device respectively, but then there’s a surveillance arrow that maps an area it goes over before providing a full map to Oliver’s goggles, and a mapping arrow that sends tracers around to manually map a whole area. Alongside vision, there’s also observational arrows focusing on sound, that pick up nearby conversions and transmit them to Ollie for listening in. One even works by radio frequencies.

There’s also more, well, actual tracking, with several arrows having tracking devices and signals to help know exact enemy locations. Some of his arrows even skip the tracking the enemy part and just go to the enemy directly. As in, automatically flying towards foes without the need for perfect accuracy, working off of things such as heat signatures or device feedback (with the latter even being able to reverse the feedback of devices it hits for devastating effect).

Mobility Arrows

When Oliver needs a better vantage point for a shot, he can trust on some mobility focused arrows for getting from point A to B. There’s some simple normal and rope ladder arrows for vertical ascent, as well as arrows with expanding capsules for traversing rivers and ravines. For unexpected descents on the other hand, G.A. has plenty of ways to break his fall, including giant landing cushions, tarps, and expanding foam. He can capitalize on falling as well with parachute arrows (which can be used for a makeshift glider with his bow), as well as balloon arrows for suspending himself in the air momentarily. Other mobility focused arrows include a fission arrow that sets up a boosted floating net, a quickly deployable hang glider, and a glider arrow he can fire at his bow for… a quickly deployable hang glider.

Defensive Arrows

Not every arrow needs to be a weapon, as contradictory as that sounds. Oliver has a couple arrows focused on defense, helping him deal with a variety of attacks. The Umbrella and Shield arrows can stop gunfire, while the Missile Shield arrow can stop missiles (though he only has one of those). The Trench arrows is another bullet blocking shield, though it’s good to note that he has more defensive arrows than just shields. The Air Bag can close off explosions, the inflating arrow can provide a landing cushion, the Riot Control arrow releases several small air bags in multiple directions, the telescoping arrows can expand to hold up debris, and the balloon arrow serves as another way to set up Green Arrow decoys. His best defensive arrow however has got to be his variety of foam arrows. The foam he can release from his arrows expands in multiple directions, can push around cars, and if mixed with water, can become an absorbent gel to bind whoever’s caught inside.

Exotic Arrows

Even for Oliver’s standards, he does have a good couple arrows that are outright weird. He used some “magic wand” arrows in his early days that he could track with tiny radio transmitters, let him swing around with invisible glass threads, and manifest red pepper coated fake balloon G.A.s and Speedys. But those are just obvious tricks, not like the science breaking arrows he gained later. He has a super conductor goo arrow that makes a feedback loop against enemy energies, turning that force against the user of the energy. Other high level tech has also been used to make an Anti-Amazo arrow (though the exact function isn’t elaborated), anti-gravity arrows to stop falling debris, and a Chronopause arrow that creates a time stop field around whatever it hits. He even got ACTUAL magic arrows (potentially from Constantine and Barter), which could temporarily turn Wonder Woman into a bunch of butterflies.

Combo Arrows

As versatile as Oliver’s arrows are, he can always make things even harder for his enemies by combining said arrows into special combo arrows. These are usually made on the spot for improvisation, but there’s no reason G.A. can’t repeat his tactics. Helps when stuff like nets from net arrows or bolas from bola arrows can just be attached to other arrows. There’s a lot of separate different combos and situations, so rather than a traditional paragraph format, this section will just have a bulleted list for simplicity’s sake.

Net + Boomerang for a spinning net, or to form a net floor to catch people’s fall
Arrowlines + Boomerang for tying up quickly from a distance
Rocket + Boxing Glove to have an explosive shell guarantee the glove is uninterrupted on its way to punching someone in the face.
Boxing Glove + Boomerang to to recycle the glove as it’ll come back to Oliver
Rain + Electric to cause a stor- that is NOT how weather works
Magnetic + Parachute to redirect metallic projectiles mid-flight
Boomerang + Balloon to leave people airborne after being tied up
Lighting + Rain for shocking people through the water the rain arrow makes
Arrowline + Jet for a pseudo flight by holding onto the arrowline
Explosive + Magnet to stick booms to specific places
Jet + Bola to have bolas able tie people up as they’re pinned to the roof
Arrowline + Grenade for a line to swing on that doubles as an explosive once planted
Oxygen + Flare for a custom flashbang
Explosive + Drill to dig into structures and causing a detonation inside of them for big collateral
Explosive + Normal Arrows for an arrow shrapnel bomb

It is worth adding that some arrows are more combination than combo, including the vortex arrow that does blinding lights and deafening sounds simultaneously, and the umbrella arrow that shoots fire arrows in eight directions.

“Ollie was drunk and/or desperate” Arrows

Sometimes, Oliver Queen, the billionaire, hunter, marksman, super hero, is also a dumbass. This has led to some really, really dumb trick arrows being developed. Sure, they can have their niche uses, but in 99.9% of situations? Not really. But to be comprehensive, here’s all the random crap Oliver probably has stuffed in a closet somewhere that he’s not going to dare open.

Matador Arrow: To distract a bull, has a red flag on it.
Bright Light Arrow: A battery powered bright light arrow to distract butterflies.
Diary Arrow: To make someone think they dropped their diary.
Sparrow Hawk Arrow: Arrows that imitate sparrow hawks to scare away grasshoppers.
Sports Day Arrow: An arrow that releases a message in the sky for special occasions, can rig it to say S.O.S.
Uranium Arrow: Oh hey this sounds promising actu- nevermind it’s just for ruining film.
Reporting Arrow: To carry over news reports.
Chocolate and Hotdog Arrows: Food based arrows, work for making a mess and blinding people, I guess.
SOS Arrow: Ok wait then why did he bother messing with the Sports Day Arrow?
Camera Arrow: To track nearby surroundings with taken photos, wow.
Photo Arrow: I’ll give you one guess.
Acrylic Arrow: An alternate paint arrow, feel the rainbow.
Winged, Pinwheel, and Phonograph Arrows: Different arrows that can circle around people at different elevations to pin them in place.
Annual Sports Day Arrow: Oliver you cannot have that much to talk about that’ll go to the sky.
Wedding Arrow: It has rice in it.
Luminous Arrow: Sky spelling, but bright.
Target Arrow: Produces a slowly descending target in the sky.
Helium Balloon Arrows: SHUT UP SKY OLIVER I DON’T CARE!
Topsy-Turvey Arrow: Randomly confusing somehow.
Wheel Arrow: Randomly rolling somehow.
Falcon Arrow: Arrows with feathers for wings and thorns for talons.
Black Cat Arrow: Has a black cat cut out on the point.
Number 13 Arrow: To mark the number with ink on whatever it hits.
Bait Arrow: To distract animals.
Gum Arrow: A gum arrow to… cover criminals in gum and make popping noises so loud that a guy felt it was going to burst his ear drums? Ok, actual potential with this one.
Umbrella Arrow: An umbrella arrow to serve as a kite, but also hold up traps in the air. Neat.
Baby Arrow: To distract babies, oh and uh, imitate rattle snake sounds.
Cat Dummy Arrow: To mimic the appearance of a cat.
Colored Disc Arrow: To confuse people at traffic lights.
Wet Mop Arrow: To clean stuff.
Baseball Arrow: For playing baseball.
Key Arrow: For opening doors from a distance properly.
Lockpick Arrow: Though he prefers kicking down doors than opening doors anyways.
Written On Arrow: Oh thank god he just wrote on the arrow directly this time.
Bleach Jug Arrow: The 2nd strongest arrow of all time.
Taped Can Arrow: The strongest arrow of all time.

Abilities

Chil- WHAT DO YOU MEAN CHILI?

This isn’t some joke, Green Arrow’s chili is unironically listed as a power. “Oh but they put question marks there!”, yeah, and the same page for the Justice League Intergalactic Special lists “None” for Adam Strange’s powerless normal human ass. So yeah, that iconic Justice League (except Batman) soloing level chili? Considered an ability. Deal with it.

Resistances

Mental Attacks: Oliver has had a weirdly extensive history of dealing with mental attacks. He’s used different arrows to break hypnotic spells (as well as bypass mind control by shooting faster than he thinks, figure that one out), but there’s multiple cases of him outright powering through mental attacks. Helps when you and other Justice League members were given a 101 mental attack resisting course from Martian Manhunter. He powered through Poison Ivy’s infection based mind control, resisted Blackbird’s hypnosis, and could calm down despite being forcefully angered by being in hell. His will has even let him resist Black Lantern control by the slightest necessary bit. Even after being shown a vision of his entire timeline at once, he was only stunned for a brief period. Clock King was rightfully baffled, because what the hell?
Equalizing Disease: Due to some shenanigans with power stealing robots and a Thanagarian space disease called the equalizing disease, Oliver became immune to said disease, no longer able to have his skills and strength biologically equalized with the people around him. Comic books.
Freezing: Casually broke out of being encased in ice, and swam through freezing water without much complaint.
Electricity: Endures being zapped by an electrified building.
Blinding: Can keep moving quickly after being hit with a flashbang.
Heat: Has endured being near multiple fiery explosions before.
Chemical Burns: He’s been grabbed by living toxic waste dumps, taken ammonia to the face (though was blinded temporarily), and survived radiation blasts from Parasite.
Sound: He has many tools to endure strong sounds, but has also tanked Black Canary’s redirected sonic scream before. Her scream can get up to 300 decibels from what looks like casual blasts, though it is worth noting said scream gets stronger over time.
Poisoning: Even when injected with “enough in him to sedate a small army”, he was still able to run away from Amazon warriors just fine.
Vertigo Inducement: Even when induced with heavy vertigo by, I mean take a guess, was able to analyze the altered world and easily navigate it through pattern analysis.

Feats

Overall

Defeated Deathstroke, Grundy, Drakkon, Brick, Merlyn, Vertigo, and Red Hood (bum)
Has captured thousands of criminals across his crime fighting career
Saved Star City and the wider world multiple times
Took down the worldwide hidden crime syndicate known as the Ninth Circle
Became a crucial member of the Justice League, being the difference maker in multiple battles
Fixed the broken bonds within his mess of a family
Is the greatest archer in the world
Married Black Canary
- No, that divorce didn’t happen. What’s Cry For Justice?
  - It got fixed later anyways

Power

Striking:

Broke through a wooden door, causing it to shatter into pieces
Threw a sword by spinning it with enough force to cut into a car
Punched a dummy’s head off
Casually breaks out of being partially encased in ice
Punched a big buff guy through a window with one hit
Knocked out a guy with three headbutts
Broke through metal binds
Breaks a monster-ized guy’s jaw with one punch

Lifting:

Pulls himself up by an arrowline, while underwater, while his feet are stuck in a bucket of cement
Holds an arrowline attached to a moving boat with his teeth
Steers away a torpedo
Lifts a log alongside Speedy
Lifts a falling chandelier with one hand
Can do a 120 pound weight pull with one hand
Catches an arrow shot with 200 pounds of pressure
Is able to pull back bowstrings that require as much as 750 pounds of draw strength to pull
Casually tosses Peacemaker into a metal wall so hard it makes a large dent

With Arrows:

Hit a metal door so hard it jams the hands of two crooks
Uses a special dynamite arrow to blow up an iron bar gate
Bola arrow’s steel wire is able to prevent a runaway train car from disconnecting
Lariat arrows attached to rocket arrows can lift a large statue before it falls to the ground
Compressed air arrows combos with metal-piercing arrows to break through a water tank’s steel wall
Jet arrow can deflect a giant arrow’s trajectory
Accidently takes both himself and Hawkman out with his explosive arrow (it does blow apart Shaggyman though)
Steel blade tipped shafts cut through helicopter blades
Billiard arrows are strong enough to send a large earth cue ball from its fixed position and make it go flying, causing a chain reaction with the other balls on the set
Reverse-rocket arrow can propel a heavy safe upwards
TNT arrows blow up a huge abandoned freighter ship along with some rocks
Helps push a small mini island on a lake alongside Aquaman and Wonder Woman by spamming rocket arrows (See Before The Verdict)
Uses magnet arrows to close missile silo doors
Arrows are strong enough to push past bullets
Breaks a cinder block with an arrow shot
Shoots an arrow that makes small building sized explosion
A sort of pincer arrow is able to crack concrete
Explosive arrow takes out an entire small airship with its blast

Speed

Oliver himself:

Shoots an arrow while moving too fast for the eye to follow
Parries a blowgun dart with his bow at “lightning speed” (Hyperbole)
The super boomerang arrow travels at supersonic speed, but also returns with said speed at which point Oliver intercepts it to save himself
Hits multiple lights by firing six arrows in two seconds
Dodges a beam attack from one of the Royal Flush gang members
Shoots 5 arrows in the time it takes to launch one whip strike
Slaps an incoming arrow in the way at point blank
Catches an arrow shot with 200 pounds of pressure
Ducks from shots from Mirror Master’s gun
Dodges an arrow from Merlyn after it was fired
Dodges close range gunfire from Red Hood (bum), quicker than Jason (bum) thought he’d be
Cuts an arrow that’s nearly about to hit him with his sword
Dodge around a bullet Touhou level, no there is not another way to phrase this
Blocks arrows from Mia with a frying pan
Shoots three arrows so fast he looks like he’s holding three bows
Runs in tandem with an arrow from Malcolm Merlyn, taking the shot by blocking it with his bow
Parries three arrows consecutively
Tags a Speed Force boosted wolf that jumped Flash
Shoots a communication drone in space that’s meant to move between satellites
- Said drone moves from a big brother satellite on the dark side of the moon, to smaller ones circling the Earth. He uses a GL construct suit while doing it, but it doesn’t seem to amp his speed to something he’s not used to or anything. Just let him be in space
Uses his belt to grab onto a support beam while falling off of a building, a feat Batman says few people would be able to pull off

Oliver’s arrows:

As said before, the super boomerang arrow travels at supersonic speed
Supersonic arrows break through the sound barrier
Speed Arrow can’t be seen by the human eye
His arrow is already moving through the air before anyone hears it release from the bow
Intercepts a shot from Merlyn that was going to hit Batman
Matches Deadshot’s bullets with arrows
Can make a 50 yard shot in 1.078 seconds
Shoots an arrow into a train that can travel between Shang-Hai and Seattle in a short time frame
Hits a sniper in an instant that was so far away, Oliver could barely see the glint of their scope

Durability

Tanked getting tossed off a car and into a store
Can endure being blasted by Superman’s super breath to imitate Flash’s super speed (See Before The Verdict)
No diff tanks a random guy’s punch for zero damage
Falls onto a trash lid and quickly keeps running
Is thrown into a stalactite by Grundy, nearly breaks his back but he gets up just fine
Takes a light blast from Dr. Light without injury
Falls multiple stories into a dumpster and bounces back up like nothing happened
Tanks an electrical blast that sends him through a window
Survives being caught in a satellite explosion visible from cities across Earth (See Before The Verdict)
Gets tossed through a brick wall and casually gets up
Isn’t hurt too bad being at the edge of an explosion
Survives being caught in an explosion that takes out a building floor and is heard from across town

Scaling

Given his legacy, it should come as no surprise that Green Arrow is a pretty formidable hero when it comes to defending the streets of DC Comics. He evenly fought Stripesy and Star Spangled Kid in a 2 on 2 alongside Speedy, stalemated in a fight with Cat Woman, and has fought alongside the likes of Huntress and Deathstroke. And as mentioned before, he’s beaten people like Deathstroke and Grundy. Notably, Batman has remarked that Oliver has a stronger bow pull than anything his son Connor can pull off, and by consistently fighting alongside them, Oliver should pretty obviously be at least on par with the rest of his arrow family. Which includes people like former sidekick Roy Harper, who could beat Peacemaker in an arrow VS bullet shooting contest. Given Batman of all people has claimed he couldn’t match Oliver in pure reaction time, and that Oliver was bordering super human physique, as well as his other showings? There’s no reason not to scale Oliver Queen to the other heroes roaming DC’s streets. His pure reactions should also be outright better due to Batman’s statement, though it’s unlikely his combat speed specifically is in a higher tier.

The Arrow Family

Black Canary dents a metal helicopter hull with a karate chop
Black Canary catches an arrow Green Arrow shot towards her
Black Canary was at the epicenter of a soundwave explosion that took the top story off of a huge building
Connor lifts a large cage with someone in it by the rope connected to it
Connor dodges an arrow in tandem when it’s nearly point blank
Connor catches and throws back an arrow at seemingly similar speeds
Mia shoots a rocket out of the sky
Roy parries a bullet after its fired with his bow
Emi can casually hit a close range 80 MPH pitch aimed at her face
Emi runs in to intercept an arrow that was above to hit Oliver

Other Street Level Fighters

Manhunter parried a bullet from Jason Todd (Bum)
Peacemaker caught an arrow from Green Arrow
Batman withstood attacks from Quakemaster Jackhammer gun, which was strong enough to make a Gotham City shaking earthquake (847.9 Tons of TNT)
Batman endured an explosion that produced a massive crater (3.36 Kilotons of TNT)
- It should be noted that this incident left Batman unconscious. So even if he survived with minimal injuries, it shouldn’t really be applicable to the traditional amount of power he can withstand / dish out, but rather as a sort of ceiling for how much he can take without being knocked out. The gap between this and the Quakemaster feat is consistent with this idea.
Alanna could react to and dodge a beam stated to be near the speed of light (62% to 1.119 C)
Azrael could cut through incoming lasers (2.33 C)
- Possible to argue the lasers don’t meet enough standards to be considered as such

Weaknesses

As impressive as he is, in spite of everything he’s achieved, Oliver Queen is still a human being. Hit him with an arrow in the chest, or a bullet in the boo, or a long fall on his everything, or high speed flight on his everything, or an explosion on his everything, you get it, he’s not going to keep fighting. While he can fight while injured just fine, that doesn’t mean he isn’t hampered by injuries. He can adapt to that of course, but say, he can only see with one eye, and his depth perception for shooting arrows is going to get messed up. His equipment also isn’t unlimited. His vehicles can run out of gas, he doesn’t have an unlimited arrow supply, and if something like his quiver gets sabotaged, it’s not like he can instantly replace it. While, again, he can adapt to issues like this, doesn’t mean the issue is something he doesn’t have to deal with.

Hawkeye

Background

Full Name: Clinton Francis Barton
Age: Roughly late 30s to early 40s
Height: 6’3” | 1.91 m
Weight: 230 lbs | 104.3 kg
Teams: Avengers, West Coast Avengers, Defenders, Thunderbolts, Justice League of America
Likes: Blade Runner, In N’ Out, Barbecue, Mockingbird, Kate Bishop, Luck
Dislikes: Magic, Five Guys, Bullseye, Bass Fishing Simulator
Respectable high tier in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

“We could have had a good, simple life. But I wanted to play with the big boys. And if I miss, it means I’m just another dude with a bow. It means I’ve been fooling myself this whole time. And that’s why I never miss.“

Clint Barton knew the harsh reality of life at a young age. He, his brother Barney, and their mother had to suffer constant abuse from Clint’s alcoholic father, Harold. Not wanting to end up like the man who was raising him, Clint often fought back against his dad, ending in him getting injured, but hardening his resolve. His brother even helped train him in how to throw a punch and aim in rough spots, so that the next time, he’d be prepared. And yet, that day would never come, when Harold got him and his wife killed in a drunk driving crash. Clint and Barney were now orphans, and had to do their best to survive. They would never find the family they needed, constantly going from foster home to foster home, sometimes even scoring another abusive household they had to escape from. That is, until one day, while on the run from one particularly bad family, the two brothers arrived at a traveling carnival.

The carnival was a place of new opportunities; acrobats and clowns, doing all sorts of circus tricks to make people around them smile. The star and leader of this group was Jacques DuQuesne, going by the stage name of Swordsman. He took them into the circus, training the two and becoming somewhat of an ideal father in Clint’s eyes, a man he wanted to prove himself to. Clint started with gymnastics and then throwing blades, impressing his tutor, but Clint also caught the eye of Buck Chisholm, known as Trick Shot. He believed Clint had a better knack for a bow and arrow than simple knives, and soon took the young teen under his wing to practice in archery. Indeed, his intuitions were true, as Clint proved himself to be an expert marksman within a few months. He eventually built his own costume and took the stage name of Hawkeye in the circus, hoping to be as great of a performer as his father figure. However, his view of Jacques would come crashing down, as he robbed the carnival paymaster to free himself of debt, and got caught red-handed by Clint.

Refusing to go along with the crime, Clint turned away, and Jacques attacked him, even almost killing him before Barney and Buck intervened. However, this ended up causing a rift between Clint and his brother. Barney was already jealous of Clint’s growing success, but now seeing that his brother couldn’t even be loyal to his mentors was the final straw for him, no matter how wrong Jacques was. In Clint’s eyes, he failed to prove himself to his brother, the one person who was always there for him. While recovering, he still ended up in training with Buck as his protege to continue in archery, even learning about special trick arrows from him, but the two never grew close, only sticking by because Clint had nowhere else to go. Barney tried to reconcile with Clint to leave the circus behind and join him in the army, believing Buck to be bad news, but Clint was stubborn and refused, causing the two brothers to separate.

All the conflict in his life came to a head months later when Buck brought him along for a secret mission against a criminal named Marko. It turns out, Buck was a sadistic criminal, killing Marko and his wife in cold blood to rob him of his money. Clint was unaware, once again being taken advantage of by someone around him, and was in a fight against Marko’s guards, and ended up shooting one of them. This specific guard ended up being his brother, Barney, working as an undercover agent to bring to light Marko’s crimes. Clint was horrified at what he had done, and doubly so for Buck’s murders, being abandoned by his tutor again and bringing Barney to a hospital so he could recover. Clint returned back to the circus career, and one day, saw Iron Man in action, saving people. In a feeling of both admiration and jealousy, Clint designed a new costume and his array of trick arrows to take to the streets as a new hero: Hawkeye.

Unfortunately for Clint, the police mistook him for a petty thief on his first public outing, forcing him on the run and encountering the deadly Soviet agent Black Widow. Seduced into villainy, Clint worked alongside her to combat Iron Man a few times, until Black Widow got seriously injured. Realizing he’d been on the side of criminals and causing hurt, not unlike his former mentors, Clint defected and asked to become a proper hero on the side of the Avengers. They ended up accepting him, but despite his noble deeds, Clint was far from the best teammate. Arrogant, rude, misogynistic, he frequently butted heads with his allies, including Captain America, whom he believed he could be a better leader than. Still, he proved himself several times, being vital in saving the world from different threats and even getting one up on the Grandmaster himself to save the universe.

As more adventures arrived, they ended up as humbling experiences for Clint; he mellowed out and stopped being as much of a douche to his teammates, fell in love with and eventually married newfound ally Barbara Morse (also known as Mockingbird), trained the aspiring Kate Bishop, and became trusted enough to lead his own faction of the West Coast Avengers. And yet, despite all the success and fame, Clint’s greatest enemy was always proving to himself he could be a hero. His desire to help others as much as possible comes into conflict with him feeling out of place; in a group of super-soldiers and gods, he stood out as being a guy with just a bow and arrow. He’s had numerous near-death and full-death experiences, been thrown around by villains too powerful for him, and put out of commission by damage all his other allies could get back up from. He can always return from the physical pain, but never the reminders of his fragility and humanity.

This ended up forming into a self-destructive behavior; he and Barbara got a divorce, he had several breakups with different heroes, left and joined the Avengers several times due to being lost on his own identity, and almost never asked for help. Even Kate, the pupil who became a hero because of him, ended up having falling outs with Clint. Wanting to take time away from the Avengers, Clint ended up finding a place in a rusty apartment building in Brooklyn, owned by Ivan Banionis and his tracksuit mafia. When Ivan started raising the rent and abused his renters, Clint took matters into his own hands and bought the building himself, forcing Ivan and his gang out while securing his neighbors a safer home. The mafia kept on fighting back against Clint to get the building back, even going so far as to hire an assassin that damaged Clint’s ears, leaving him permanently deaf, and killing one of his friends.

At his lowest point, he knew he needed to change and get help, and the hands of his neighbors and community came to support him, including Kate and Barney. Because in truth, whether he realized it or not, Clint’s actions have always helped people. Between saving a building and its renters, fighting small-time crooks, battling Avengers level threats, or inspiring a new generation of young heroes, his actions and heroism have always resonated with and saved lives. Together, alongside his community and friends, they were able to strike back against the tracksuit mafia, defeat their deadly assassin, and put Ivan behind bars. And now, after realizing how much of a hero he can be to people, Clint started prioritizing in making his own life better alongside the lives of others. He’s reconciled with Barbara, became leader of a new team of Thunderbolts for mayor Luke Cage, and is working with Kate under a newly formed West Coast Avengers to fight crime together.

Throughout all his life of failing to live up to the eyes of others and his own, Clint’s finally shown he has what it takes to be Hawkeye. It’s all about finding the way to do right, to do good, to be a hero for everyone and himself, in order to live another day and take another shot at it. How’s that for a circus performer from Iowa?

Experience & Skill

Traditional Skills

While best known for his stunts in archery, Clint excels in many other areas. He was trained in the circus by Swordsman and Trick Shot in all kinds of escapades since he was a child, making him an Olympic level athlete with the gymnastic skills of a carnival aerialist, even training his acrobatics in tandem with his archery. As such, he has excellent agility that’s only increased over time, able to jump between rooftops, walk across tightropes, hop onto moving snowmobiles, recover from trips fast enough to counterattack, and leap off of one of his allies in mid-air towards a target object, successfully fire at the target while falling, and then reel it back in and land on one of his allies in the span of one page. He can even weave around attacks from trained ninjas while tied to a chair and jump off a motorcycle several feet high to grab onto a trolley in the air.

Clint also has acute eyesight, stated to see clearly from 20 feet away when most can only see up to 8. This greatly undersells his capability though, as he’s shown several times to correctly identify targets from dozens, if not hundreds of feet away, including the flickering in Bruce Banner’s eyes or a small opening between the panels of a building sized robot. His eyesight is so good it’s been said to be greater than a hawk’s, and beyond anyone else on the Avengers. His hawk-like eyes are naturally impressive up-close too, as Clint’s able to memorize a location schematic, estimate the weight of an animal just by seeing its footprints, and can perfectly make out what people are saying through lip reading despite his deafness.

Speaking of deafness, Clint is 80% deaf in both ears, but learned sign language to accommodate; not like it impeded his combat skills, as he honed his other senses to compensate. He’s shown multiple times to detect people from behind him and react to sneak attacks accordingly, could tell people were following him just through smell, and predicted Bucky Barnes’ firing shots just through sensing movements in the air. One time, he woke up at the feeling of a gun pressed against his head, instantly recognized it, and attacked the assailant before he had a chance to pull the trigger. Most strangely of all is when he kissed Loki when the god changed his appearance to that of the Scarlet Witch, and is able to deduce his disguise through that?

Even outside of combat, Hawkeye is remarkably smart; he’d have to be in order to develop his personal trick arrows and various weapons as Ronin, but he’s also shown to be knowledgeable when it comes to catalysts and toxins. He once messed with the back of a phone so it could act as a transponder and find the right frequency to open a door that usually requires a magnetic stripe to open, deduced a rogue planet aiming straight at Earth was shot just by hearing about its linear trajectory, and quickly came up with a time travel to plan to ‘Marty McFly’ a Makluan out of existence by directing the Scarlet Witch to use her hex powers, thus sending a Hydra agent back in time with the Makluan egg so it’d never hatch in the present, and thereby erasing the current Makluan wreaking havoc. His cleverness is highlighted best when he played a game of chance with the Grandmaster; by holding out two arrows, the Grandmaster would have to choose the one with the head in order to proceed with his plan of rewriting the universe. However, even when he picked the correct arrow, Clint simply palmed the arrowhead right under the Grandmaster’s nose, giving the illusion to everyone that the elder lost the game, and saving the universe with nothing but his grifter skills.

With all this, it’s no surprise Hawkeye’s resume backs up his impressive skillset. Avengers, Defenders, Thunderbolts, he makes any team better, and even worked as an international spy with Mockingbird and under S.H.I.E.L.D. for a period of time. He’s not only an excellent second in command, but a talented leader, having led his own superhero team several times, including personal Avengers squads. When leading the Thunderbolts, he slowly taught them tactics on how to work together with simple ploys, even when surrounded by numerous enemies, and used his own experience to survive and defeat his peers for up to 5 minutes while schooling them in battling lessons, using the skill, agility, and awareness he’s honed over the years. At one point, Tony Stark even thought he could take on the role as the next Captain America. Truly, Clint Barton is unrecognizable from the simple circus man he was before.

Close Quarters Combat Mastery

Clint knew that in order to hang up with the big leagues, he’d need to do more than be good with a bow and arrow. It was through this he ended up getting many training sessions under Captain America, one of the greatest fighters in the world who’s mastered every martial art. While he may not be as skilled as the Star Spangled Soldier, it was under his tutelage that he became a formidable up close fighter during his tenure as the Ronin, enough so that even Iron Fist complimented his skills. Thanks to his training, Hawkeye is easily able to fend off basic street thugs and henchmen, hold off S.H.I.E.L.D. agents for a time, and even defeat a combination of Hydra, the Hand, and A.I.M. agents while suffering from an injured foot. He’s able to beat up trained officers while handcuffed, fight off members of a vampire cult, defeat four unarmed men while in an elevator, and overwhelm someone in close quarters while blinded, knowing their moves before they can make them. He’s also skilled in disarming foes of their weaponry, once again while blinded.

Of course, beating up nameless grunts wouldn’t be enough to consider Clint an excellent unarmed combatant, which is why his own battles against similarly skilled street tiers backs up the fruits of his training. While mind controlled alongside Mockingbird, the two got into a close quarters brawl with the intent to kill each other, and Hawkeye managed to hold the advantage over her. On two separate occasions, he’s defeated the Swordsman in close quarters combat, who, despite the name, is similarly a skilled unarmed combatant in his own right. Through techniques he learned from Captain America, he was able to fight equally with and defeat Batroc the Leaper, another master martial artist. He briefly matched Black Widow in close quarters, only being knocked out by a special gadget of hers, and even managed to defeat a combination of the Winter Soldier, the Falcon, and himself (long story) with his battle skills.

Outside of unarmed combat, Clint has shown to be surprisingly stealthy, being able to appear and disappear from sight quickly, sneak around a U.S. government base, and infiltrate a hospital so discretely that he caught Mockingbird off guard, despite her being one of the greatest spies in the world. Clint’s also more than just his bows and arrows with weaponry, as he spent many days in his youth training with throwing knives under the Swordsman, one of the best swordfighters in the world. He later studied proper swordsmanship to become an expert with the blade, able to effortlessly wield two at once, as well as other close-ranged weaponry like nunchucks and bo staffs. It’s thanks to a combination of his eyesight, reflexes, manual dexterity, and hand-eye coordination that he’s a natural with almost any weapon, even being one of the few people around who can properly throw and wield Captain America’s shield.

Pain Tolerance & Endurance

Befitting for someone with a stubborn personality, Hawkeye is equally stubborn when it comes to the battlefield. He’s survived wounds like getting bitten in the shoulder by Mac Gargan as Venom, various stabs from arrows, forks and blades, getting shot at or waking up with bullet wounds, and even forced himself through literal burning pain to take down Typhoid Mary. He’s been able to keep on fighting with cracked ribs, and somehow surviving getting his body riddled with dozens of bullets. Sure, he may have been knocked out from it and required medical services, but he was able to recover from the damage faster than any ordinary person should, still making it one of his best feats in this area. And the mental and physical side-effects an ordinary person would suffer from using Pym Particles? Clint is largely immune to them just through the high athleticism and focused concentration his training has given him.

When it comes to how long he can keep going, Clint has several instances of staying active for more than a day or two’s worth. Some of these are out of combat of course, but then there’s the time he kept on his training in archery for 42 hours, constantly drawing and pulling the 250 pound pull weight of his bow without eating or sleeping before finally collapsing, or how he kept running, evading, and fighting back multiple assassination attempts for around 48 hours, including the fifth one while suffering broken ribs from the fourth. After those assassins hit him with a massive explosion, he only got four broken bones from it, and was able to recover quick enough after waking up to avoid another assassination attempt.

Adaptation
(Experience & Skill)

Hawkeye’s years of training and experience naturally carry over to adaptive skills if the situation calls for it. He’s got a particular fighting style on how to deal with multiple attackers at once; due to there being a crowd of people, he uses that to skillfully evade attacks and have the enemies get in each other’s way. Sometimes this can be having the enemy hit their own allies by accident or tricking them to use their own powers against them, like when he shot Aquarius’ gun that shot electric blasts so it’d react with the watery mist Pisces created, causing a shocking chain reaction and knocking both of them out. He may have previously struggled to fight blind, but later gained enough awareness to work around it just by going off memory of the room to successfully fight against others, and is able to block enemy attacks in the dark for a bit while they’re able to see him and he cannot. When it comes to the environment in general, he’s used it to his advantage several times, like collapsing roofs on top of monsters, throwing his swords at a gas tank to create an explosion, or predicting when and where to catch an arrow just from the sound someone makes touching a puddle of water.

Clint’s resourcefulness also applies to basically anything he can get his hands on thanks to being a master marksman, even being compared to Bullseye in this field (albeit not as lethally). There’s traditional weapons he can use seamlessly if they’re around like shuriken or kunai, but then there’s more odd ones; toothpicks, playing cards, coins, pebbles, or a spoon he shot with a hairpin hard enough to break a glass bottle. Even with his bread and butter of arrows, he can throw them as great as he shoots them (with Kate Bishop having comparable feats), and can jam them to the side of a building to break his fall. He’s also used arrows as melee weaponry to stab people or to get a better chance at using their special trick effects. In his own words, give him something to shoot or throw, and he’ll make that shot. If he’s short of both arrows and a bow, he can just makeshift new ones quickly, whether it be from wood, a combination of a piston, crowbar, and hunk of wire, or from a dead reed and spare bowstring. Speaking of bows and arrows, it’s about time we get into what Hawkeye is most well known for.

Archery

While Clint Barton has many skills he’s made known throughout the years, he’s best known in and out of comics for his excellence at archery. As a result, he’s shown vastly different applications and skills in this field throughout decades, and will get multiple sections detailing them.

Training & Status

Ever since he was young, Clint had a natural talent for archery. He was already more skilled in the field than Swordsman within a week of practicing, but he also spent four years under both him and Trick Shot, one of the best archers in the world, in practicing the bow and arrow eight hours every day. He was eventually able to shoot right through four glass bottles and land a bullseye while recovering from injuries through this, and he only continued honing his skills, practicing at least two hours a day in his teenage years and never taking break days. He’s trained himself to make accurate shots from virtually any angle, physical position, or state of motion, and has an instinctive genius for calculating the angles, velocity, and likely impact of objects in motion. Even when changing his main weapon focus to swords as the Ronin, he never lost his touch with marksmanship.

We get a good insight into how Clint describes his archery skills. The stance is the foundation, where one draws their strength. Nock the arrow and grip to realize one is wielding a weapon, and focus solely on the goal, regardless of surroundings. Set up and draw, then release the arrow. Sounds simple, but it shows how serious and focused Hawkeye gets when he fires a shot. In his eyes, he can’t ever miss, or else he’s nothing more than an average joe, and it’s why he keeps on training to get better at long range shots or bullseyes, even hooking himself to constantly moving and swinging machinery to better hone his own skills or putting himself in training regimes that could seriously harm him if he makes one mistake. He’s even helped train Kate Bishop, another talented archer like himself.

Thanks to his constant training and prodigious nature, Hawkeye for a while was the undisputed best archer in the world. Many statements have just called him an expert, elite, or master marksman, an Olympic level sharpshooter, the original master archer, etc., but multiple sources of omniscient narration have referred to him as the top dog archer. It’s even said his skills exceed Robin Hood, William Tell, and any other master bowman in history. And when I say was the undisputed top one, that’s just because he can only be rivaled by Kate, someone who was trained by Clint and is able to share the mantle of Hawkeye with him. They go back and forth recently on who’s better between the two, but that really speaks more for Kate rather than reflect poorly on Clint.

Against regular archers, he has feats of being able to catch their arrows or destroy enemy bows from a distance, but how about when he has to deal with the big guns? Well, he was able to match and defeat his brother Barney Barton while blind, despite him also being one of the best sharpshooters around. He’s strung and fired an arrow in the time it took Champion, a fellow master archer, to release his bowstring. He nearly matched Bullseye when it came to aim during a one on one fight, shot Trick Shot’s arrows out of the sky, and was able to stalemate a Life Model Decoy of himself in archery that had the exact same set of experience and skills as himself. At one point, he was surrounded by dozens of archers, and yet had enough skill in spite of that to defeat many of the attackers, arrow on arrow, before he succumbed to a poison.

General Shooting Skills

Hawkeye’s own showcases have lived up to his reputation and then some. He’s no stranger to landing bullseyes of course, but he’s skilled enough to disarm guns from his foes several times, as well as swords and magnesium flares. Plenty of other times though, he’s been able to fire his arrow well enough to plug the barrels of firearms or even split them in half. He can pin enemies down before they can do anything, usually by shooting their clothing, at one point even shooting a hospital band on someone’s wrist to nail them to a wall. He was also capable of sniping guns off of four ninjas and their hands before shooting again the next instant to pin them to a wall. As these feats somehow manage to avoid any vitals, it’s no surprise these shooting skills are also helpful for allies or civilians. He can easily shoot arrows precise enough to cut rope bindings, even if the person is twisting around in a small tornado. He’s also fond of shooting his arrows to split other arrows just for practice.

Weak points are also easy for Hawkeye’s eyes to decipher and shoot at to get an advantage. Against vehicles, he can shoot several arrows into the tire of a van, a car’s engine block, through the armor shell and into the motor of a helicopter, or between the spokes of a motorcycle’s wheel. In regards to enemies, he can just shoot them through their hood to pin them down if they’re flying away, or he can just shoot off a small chip on their neck before shooting it again with another arrow to knock it far away. Of course, the human body has several weak points that Clint is more than willing to target if he has to. Headshots are obvious, but other examples include shooting at the wrist to deprive people of their weaponry, the knees to slow down movement, explosive arrows at the mouth for greater damage, or other trick arrows through the heart and brain for almost fatal shots. Or the crotch if he felt like it, Kate certainly loves that option. Even if you’re somehow quick enough to dodge a shot from him, an arrow would still just be a quarter inch off from cutting deep enough and hitting your spine.

Such great accuracy is helped with Clint’s especially fast quick draw. He’s implied he can have an arrow out in less than a second and is said to fire arrows faster than the eye can register. Narration even stated he can move his right arm like a blur to reach his quiver arrow after arrow, firing them with the rapidity of a machine gun. But could these be hyperbole? Unlikely. Hawkeye can nock an arrow immediately after firing four at once, fire five different arrows near simultaneously, shoot over half a dozen arrows within quick proximity to each other while falling dozens of feet, can fire over a dozen arrows within one panel to pin down a small group of people, and did the same to a bullseye target so fast that all the arrows appeared to hit the board at the same time. It’s not just bullseye exclusive though, as he once rapidly fired arrows towards Maestro at such a pace they looked like they hit him simultaneously.

With great speed comes great timing, as the not-so-known saying goes. Clint’s quick enough to fire his arrows to shoot out enemy projectiles, from knives, sniper rounds, or missiles. Objects thrown in the air like apples, arrows, or quarters can be shot down before they fall down to the ground. He can fire an arrow inside a laser guided robot gun shooting 30 rounds a second to destroy it and was able to count the timing of constantly firing lasers in a hallway to fire his arrow towards the console controlling them. Hell, he was even fast enough to grab a bow, draw it, and fire counter arrows to shoot down four already descending arrows from hitting him just a few feet away. That last bit sounds crazy, but Hawkeye’s arrow shots have been able to outspeed and hit his previously fired arrow before it could fall, and he even fired three arrows separately almost faster than eyesight, so fast it looks like they were fired at the same time. At one point, Clint dared to test if he could fire an arrow faster than Psylocke can think to trepan him with her psychic powers, and Angel didn’t want to take the risk. Bragging rights? Perhaps, but it’d be consistent with his other feats.

Of course, Hawkeye can prove to be even deadlier on the battlefield if he chooses to fire multiple arrows at once. Kate has shown to fire four like that, but Clint has done the same thing, sometimes even faster than eyesight. He’s gone beyond that threshold, having fired six (never seven), eight, even nine and possibly ten arrows simultaneously. These were done with just regular arrows, and he’s no stranger to firing multiple trick arrows at once to ensure his opponent has little chance to evade their powerful effects.

Adaptation
(Archery)

Clint’s marksmanship is already impressive, but it’s even greater when combined with his ability to land any shot from any position he finds himself in. Some of his training routines involve landing bullseyes while swinging from a trapeze or Satan’s carousel, dodging miniature tank fire, and firing arrows by holding up his bow with his feet, all to help him adapt to any situation. In the midst of combat, he can land his shots while upside down or performing somersaults and backflips, sniped grenades after jumping off a plane, and aimed his arrow at a giant robot’s panel opening while falling. When the environment itself is limited, like when he’s trapped in a constantly shifting steel maze by Ultron, he can still aim well enough to make a shot in one of the engine’s openings to shut down the metal with his Vibranium arrow.

Hawkeye’s previously established endurance also extends to his archery. He can already fire arrows well enough while recovering from cracked ribs or make headshots with a busted leg, but when suffering both cracked ribs and a broken wrist, he was able to make an impossible shot of shooting an arrow to graze Bruce Banner, avoiding killing him, and also pushing him away to save him from an up close gunshot. Even when his draw arm gets hit with a muscle relaxant that makes it unable to move for hours, causing his aim to be off by eight inches to the right, he just nocked a hook arrow with his teeth and still fired precise enough to hit an opening between Black Widow’s falling explosive gauntlets. And as mentioned before, he kept on readying his bow and firing arrows repeatedly for 42 hours without any breaks.

Hawkeye has had points where his sight was impaired in a given scenario, usually an archer’s big weakness, but these only highlight his already impressive adaptation skills to their best. He’s shown to train in archery while wearing a blindfold at times, and when in a pitch black room, he only needed to rely on his hearing to follow the direction of noise and aim his arrow perfectly at his enemies. One of Clint’s main solo runs had him completely blinded following a brain swell injury, yet he was able to memorize the room he was in and combat in an archery fight against his brother long enough to take the advantage in close quarters. Even when not put in a disadvantageous position, Clint can shoot three arrows at once perfectly to sever a man’s bindings with his eyes closed or shoot arrows from behind to nail his targets, including headshots.

Range

One of the keys to being a great archer is how far you can make those shots, and Clint himself is no exception to this, being able to see up to 150 feet with about 95% accuracy. Many of his personal feats support this, as he’s made shots across hallways, on top of buildings, between buildings, through the trees of a jungle, across streets, to the center of a city park, etc. He’s gone above that supposed threshold though, being able to tag jets, helicopters, airborne enemies far above him, or snipe people from across a flying plane. He’s even had an entire long-range battle with Black Widow and her sniper rifle, making shots that tagged her across the cityscape. As far as specific numbers go, there unfortunately hasn’t been many concrete feats for how far Hawkeye can shoot his arrow, but the ones he does have are impressive; that being when he managed to snipe a bowstring from 50 yards away. His shots can reach up to 700 yards, though he’s barely missing his target at this range normally. With enhanced telescopic sight, he can fire at targets perfectly from up to a mile away.

Ricochet Shots

If Hawkeye ever seems like he misses his mark, he doesn’t. He routinely plans and executes complicated ricochet shots using assorted projectiles, and that extends to his arrows. He can have them bounce off objects like vases to make them fall off targets, but he can also have them ricochet off walls, shields, pipes, and varying mechanical surfaces. By far his most impressive showcase in this field is one time, when cornered by a cop, he fired a smoke arrow from behind and was able to aim it well enough for it to bounce off a trashcan, mailbox, and light pole faster than eyesight, before it reached back at him and allowed an escape.

The Absurd

Hawkeye’s made a lot of ridiculous shots like above over the years, befitting a comic character with decades of history. Some seem just typically out of the ordinary like shooting two arrows vertically into the air to land on top of police officers and knocking them out, all from behind without looking. But at this best? How about when he managed to aim a Pym Particle arrow at the exact position that, even when it explodes to release dozens of other arrows, those shafts would hit 0 vital areas against the crooks he’s fighting? Or when he managed to shoot an arrow with a nearly broken bow through a crowd of people to hit his target in the knee? If neither of those two are enough, let’s talk about the time Clint tried to enter an ancient temple that would only open when exposed to sunlight once every 40 years on the 40th day at 4:44 PM. As soon as he heard that information, he was able to calculate the exact shot he needed with Earth’s rotation and axis drift in effect to fire a flash arrow at a certain angle and position that would imitate sunlight at that instance, gaining access to the temple. Simply put, there’s no impossible shot Clint can’t make, and one should be wise to avoid getting on his bullseye list.

Traditional Equipment

Hawkeye Costume

Originally designed by him, Hawkeye’s costume has had many different looks over the years. The classic one is based on a mix of circus performers and Robin Hood, equipped with a cowl, but later designs involve a hideous tunic with purple boots and a headband, a similar blue-clad look with more purple accents, and a complete golden redesign with red boots and accents. Starting around the 2010s, Hawkeye’s outfit became a lot more sleek and casual, usually a tactical battle jacket with small armored parts and his insignia. His most recent costume combines the battle jacket with the recognizable purple accents of his old designs, making for a nice blend of classic and modern. For the most part, Hawkeye’s differing looks when taking up the bow and arrow are just for cosmetics, with qualities not mutually exclusive to one another, and will thus be combined into one.

The shirt was made of chain mail that protects from javelins, but was later replaced with a lighter weight variant that composes Iron Man’s armor, strong enough to stop a bullet and reinforced at the neck to protect from hanging, but light enough to still let him perform his acrobatic maneuvers. There’s also synthetic versions for every part of his costume, which makes him immune to any sort of magnetic control his opponent can dish out. The cowl has infrared lenses to see in the dark, but got a handy upgrade from Tony Stark when Clint was suffering near blindness. This upgraded cowl comes with sensors to help his brain register what’s real and what’s not, giving a full spectrum of not just infrared, but U.V. vision, as well as radar-like motion detectors. It can identify heat signatures, comes with a zoom-in and zoom-out function, find audio voiceprint to match with records, and calculate the distance and angular degrees Clint needs to jump and move. It was unnecessary to keep after his blindness was fixed, but he still got a miniature pair of glasses with the same functions, marking it as standard equipment.

Other Wearable Gear

Of course, there’s other equipment Clint can bring alongside if the job calls for it. As said before, he still has glasses with the same functions as his once upgraded cowl, but he also has tunic pouches with their spare arrowheads he can pull out in a pinch, which can be affixed to ordinary target point arrowheads within seconds. In these tunics, there’s 24 modules, half on the front and back, opened with a two finger positive pressure lock. There’s also a respirator to protect himself from his own gas arrows, wrist flashlights to see in the dark, and psionic cloaks to protect his mind from telepaths. He finally has a camouflage (or image inducer) device to either give the illusion of different clothing or disguising himself as someone else entirely, mostly for stealth missions.

Hearing Aids

As said earlier, Clint’s hearing is worse by about 80%, and while he’s able to fend off threats fine still, it’s of course still a hindrance. That’s why good old pal Tony Stark gave him personal hearing aids. Aside from being able to let him hear, obviously, they have other practical uses. In the case of a sonic attack, Clint can just turn them off to be unaffected, or dial them up to hear better than most, like the gears turning in an android’s body, though too much loud noise can end up destroying them. It can come equipped with an inner ear translator to understand foreign languages too if he’s on an international adventure.

Bows

The staple of Clint’s entire arsenal, he’s carried a variety of bows over the years. The first information on his bow came from The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, described as a double recurved, compound, reinforced-fiber glass longbow, requiring 75 pounds of force to draw and owning three of these. He of course carried different bows, but these wouldn’t be described until the second handbook. Here, we learn he also has a regular all purpose bow with a similar string tension and fiberglass composition, but also a compound bow with a draw weight of 60 pounds. It has a magnesium alloy grip and a graphite epoxy body, excellent for distance shooting, but its weight of 8.3 pounds makes it heavier and more cumbersome. Outside of these, Hawkeye was shown to carry a 250 pound draw force bow in his first solo run and was gifted an energy bow from Noh-Varr, allowing him to fire energy arrows without the use of resources, though whether he kept this afterward is unknown.

His bows can be attached with a telescopic sight to help Clint fire up to a mile away and has a tracking device he can locate with his phone if it’s ever stolen. It has other practical uses beyond that, like being used to slide down ropes or cables, but in particular, Clint is fond of using it as a weapon itself. It’s tough enough to block swords and shuriken, which makes it excellent to parry melee attacks or enemy arrow fire. If he wants to get up close, he can use it to attack people as a close quarters weapon or use it as a defense to hold enemies back, like a reptilian Captain America.

Crossbows

In case he somehow loses access to his bow and arrow or can’t easily use them in situations, Hawkeye comes equipped with crossbows, either on hand or in his wrist, to get the job done. Typically, these shoot out tranquilizer darts in his espionage missions, but have been shown to carry and fire his trick arrows, with enough range to reach the top of a building from ground level.

Quivers

Of course, for one to carry arrows, they need a trusty quiver alongside them. Clint’s quiver is one of ply leather construction, able to hold 36 arrows total with a special clamping mechanism to hold them in position, making so even if the whole thing is inverted, those arrows won’t fall off.

Ronin Weaponry

When retiring the bow and arrow for a time, Clint adopted several eastern weapons as the Ronin. Most frequent is his blade, spending years practicing in swordsmanship and skillfully wielding two at once, with them being sharp enough to pierce and cut through metal bots. Beyond that, he has a nunchuck for a powerful blunt weapon, that he can also combine the two sides of to form a bo staff for greater reach, as well as shuriken and multiple firearms. An extensive look at his arsenal shows he also has sai, knives, and handguns, though he has not shown to use these.

Pym Particles

For a period of time between the late 60s and early 70s, Clint felt like his skills in archery were inadequate to aid the Avengers, and so took a drink of Hank’s Pym Particle serum to enlarge his size, becoming Goliath. Ranging from 60 to 100 ft tall, Clint gains superhuman strength, enough to stop and throw aside a Ferris wheel and destroy some Ultron robots. Around 2019, he was shown to still have access to a vial of the serum, though he never got to use it due to Rocket Raccoon swiping it for his own purposes. He’s also used a capsule of them to store motorcycles for quick ground travel. Clint has shown to carry vials of the serum before and has been willing to use them in character, making these viable standard options, though it should be worth noting he’s only pulled them out in intense combat situations, and it’s unlikely he’d pull it out against some joe schmoe.

Sky-Cycle

Custom built by his friend Jorge Latham, the Sky-Cycle is Hawkeye’s primary method of transportation (modeled after a commercial snowmobile, I guess). Its most obvious capability is flight through the use of a high-yield turbine with air intake through a vent in the nose below the handlebar assembly. The vehicle’s thrust angle and lift are controlled by secondary turbines with adjustable vents at the bottom of the frame under the driver’s seat. It’s able to easily catch up to speeding trucks and reach a max speed of 380 mph, with a max altitude of 12,000 feet. Hawkeye mainly uses it to get around or scout the city for criminals, but he’s brought it into combat, and the use of its voice operated, hands-off autopilot steering mechanism means he’s able to keep the vehicle hovering and maintain speed, all while he fires arrows at enemies below or similarly airborne. They also come with an internal navigation computer and radio communication gear, alongside a signal radius of up to 50 kilometers that Clint can call upon them from.

Misc. Tools

A bunch of miscellaneous weapons or equipment used once or twice. Most of this are non combat oriented stuff.

Dagger: Hawkeye carries combat daggers with him a couple of times for better close quarter encounters
Binoculars: Hawkeye has used binoculars to see far away or scan the area
Grappling Gun: Shoots a long cable to get between buildings and climb them up like a rope
Explosives: Used them to break out of a trap he was caught in
Blowdart Gun: For shooting tranquilizer darts in case you got nothing else
Tracker & Tracking Device: He can sneakily tag people with a tracking device, and follow them with either his phone or another device, even working well with his transmitter arrows or bow
Bandages: For wrapping up wounds
Lightstick: To see in the dark
Cheap Time Machine: A device from one of Kang’s invasions he stole, it sends someone forward in time before bringing them back to where they left off like a temporal boomerang. Clint used this to pose as both Hawkeye and the Ronin without drawing suspicion.

Trick Arrows

Initial Overview

In a world of superhumans, Clint knew regular arrows wouldn’t be enough, and needed to go beyond that. And so, come his famous trick arrows. Most of these were built by himself from day one, but on occasion gets specifically built arrows from allies like Tony Stark, Henry Pym, or the Tinkerer. Despite having a wealth of different arrows and effects available, he arranges them in a set pattern and marks each arrow with a notch coded tail feather, so he can instantly know what type he’s drawing just by touch. Typically, he carries 12 standard target-point arrows, 6 three-bladed broadheads, and 18 various specially designed tips. The heavier the arrow, the less range they have, though given his impressive marksmanship, this is hardly an issue.

As a general outline of his arrows, they’re 28 inches in length and as fast as bullets at close range. Their composition varies over the years, sometimes being made of wood, but also aluminum, metals like tungsten, sometimes even Adamantium shafts apparently? Otherwise, if his shafts aren’t ready, the arrowheads can be thrown as projectiles with similar accuracy to activate their effects.

Hawkeye is constantly modifying his arsenal of arrows and never carries the same batch for each adventure, which means he’s assorted hundreds over the decades. For better formatting, the trick arrows will be split into varying categories and grouped based on their functions and general use.

Traditional Arrows

Despite having so, so many different tricks and effects with his arrowheads throughout decades, Clint will always be fond of the good old fashioned normal tip. That isn’t to say these aren’t above your typical paygrade though, given they can cut through chains, ropes, padlocks, Spider-Man’s webs, pierce armored foes and metal, and punch through three robot enemies at once. But what if he decides to go deadlier with them? Well, he has your expected iron-tipped and diamond tipped arrows of course, but also a diamond-drill arrow that has its diamond point driven by a tiny transistorized electric motor, letting it drill through ten inches of armor plate without stopping. The tungsten-carbide knife-edge arrow (fucking mouthful) is harder than diamond with a sharp edge that can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter.

That said, he’s part of an Avengers team, and is obviously going to be fighting against Avengers level threats. In cases like this, Hawkeye just gives arrow tips a good spin, like Vibranium armor piercing arrows that could go through the Iron Patriot armor. He’s carried several Adamantium arrows on his person, usually kept in store for Ultron, and was gifted arrows by Thor to use for enemies on his level like the Wrecking Crew. He likes giving his arrows fun tricks just outside of sharp arrowheads though, like silver arrows in case he ever fights a werewolf, invisible plastic arrows, arrows only slightly slower than an early Quicksilver that’re described as lightning fast, Antarctic Vibranium arrows capable of melting all metals (even Adamantium), or arrows contained within a pym particle vile that he can shoot out to rain dozens of arrows onto others.

Blunt Force Arrows

As said before, Hawkeye doesn’t always want to brutally hurt his enemies, so these blunt force arrows are good usages for that. The boxing glove arrow is deceptively powerful, instantly inflating under rock hard pressure to slam onto someone. On its own, it already packs a punch, but thanks to the momentum of an arrow, the impact is equivalent to getting hit with a world heavyweight champion, the kick of a mule, and the weight of a sledgehammer. And if somehow those don’t work, he has regular stun arrows, brass-knuckle arrows, bone-blow arrows, hammer arrows, or battering ram arrows to compensate. On the simpler side, he also has arrows with just specific tips for blunt force to knock them out.

Line Arrows

If a place is too far for Clint’s acrobatics to jump across, several different line arrows come in handy for those situations. His cable arrows are of a .36 inch aircraft control cable that can reach 50 feet in length, which allows him to scale buildings or walk tightropes to cross them. However, they can be used in other ways, like grounding electricity generated from an enemy and forcing them to fight on Clint’s terms, tying up crashing vans to stop them dead in their tracks, slicing a speeding car’s top off, or being used to help with landings. Outside of long cables, grapple arrows are great for swinging around the environment like a certain web-slinger, grabbing far away objects, or breaking his falls. Rope arrows are good for climbing down, and tether arrows can stick onto objects or even flying people to keep Clint on their trail.

Trapping Arrows

Criminals are smart enough to run away when they see the world’s greatest archer, so Clint carries a bunch of arrows specifically designed to keep them in place. Net arrows are the most common, releasing a 10 foot wide, 0.36 inch cable net, easily able to ensnare and trap someone, or two, or a whole group! They can also just pin someone next to a wall, hang them upside down as a trap setup, or if it’s for an ally, put them in a net attached with a parachute for safe landings. There are specific variations for net arrows too, like electro-nets for shocking constriction, titanium nets to make breaking out harder, or net arrows with electrocution properties to knock out especially powerful foes.

What else besides nets? How about steel locks or steel cables, titanium coil designed to restrain Iron Man, putty, constriction, adhesives, quick-drying cement, purple glue, lead-foil containment, bandages, fishnets, nylon rope, a twirling wire, razor tipped wires, and strangest of all, a chain composed of energized plasma particles to form an invisible bind more rigid than steel. Sometimes you have to wonder where the hell he or his benefactors get this stuff.

Weapon & Tool Arrows

What’s better than an arrow as a weapon? Arrows with weapons on their arrowtips! Hawkeye loves being creative with these, the most common of which being his bola arrows, able to release three small heavy balls on an 18 inch cable to entwine targets or even firearms. These are already great for small-time crooks, but he also has a version that’s attached to a beryllium steel heavy-gauge wire in case of stronger foes. There’s also the boomerang arrow, which can return through means of a homing-circuitry-controlled weight-shifting mechanism… which is just fancy words to say it can hit the enemy from behind with curve shots. There’s also the suction-tipped arrows, with the tip being covered in micro-adhesors to stick to any object for up to 5 minutes, useful for sticking onto objects combined with cable arrows, but also to swing himself around and close enemy distance, plucking small objects, or to stick onto surfaces safely.

Other weapon types include clamp arrows to pluck away objects or restrain enemy hands, miniature buzzsaw arrows that cut through a steel door, tuning fork arrows that act as a boomerang with vibrations powerful enough to knock someone out, a Texas chainsaw arrow for some massacres, and arrowpoons (yes, he calls them that) to reach onto far away enemies while also stabbing them.

Rocket Arrows

Rocket arrows have been used sparingly in Hawkeye’s history, but with good usage. They contain a small solid-fueled missile with various payloads up to 2.7 pounds, allowing him to fire it and propel himself up to the air. These rockets produce enough speed and force to penetrate through a tornado that was deflecting all his other arrows, and can have its shaft attached to various arrowheads like a bola one. The rocket arrows come equipped with other functions for better use, like knockout gas that releases upon impact. Of course, he also has traditional rocket arrows for causing large explosives.

Electric Arrows

Not shocking to see Hawkeye has held electric arrows across his tenure, being one of his most commonly used in fact. These are, of course, often used to shock people and leave them unconscious, but there’s plenty of ways to use a tool like this. He has wide AoE versions of these arrows, conductor arrows, electro-arrows that act as an electrified version of a heat-seeking missile, and a paralysis arrow that’d leave even someone like Captain America unable to move for ten seconds. The potency of the arrows vary, some being 500 volts to even 21 thousand, others having enough voltage to knock down an elephant, and then an arrow that holds a proton battery in its shaft to create a burst of current equal to a thousand lightning bolts.

It’s not just humans these arrows are great for though, because they’re also a good way to combat against anything technological. There are various electronic scrambler devices he carries, like a micro-pulse circuit shifter that fries a caddy’s electrical system, magnetic electric arrows to zap a robot’s internals, a version that disrupts robot equilibriums with a static burst, etc. He has scrambler arrowheads to shut down security systems, but also ones that can download a frequency to freeze enemy armor systems, scramblers that shut down Deathlok, homing arrows to disrupt an armor’s electrical systems, or even a bioelectric scrambler tuned to Vision at a frequency that can affect him while intangible. He also has exceptionally powerful EMP arrows, able to cause system wide shutdowns and blackouts, shut down electricity, and put down advanced technology like Iron Man armors.

Fire & Heat Arrows

Turning up the heat are a bunch of different fire arrows. The thermal arrows release a temperature of 8,000 degrees after ignition upon impact, and there’s arrow tips armed with superthermite to make steel burn like paper. These can be used to light up fuel packs on armors or just set anything aflame, from wolfmen to the street or even a whole boat. Hawkeye is of course familiar with utilizing these with anything around him, like using a flare arrow against a stone wall to melt metal bars, igniting oil drums, or firing at spilled gasoline to cause massive explosions.

Ice Arrows

If he doesn’t feel like using nets, Hawkeye has various cold-themed arrows to literally freeze people in place. These are in large sheets of ice that can freeze Carnage possessed humans, and undead versions of Dr. Voodoo and Thor. Liquid nitrogen arrows can help hold back explosions from spreading, and he can improvise with water arrows when in cold temperatures to freeze a helicopter’s motor blades. Also, he has a quirky snowball arrow.

Liquid & Aquatic Arrows

Clint has several liquid arrows for different usages. The water arrow may be useless on its own, but can be great for other scenarios. As mentioned above, it can freeze in cold temperatures, but it can be used to short circuit tech or hear footsteps if his sight is impaired. Outside of water though, he has foam arrows to put out electrical fires, grease arrows for slipping out, and ink arrows to blind foes.

Gas Arrows

Clint has carried a vast amount of gas arrows throughout his history. There’s the typical smoke arrow, which releases bilious clouds of chemical smoke to use as a smokescreen and hide from enemies or escape. They can also be used to make it difficult for people to breathe, putting Clint in an advantageous position. He has various amounts of knockout gas arrows and sleeping gas, including fast acting ones, which can keep people in slumber-land for hours. Sneezing smog arrows to cause sneezing, sedative gas arrows, gasses that overwhelm Daredevil’s hyper-senses, immunization gas to protect from Ultron’s encephalo ray, he carries a bunch. If he wants to be really disgusting, he has stink arrows to give a wretched stench and disorient people or puker arrows to literally make his enemies vomit. They also don’t have to be fired to be of use, since he can spin them around and spread the gas around him.

Toxic & Chemical Arrows

A little bit concerning Hawkeye carries more variety in toxic arrows than regular gas arrows, but they’ve very much proven useful. Even early in his career, he carried four chemical arrows that were strong enough to make Iron Man’s armor rust. These arrows contain a phial of concentrated nitric acid, powerful enough to melt a three-inch steel pipe and affect Doctor Doom’s power armor. Other versions hold energized radioactive fluoric acid that eats through glass and stone, can melt off parts of a large robot, and later anti-metallic versions can still affect stronger Iron Man armors alongside a thick metal girder. Wasp even made him an arrow containing nano-acids that crawl their way through someone’s skin. These acid arrows aren’t just used offensively, and they can help break Clint free from rope restraints.

Of course, acid isn’t the only toxic chemical in his possession. Clint carries a variety of tear gas arrows that release two ounces of it upon impact. Tranquilizer arrows are a good way to knock people out without risking himself to the effects of knockout gas, and he has arrows that release an itching powder that’s specifically chemically treated to make it a mad irritant.

Explosive Arrows

The most used trick arrow throughout Hawkeye’s history, and for good reason. Even just a regular explosive tipped arrow has a concussive impact worth 2/3rd a pound of TNT, equivalent to a megajoule. This is what allows him to destroy a car, damage a subway train, flip tanks, blast holes in concrete, obliterate metal doors, or even vaporize the heads of enemies. Alongside heavy firepower, Clint’s marksmanship allows him to use these arrows to greater effect, aiming at vulnerable areas like the mouth or firing them at the perfect spot to split apart a falling metal structure weighing thousands of tons. Even with smaller, concentrated blasts, they can damage people physically superior to Clint. He doesn’t just have regular explosion arrows though; grenade versions, C4s, timed explosives, remote explosives, counter-blasts to stop stun rays, non-lethal concussion blasts to stun enemies, and a little baby explosive arrow for small locks.

Of course, if absolutely necessary, he has explosive arrows for a bigger kaboom. Regular trick arrows can already cause larger than normal explosions at times, especially if used in conjunction for a bigger blast radius, but at their best? He has arrows with enough blast power to destroy a bunker. He once carried a nuclear tipped arrow with power equivalent to a fraction of an A-Bomb, able to pulverize a battleship. He was gifted by Loki a low yield thermograde nuke arrow that could even slightly hurt Terrax, a herald of Galactus. And most impressively, a 30 megaton depth arrow that could destroy a body of Ultron… which probably makes it higher than stated yield really, but who are we to argue with the comic.

Magnetic Arrows

Magnetic arrows come in handy in more scenarios than you’d expect. The magnetic intensifier arrows strongly magnetizes any surface it sticks to and pulls metal toward it, especially useful if surrounded by folks with guns. They have a strong enough magnetic pull to even affect Iron Man’s armor, diverting his arm and making him miss his shot. He also has ones attached with a tether to stick onto metal surfaces and help him reach across distances, but even these arrows can be strong enough to anchor a ship to stop it from falling off an edge. By far the deadliest version is a concussive magnetic homing arrow, strong enough to pulverize a target’s brain on impact.

Sound Arrows

Sometimes, being deaf has its own advantages, because it means Clint can just use his sonic arrows without issue. Just the typical version produces a 95 decibel frequency, and stronger ones can deafen someone for a time or can be strengthened by clamming two together. These overload both the optic nerve and the eardrum, and are strong enough to affect the Hulk, Wonder Man, and She-Hulk with N’Step music, sure. Outside of making people suffer loud noises, the sonic arrows are loud enough to destroy machinery, disrupt Songbird’s prison sphere, shatter windows, turn grout into paste, revert Hulk back into Banner somehow, and even be dialed at a frequency that would hurt only Symbiotes and leave everyone else in the vicinity unharmed. His sonic arrows can also be used as a counter frequency to jam ultrasonic effects or limit high-frequency hearing so that both him and allies affected by a specific pitch sound can no longer hear it.

Light Arrows

Hawkeye loves being in the spotlight, so much so he’s made arrows to enhance that. Light arrows can be used as flashbangs to blind people around him in a wide area, but flare arrows are more concentrated, containing magnesium flares that can blind even Ultron’s optic sensors or Havok. Not just light though, he has literal sunburst flare arrows containing synthetic bolted sunlight in case he’s ever fighting a vampire. Of course, these arrows are also useful for seeing in the dark and illuminating areas.

Tracking Arrows

While Hawkeye will rarely ever miss his shot, there are some points where a scenario has the enemy be too far out of his reach. It’s handy then that he has a variety of tracking arrows he can shoot and stick on to people or vehicles. In response, these tracking arrows have a beacon that he can locate with either a special device or his phone. The tracking devices are very difficult to notice, and even the arrows can just leave traces of a nanite tracking cluster. Alternatively, his arrows can release an infrared sensor to see if a room is filled with bad guys, or he can use the I-Spy Arrow to record footage and send it back to Clint.

Mobility Arrows

Once again, Clint’s acrobatics aren’t enough for everything, so he carries some special mobility arrows to assist him. Parachute arrows to help slow down his falls, cushion arrows to ensure a safe landing, or quick drying aerated polymer to do the same landing in a pinch.

Defensive Arrows

Defense is just as valuable as offense, and Clint has known this from the start. That’s why he has several arrows designed for protecting him in tough situations. Gas is surrounding him? Arrow that disperses and sucks it up. Metal objects all around? Vibranium arrows to absorb vibrations. Powerful explosives? Stasis arrows to absorb, amplify, and reflect the force back onto the opponent. A control panel that’s controlling non stop laser fire? How about a null field arrow to shut it down. Even his putty arrows are able to close sniper wounds and his polymer foam can disrupt energy weapons like Captain America’s energy shield.

Exotic Arrows

With so many trick arrows at his disposal, even Clint has ones that are a bit out there. There’s relatively harmless ones, like an arrow that explodes into a small parachute to create flowers, ribbon arrows, or a USB arrow that carries 256 megabytes. But for more beneficial usages, there’s Pym Particle arrows to shrink others or enlarge himself, arrows that disrupt gravimetric fields, a molecular displacement arrow to outright Looney Tunes away some people, so-called portal arrows to open tunnels through target surfaces, and a vibrating arrow at such a perfect pitch it can somehow lift a one-ton safe. For arrows he was actually given, there’s the infamous gamma-enriched Vibranium arrow from Banner used to kill him, as well as one made by Rocket Raccoon with an antimatter charge capable of blowing a hole in a Kree star cruiser. But most bizarre of all is when he had Chaos Magic arrows gifted by the Scarlet Witch, letting him see through an illusion and being powerful enough to harm Mephisto, even able to draw psychic energy from nearby souls to destroy his physical body.

Combo Arrows

Single arrows are enough to get the job done, but just in case, it never hurts stacking special tricks together for greater effect. Adamantium arrows can pierce just about anything, but have only such a small area to hurt, so stack it with a powerful electric shock to affect the whole body. Boomerang arrows don’t have enough blunt force to damage people, but can still mess them up if you make it emit a high pitch sound to deafen them as it swirls around. Maybe a flashbang arrow won’t be enough to disorient someone, but fire a sunburst arrow that combines mega-strobes and mega-sonics to whipsaw the senses all across the audiovisual spectrum and hurt their ears too. And if a powerful explosion is about to go off, he can combine his net and putty arrows to absorb the heat and protect himself. How’s that for a trick?

Resistances

Sound: It’s kind of fucked up to say but being deaf has made Hawkeye largely immune to loud sound attacks, shown multiple times in his history
Mind Manipulation: It took considerable effort for Mentallo to successfully probe his mind, as he’s been trained by Captain America and Nick Fury to fight off mental invasion. Likewise, his psionic cloak protected him from any of Psylocke’s mental attacks
Electricity: Withstood an electric shock attack and recovered within one panel
Heat: Withstood Typhoid Mary’s pyrokinesis burning him for a time
Neurotoxin: In a way almost as fucked up as sound, Clint was subjected to repeated low doses of Mockingbird’s experimental neurotoxin during their marriage, and as such, he was immune to a gas that rendered people unconscious for 20 minutes

Feats

Overall

Defeated Swordsman, Trick Shot (Barney), Batroc the Leaper, Deathlok, Captain America, Winter Soldier, Falcon, and Bullseye
Infiltrated Dark Avengers HQ and took out Mac Gargan, Bullseye, and Daken
Trained Kate Bishop to be a master archer like himself
Led the West Coast Avengers, Secret Avengers, and various Thunderbolts teams
Became one of the core members of the Avengers, being in multiple versions of the team across decades and helping save the world several times
Joined the Justice League at one point
Is the greatest archer in the world… or tied for it

Power

Striking:

Lifting:

With Arrows:

With Ronin Weaponry:

Speed

Clint himself:

Clint’s arrows:

Durability

Scaling

In terms of physicals, Hawkeye is shown to be a match against various other Marvel street tiers consistently. He’s been able to tussle evenly with Mockingbird, defeat the Swordsman on two separate occasions, and even held his own and win in a fight against Captain America. His most impressive attribute is consistently his speed, given his aforementioned agility and even being complimented by Daredevil, one of the fastest street tiers, in this field. Clint has also gotten stronger over time, as, despite initially being overpowered by the U.S. Agent, he was later able to stun him with his blows, and when initially stomped by Batroc, he was able to keep up with and even knock him down in a later fight despite being outnumbered. The only peaks Clint doesn’t reach, of course, would be Spider-Man and people on his tiers, as even recently he’s been overwhelmed by Peter in combat and couldn’t do much against Fred Myers using a Symbiote. Still, only being a notch below the literal superhumans is hardly against Clint, and he’s proven himself more than comparable to many similar ‘peak humans’ within the Marvel universe.

Moon Knight avoided lasers from the Master of Illumination and reacted fast enough to deflect one of them (44.2% the speed of light)
Wolverine endured blasts from the Black Shadow, a mutant superpower that can annihilate entire city blocks (140.7 – 465.6 tons of TNT)
Wolverinemoved fast enough to intercept Cyclops’ light speed Optic Blasts with a sword swing (1.49 times FTL)
- At one point, as a Horseman of Death, he intercepted an Optic Blast explicitly after it was fired (1.06 times FTL)
Deadpool withstood being punched so hard, the impact caused a small island-sized explosion (182.1 – 849.6 tons of TNT)
Deadpool withstood a large explosion that would’ve broken part of the Hoover Dam
Mockingbird dodges gunfire
Hank Pym, when unenhanced by Pym Particles, survived a building sized explosion
Captain America damages a robot that created a large crater upon impact (11.8 tons of TNT)
Captain America reacts to a rammer moving at missile speed when it was inches away from hitting him
Kate Bishop survives an explosion from Iron Lad (Kang) that destroyed part of a city block
The Shocker gauntlets can create 10-mile long earthquakes when nerfed; The Punisher was able to survive a blast from these (924 tons of TNT)

Weaknesses

Hawkeye has earned his role as one of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but even he isn’t flawless. Ultimately, he’s still human, and is still susceptible to damage and fatigue, especially arrows or bullets. His bow string has impressive draw strength, but can be broken at times, especially if a cable arrow is holding onto a heavy object. His bow can be disarmed from him or even broken, and his arrows can either be destroyed, melted, or taken control of by magnetic forces. At points he can have his quiver cut off or destroyed, or someone can set off all the arrows in his quiver, activating nasty trick effects on Clint instead. Despite having a disgusting amount of arrows at his disposal, he can and has run out before, and while he can quickly adapt for makeshift bows and arrows, those require some time and available resources, still leaving him vulnerable. While he is adept in CQC, he does prefer his archery above all else, and can be outdone in close combat by skilled enough opponents. He requires his hearing aids to hear, but they can go on the fritz if he’s hit on the head or even destroyed. Finally, despite his impressive resistances, tear gas and sleep gas can still affect him, and more esoteric powers like transmutation, petrification, possession, and time stops have worked on him before.

Before The Verdict

Green Arrow: DC’s Street Tier Feats-Man?

There’s a couple feats pushed here or there to try and raise the ceiling for DC’s street level attack potency and durability. Now, new arguments are pushed a lot for different series, but the reason these arguments that’ll be mentioned stick out in this case are due to them being performed by Green Arrow. Half the focus of this blog if that wasn’t obvious. The feats in question are Oliver helping push a small island with rocket arrows alongside Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and him surviving being caught in a satellite explosion visible from Earth. There’s also an additional possible high end feat found during Ollie’s research, where he withstands being pushed at high speeds by Superman’s super breath, trying to make Oliver (currently in a Flash costume) look like he’s moving at Flash’s super speeds. This would result in high kinetic energy, and the other feats mentioned on paper should get high for attack potency and durability respectively. However, there’s specific issues with all of these feats that make them unusable.

The island moving is actually fine, but not applicable to Oliver himself as he used his rocket arrows to help support the push. Oliver consistently is shown to reserve some arrows for higher level threats, and doesn’t exactly shoot the big guns at regular folk. Says it himself after taking out a robot knocking Aquaman around with a wall smasher arrow: “but fighting street crooks, the way I usually do, I never got the chance.”. There’s also the fact that we don’t know how much of the island’s movement was due to Oliver’s arrows themselves. He says that each of his rocket arrows “has a thrust of several tons”, so it’s questionable to say he did a full third of the effort.

The satellite explosion is obviously huge, but it’s unlikely Oliver took the full force of the blast. His Nth Metal arrowhead more likely kicked off a chain reaction, given he used it to overcharge the ship. It’s not like he was right next to the generator. Granted, it’s not certain that’s the case given the lack of context on Oliver’s perspective during the explosion, but given the area around him was still in tact enough to where he didn’t fall into space, and that Green Lantern went into the bottom of the satellite to find him while the explosion seemed to be at the center? More than likely that Oliver didn’t take the blast point-blank.

Lastly, the kinetic energy from moving at high speeds thanks to Superman’s super breath. This is actually entirely fine! No glaring issues with the feat itself, complete thumbs up. The issue is we don’t know exactly how fast Oliver was being moved here. We’re never given an exact speed, so it could’ve just been vaguely fast, which means you can’t get some impressive kinetic energy value out of the feat. Granted, Flash is stated earlier in the same story to be moving across the world at the speed of light. However, the idea of Oliver being pushed at super high speeds is also heavily contradicted later on in his history, given that Superman says that high speed flight with Oliver would kill him due to the G-forces when he’s trying to figure out how to get Oliver from a plane that’s about to explode. Speaking of that scene, let’s talk about it and Oliver’s history across DC Comics as a character.

Why would that be important? Because it’s a key selling point that Oliver is a grounded human being. While Batman says his strength is borderline super human in a recent story, borderline does not mean past the line. Let’s say all of the feats above are legitimate. Oliver has the strength to push a small island, the durability to survive a satellite explosion visible from Earth, and the resistance to withstand moving at relativistic speeds. As cool as it’d be if Oliver was legitimately that physically impressive, all of those feats would be clear outliers that wouldn’t pair with the character at all. A big selling point of Oliver Queen’s is he’s the grounded guy on the team, no super powers no nothing, and that lets him see things from a different perspective.

If he was able to push islands, survive giant explosions, and withstand relativistic speeds, you wouldn’t have Oliver Queen. You’d have some C-Lister meta human with a cool weapon gimmick. Oliver built his image on fighting crime bosses and powering through right hooks from gangs. This isn’t to say that he can’t have superhuman feats obviously (just pass him a bow and an arrow and he’ll pull off some nonsense), a lot of DC characters that are seemingly normal humans have pulled off the absurd. The point is that pushing for Oliver in particular in an attempt to raise the ceiling for street tier stats to such a degree is not the way to go. That plane that was about to explode by the way? It did, and it blew Oliver to microscopic pieces, and he died. When Oliver gets taken on a lore dump by Hal Jordan, he even shows him that scene again and asks him if any non-meta human could’ve survived, to which Oliver doesn’t object. That satellite explosion argument looks kind of silly now, right?

To put it simply, Oliver is not the type of character to use to push for comic street tiers being able to pull off feats that would put nuclear bombs to shame. And even if he was, the feats for doing so all have flaws that make them unusable.

Green Arrow VS Hawkeye Retrospective

“Say the line Bart!”

“That’s not even Clint in the TN, it’s Bullseye.”

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!”

As with both previous and upcoming Marvel VS DC rematch blogs, both sides have decided to give a retrospective on the characters’ portrayal in their episode. Going over the analysis, fight, and post-analysis depictions of each and giving a take with all of the character’s comic history in mind.

Green Arrow

Blue Igneous here. First big solo comic analysis I’ve done, having read through over 2000 appearances, so I’m glad I get to break character for a moment for this. Enjoyed covering Ollie’s story a lot, and was pretty interested in covering Oliver’s existing 2015 analysis. So, how’d it hold up?

“desperate to forget the horrible trauma of his parents’ death by lions, he turned to a lifestyle of booze and debauchery”

This analysis takes a really weird set of directions when it comes to how it tackles Oliver’s backstory. The detail of his parents dying to lions is a much later addition to his lore, and in general his parents aren’t actually that important to his lore outright. The exception is New 52 and Rebirth’s storylines, but they obviously didn’t focus on the former for this analysis, and the latter didn’t exist yet. Definitely feels like an addition made in order to draw a comparison to Clint rather than to cover Oliver’s own story. On the topic of his story coverage:

“Turns out this island was home to a massive drug smuggling operation.”

There’s a sort of “Frankenstein”ing of Oliver’s backstory. He’s had multiple variations, which is natural given he’s a character that’s existed since the 40s. The only origin version that didn’t have to do with the island is his pre-crisis / Earth Two origin, though that one still had him get stranded funnily enough alongside Roy away from civilization. But for what the episode decides to do? Him being drunk and falling into the ocean, reusing and developing archery skills from his youth, taking down a drug empire, and deciding to use his skills to help people being the turning point to being Green Arrow are all from separate origin adaptations. Though given the writing standards at the time and the fact Ollie has so many distinct versions of his backstory, it’s not something I can really get annoyed by. I sort of vagueposted for his Background regarding this topic for a reason.

“so delivering a long range punch to the face makes some sense. At least more so than many of the other trick arrows in his quiver. Like the donut arrow, a weapon designed to feed children.”

Highlighting his non-lethal arrows is something I appreciate, though no, Oliver doesn’t carry children-made arrows. Mostly, there’s a couple his Earth 2 version carried around, but only after they worked. The donut arrow that was highlighted is not one of those, and it even says on the same panel they used that he doesn’t like having to use it.

“He’ll do whatever it takes to get the job done. LIKE SHOOTING A GIRL’S HAND TO KEEP HER FROM FALLING,”

Not what happened here. The arrow was used to inject said girl with something to undo her insanity. Long story. She was holding on fine at the moment (barely), and then after becoming sane again, helped pull up Black Canary who was the one who had to be kept from falling.

“Eventually, he and Black Canary got together and started up a flower shop called, Sherwood Forest.”

The other story stuff I can live with, though this particular case bothers me. This is treated like the ending phase of Oliver’s story, but it’s really the beginning. Sounds corny but like, this happens at the beginning of Oliver’s first ever ongoing run that is its own book. It’s the equivalent to ending a Goku analysis on the start of DBZ, or an Iron Man analysis on him joining the Avengers. Really odd.

The Fight

First things first, I’m mixed on the dialogue choices. Now, the episode does a good job of using its recycled dialogue well, nothing necessarily feels out of place with the situation. Though some lines like “Yes, I can dodge and shoot at the same time.” feel a bit too cocky for someone like Oliver. This isn’t to say he can’t have quips, I do like “Something about this… is very not right.” and “I like not getting blown up!” shows off his attitude well. But it feels like he’s somewhat written (or well stitched together given the recycled dialogue) like Clint if anything to me. The boxing glove ringtone bit is very out of character in particular, you made Oliver think about modern technology and using it actively. Oh and uh he would never do that in a fight.

How Oliver fights is better. The ranged fight is just a plain solid segment, and I feel the albeit brief but heavy hitting close quarters segment showed off how Oliver fought up close in Silver Age really well. Guy is jacked and hits hard. Though missing out on his better CQC skills being showcased was a shame. Green Arrow VS Hawkeye can have a badass as hell sword fight and the fact I’ll never get to see it somewhat disappoints me. Overall, Oliver’s portrayal in the fight is fine. Basic ranged segment, cool CQC segment that’s just too brief, some good lines and some bad.

Post-Analysis

Nothing too offensive here either. Oliver has some feats on par with Clint catching arrows, though they’re less impressive given context. Kind of weird speed comparison given the portrayal of the “machine gun speeds” panel but that’s a Clint thing, more so sticks out because it was used to beat Oliver’s 29 shots per minute statement.

Overall

You’ll notice I only really covered story coverage things for the primary analysis, would they be weird decisions or poor focus. The VS coverage is fine really. Obviously it doesn’t cover a lot of Oliver’s absurd feats, and glosses over a lot of strong arrows. But overall it’s a perfectly okay season 2 comic character analysis, with a couple inoffensive hiccups for specific story coverage. Makes sense given it’s a simpler character power wise. The fight however, in retrospect, kind of disappoints me? Oliver doesn’t do as much cool stuff as I remembered, the ranged fight is mostly even with Clint taking advantage by getting to Oliver’s position, some of the dialogue choices aren’t the best, there aren’t that many cool trick arrows used, and the close quarters segment while cool is brief and quickly overshadowed by setting up Clint’s comeback win. The fact that the most memorable Oliver scene from the fight in my opinion is the boxing glove arrow bit, something he’d never do, kind of stings in retrospect.

Overall, it’s just kind of fine as a Green Arrow episode, and really makes me wish Oliver got to show up again either in Death Battle proper or some other VS Show like Fan Battle. Less of a case of the portrayal being bad like some other Marvel and DC characters you’ll see in other G1 rematch blogs, and more so being underwhelming and happening a long time ago. Daredevil is a great match for him I feel and I’d love to see Matt get a good showing himself as well. Yes I’m shilling shut up.

Hawkeye

Rina here. I mainly read the second half of Clint’s history here, but have read some of his older comics and ultimately have a solid idea of his overall character. Hawkeye is one of my favorite comic characters, and for a while I held this episode as one of my favorite Marvel VS DC episodes. And to my shock, it held up… way better than I thought on Hawkeye’s end?

“Has fought under four superhero names”

I would assume outside of Hawkeye, they obviously mean Ronin and Goliath, and then I assume Captain America? He briefly took the mantle because of Tony in one comic after Cap’s death, but it was a single issue, and the whole point was that Clint hated the idea of following in Steve’s footsteps and didn’t think he was worthy of the kind of role and leadership he left. It’s why he immediately gave up the shield after seeing Kate and getting a pep talk from her. Very weird to put it in the same realm as Ronin and Goliath, which are far more prominent to his character.

“Past Romances: 6”

This is a bit of a weird one but not for any bad reasons, I just wanted to talk about it. The 5 most definitive romances are Black Widow, Mockingbird, Janet, Jessica, and Karla. The weird area comes in whether they counted Black Canary or not. If they didn’t, then 6 is about right, since Clint had a relationship with someone named Cherry during Fraction’s run of the character. If they did count Dinah, then the number should be 7, Cherry definitely wasn’t a minor romance in the story and was even confronted by previous love interests of Clint during #8. And I assume they did at least count Dinah in some fashion, as the fight post-credit ends up referencing the affair they had during the crossover event. On the same metric though, Cherry is only in Fraction’s run and not as prominent as any of the other 6, so I guess it depends.

“But growing up in the middle of nowhere wasn’t easy for 13 year old Clint Barton.”

Minor thing, but Clint’s backstory at the age of 13 is important when he actually gets in the circus. Most backstories portray him as much younger when his parents died (say around 8 years old), and then he and Barney spend more years as orphans.

“Orphaned by DWI, Clint and Barney had a second chance at a family and were adopted by a new dad. Who was just as bad at the first.”

Once again minor, but this backstory is taken from All-New Hawkeye, which made it so instead of an orphanage, Clint and Barney went foster home to foster home, eventually arriving at the current one the analysis talks about. They didn’t just get the dickhead dad they mention specifically here.

“Anyway, Clint hated the idea of working for a couple of d-bags, and ran away.”

This is definitely a gross simplification of what happened and the only thing I’d say really bothers me about the rundown. What happened is that, after Clint saw Swordsman stealing money, he was attacked by Swordsman and nearly killed before being sent to the hospital. This ended up causing a rift between him and Barney over Jacques’ actions and made them split up. Clint then only had Trick Shot to rely on to continue archery training, but was unknowingly being manipulated to eventually help him make a robbery, which ended up in Clint accidentally shooting an undercover Barney and taking him to the hospital while feeling betrayed from Trick Shot. A lot happens in between his realization of Jacques’ true nature and him leaving the circus, and summarizing it as just ‘he ran away when he realized both were bad’ is just objectively not what happened. Perhaps they simplified it because it was a long enough backstory anyways, but it definitely stands out as pretty poor.

“Lucky for him, all it took to find a new calling in life was to see Iron Man soaring overhead, another alcoholic father figure, but in the fun way. Inspired to use his talents to fight criminals, just like the Iron Avenger, Clint took up his old stage name, donned his circus costume once more, and crafted a wide assortment of multi-use trick arrows.”

I won’t fault the episode for this entirely and it’s actually a lot more minor comparatively, but initially, Clint wasn’t actually inspired by Iron Man, rather fueled by pure jealousy because he stole his spotlight at a festival. That said, some later comics kind of imply a bit it’s inspiration (even back in the 80’s, Clint phrased it that way), so I think the current intention is that it’s a mix of both.

“and string his whole bow and fire an arrow in less than a second.”

I somewhat disagree with the interpretation of this feat, though I understand why it was thought this way. Champion releasing his bowstring and Hawkeye’s arrow intercepting and splitting it is one of his more infamous feats, but Clint was already preparing his bowstring before Champion had fired, and him firing is off-screen. I think the obvious intention is that he had the bowstring ready off-screen, and then either fired the arrow at the same time the bowstring was let go of, or right before. Which is still impressive and arguably less than a second anyways, but the whole ‘string his bow’ part I wouldn’t count as part of that process.

“After grueling training under Captain America, Clint temporarily set aside the Hawkeye suit to become the samurai Ronin.”

This is phrased in a way that sort of gives a wrong impression. Clint already had training from Cap as Hawkeye and used those H2H skills already. The reason he took the Ronin identity was because he was resurrected from his death in Avengers Disassembled, and due to the trauma, disillusion, and overwhelming nature of that, alongside Mockingbird’s death and many other circumstances, Clint gave up on the Hawkeye mantle and went on a journey of self-discovery in the process. Once he learned that Kate Bishop was taking the Hawkeye mantle, and not wanting to work for Tony after the events of Civil War and to instead carry on Cap’s work, he ended up joining the New Avengers under the Ronin identity. It’s a bit more complex than presented and the episode paints it in a weird way.

“Also he’s kind of hard of hearing, but you would be too if a psychopath hid behind a door and jammed two arrows in your ears! But Tony also made him some kickass hearing aids, though if they get damaged, he’d lose about 80% of his hearing.”

Not a big detail and more a fun fact: Hawkeye had already lost his hearing before the instance they’re referring to, having used a sonic arrowhead too close and deafening his ears. This was cured after he was resurrected by Franklin Richards before the assassin did it again. Admittedly, the 80% of hearing is from his previous instance and not the current one, though they’re ‘probably’ meant to be the same even nowadays.

The Fight

The dialogue is more difficult to judge by comparison to the other Marvel VS DC ideas, solely because it’s voice clips spliced from Chris Cox’s performance of the character (which is my personal favorite). And it’s honestly impressive how almost every line Clint says in the fight, in spite of being spliced up or put together voice clips, fits really well with each scene of the fight. Especially lines like “You’re gonna try to out-archer me? This is how it’s done!” feels so natural that I forgot it’s technically two different lines put together, and it feels very in line with how Clint would react to another archer.

Fight wise, it’s nothing stellar, but nothing egregious. The ranged fight is done well and I like getting to see the scatter shot arrow and how Clint immediately follows up with a cable arrow to close the distance. His speed and agility is highlighted well, like dodging the arrows while falling and especially the way they portray his quick-draw in the end, and I like he keeps putting on the pressure with his arrows.

I only have two particular criticisms; one, him being completely styled on CQC with little room to breathe is unfortunate, since the Ronin and his entire history shows him as a very capable hand-to-hand fighter (and as Igneous said, Green Arrow VS Hawkeye without a sword fight is disappointing). Second, the big explosion arrow scene is pretty out of character for Clint. Less the use of explosive arrows, but one extremely powerful (let alone the 30 megaton one) in an environment filled with buildings and possibly people. Especially after Fraction’s run, Clint cares a lot about the neighborhood, community, and small-time people. Firing such a powerful option that could seriously hurt or even kill people like that is very strange, especially since he’s at such close-range; was he just going to tank the thing if it landed? Even when used against Ultron, he was from a distance on his Sky-Cycle.

Overall though, it’s a good time. Dialogue choices feel appropriately quippy and snarky, his fighting style is done well as far as archery goes, and a couple of odd scenes aren’t enough to deter from it.

Post-Analysis

Nothing bad here, Hawkeye’s direct feats get appropriate glaze. I think the arrow catching feat is good to bring up overall, but it ignores the additional context that he needed Barney to step in a puddle of water to catch it. He was even unable to avoid some of his shots in the same fight, getting grazed by them.

Overall

It’s a bit of a trend with early comic book episodes and characters that more often than not, they’re not really portrayed or researched the best. Even in episodes much after Season 2, there’s some real stinkers, some of which you’ll see in the next two blogs after this. Which makes it all the more surprising that Hawkeye is actually handled pretty well.

There’s definitely a few hiccups and errors overall in regards to his backstory, but outside of one particularly bad instance, it’s all relatively minor or inconsequential. The VS information, while definitely not as extensive as it could have been due to his other direct feats or vast arsenal of arrows, is presented soundly, especially in regards to his archery, which is the main thing you want to get right. Outside of one feat I’d disagree with their interpretation of (but understand the idea behind it) and omitting slight context to his arrow catching, nothing is outright wrong or egregious. And the fight itself, while not the most thrilling, does end up portraying his personality well through just voice lines, and his fighting style in archery and agility is represented effectively.

I wouldn’t call it the most perfect episode or even one of my favorite Marvel VS DC episodes anymore, but I walked away pretty happy with how Hawkeye was done and got the impression they actually read his comics, which isn’t something you can say for most comic book analysis at this point in the show. I still wouldn’t mind a return for him down the line, though admittedly he hasn’t gotten enough since the episode (especially compared to Green Arrow) that he’d be a high priority, even amongst other Marvel characters. Though I’ve grown to enjoy Usopp and Nightwing as matchups now.

Also why wasn’t it his classic costume, a sprite for it was available like seriously why wasn’t it there-

Verdict

Tertiaries

As heroes known for being more grounded than their godly partners, it makes sense to look at what they can each do at a base level without any additional equipment involved. So let’s start with Tertiaries: skill, experience, all that good stuff.

Both have great observation and battlefield awareness, actively keeping track of what’s around them and strategizing. They’ve both been at this for decades and have seen just about anything you can think of. So when it comes to intelligence and experience, they’re both going to be comparable enough.

What about experience against other archers though? Both have trained and fought alongside people like Roy and Kate, and taken down archers in their skill tier like Merlyn, Shadoo, Trickshot, and Barney. Notably though, Clint’s adversaries more actively use trick arrows of their own compared to Oliver’s. Though the trick arrows Clint has faced are drastically more basic than his own arsenal, Ollie has vague experience against people who seem to use trick arrows like Cupid, and both have fought super gimmicky tech based enemies boasting incredible versatility. So while this experience is an advantage for Clint, it’s an incredibly minor one. Or you could just use the official crossover to say they have experience against each other and therefore this paragraph is entirely moot. Though even with that, Clint showing better feats like outright catching arrows blind or parrying and shooting down arrows against similar tier archers or would still give him the advantage.

While the fight is definitely going to be at a distance more often than not though, it’s good to look at how they do up close. Both have trained from extremely skilled master fighters like Natas and Captain America, held their own against expert sword fighters like Deathstroke and Swordsman, and have been complimented by experienced warriors like Ras Al Ghul and Iron Fist. But notably, both are still shown to be a tier lower than the best of the best fighters, getting by on their other talents rather than pure CQC fighting skill… usually. Looking at their track records, Oliver’s actually looks better. He beat a year one Deathstroke in a fist fight, had Red Hood (Bum) dead to rights, and went even with Natas in wins in their training exercises.

This makes sense given Oliver’s whole special training arc, surpassing multiple master fighters and being a completely different warrior than he was a year ago. He was still below fighters like Black Canary, but that’s more a compliment for Dinah than an anti-feat for Oliver. A good way to put it is that Oliver and Clint are capable B tier fighters, below A and S tiers and able to keep up with them thanks to their archery and gear. The difference is Oliver had a training arc that made him A tier, while he still got to keep all his other assets. Granted, while this is an obviously good advantage, it is by no means a game winning one. Clint still managed to keep up with Swordsman and Captain America, the former being the best sword fighter on the planet, and the latter a legendary master of all martial arts. So while Ollie is a better fighter than Clint, Clint has kept up with people better than Ollie. So there’s no reason he shouldn’t be able to keep up with Oliver here.

But enough with all the other stuff, we all know why we’re here: who’s the better shot? When it comes to pure, normal shooting… eh, they’re probably even. Would it be pinning criminals to their clothes, jamming guns and wheels, or sending shots through the absolute chaos that is high level Justice League and Avenger fights? In terms of general shots, it’s safe to say they could probably hit any notable feat the other has. Granted, there’s a bit more nuance than that with how their feats are treated. Oliver’s big shots occasionally are seen with awe, but usually are sort of… expected. While Clint is more known for pulling off miracles with the bow, once in a lifetime shots. Interestingly, sort of how the official crossover pictured things. That said though, pure marksmanship is probably even. You could maybe argue one being a better shot, but both are as good as they need to be to hit anything they’d realistically need to, so ironically it’s not too important to break down.

What does matter however is how they use their accuracy. For instance, who’s better at hitting when they miss via ricocheting shots? Both have showings of multiple arrow bounces, with a triple ricochet while just using a reflection to see the scene probably being Clint’s best showing. Oliver, however, has similar feats in terms of ricochet numbers even in his island days, and being blunt, nothing Clint has done is as ridiculous as Oliver’s arrow spinning a dozen times as it flies over a train car for a perfect trap landing. How about range? Both have shot from various far distances during intense battles, but while Clint needs special equipment to hit mile away shots, Oliver has been stated to be able to do so naturally. Connor, his archery inferior, even precisely shot a rope holding a guy up from a mile away, and both him and Oliver did so through a narrow ravine. That said, the special equipment is still available for Clint, and even if this fight is usually going to be at range, it’s unlikely they’ll ever get far away enough from each other for this specific advantage to be too big a deal.

What is going to be very important, however, is just how fast either of them can shoot their arrows; as in, their fire rate. They have several feats of being able to ready their arrows and release them at incredible speeds, but when this match is as close as it is (given what’s been and will be mentioned), even the smallest difference matters. For instance, one of Oliver’s best feats is being able to fire his arrows so fast, they form a connected arrow chain in the air. Crunching the numbers given Oliver’s bow type and the average speed of arrows shot by said bow (longbow), his fire rate would be a shot every 14.14 milliseconds. Absurd, but how about Clint being able to fire his arrows to intercept Trickshot’s arrows that were in close proximity to him? Using a similar method but with Clint’s preference for a recurve bow, the resulting fire rate would be a shot every 12.61 milliseconds.

A small but strong advantage, given just how fast their arrows can travel (which we’ll go further into later). But it’s not that simple. After all, Oliver can go dead even in fire fights with Deadshot, who can see the individual beats of a hummingbird’s wings and time his firing even with that sort of speed in mind. Meaning he can press the trigger every 12.5 milliseconds. All of this gets more complicated when factoring general reaction speed arguments (again, go further into later), or other feats where both Oliver and Clint fire so fast their arrows appear to have been released simultaneously (balancing out as while Clint fired 3 arrows to Ollie’s 2, Ollie also did a 180 degree turn in between the shots). Given similar high end feats and other factors, the safest thing to do seems to be to just say their firing rates are comparable…

…with one caveat, being that Clint has shown to fire at these top speeds while moving more dynamically. Going back to intercepting Trickshot’s arrows, Clint not only had to roll to pick up his gear before lining up the shot, but also fired four arrows at once. Oliver comparatively has been more stationary when his firing rate has been at its best and only doing so with one arrow on the string at a time, so Clint being able to fire at top speed with these extra caveats is a notable advantage. Not to mention the fact that Clint at his best has fired nine to ten arrows at once, versus Oliver’s seven. A small number gap, but given Clint is going to be able to find more chances to shoot, it matters. Putting everything talked about so far on the table though, it’s hard to give either this category definitively. Oliver has better CQC skill and is better at ricochet shots, Clint is able to maintain his top firing rate while moving more actively, alongside being able to fire more arrows at once, and both are comparable in intelligence and experience (though Clint does have better direct feats against other archers). Thus, Tertiaries is a draw due to the back and forth going on here.

Stats

If their skills can’t establish a clear edge, could raw physicals do the job? Green Arrow and Hawkeye, despite their unassuming status, are some of the best representations of how absurd DC and Marvel’s ‘peak human’ feats can get. We will be going over this category from their direct feats first as a comparison.

When it comes to physical strength, they’re largely comparable in striking, having feats of breaking wooden doors, cracking concrete, and breaking multiple metal structures like bindings or robots. Lifting strength is a bit of a different category though. The most obvious comparison would be their bowstring pulls; while Green Arrow can accurately fire with his typical 103 pound draw weight bow and even up to 200 for a specific run, Hawkeye’s bowstring is 250 pounds by comparison, and is even stated to require two strong men to both hold it up and pull the string. This is especially notable when this is the same bow he does many of his rapid firing feats with. Oliver may have successfully pulled the draw weight of a 700 pound bowstring, but he’s never used it outside of practice, nor has the same rapid firing feats with it that Clint has shown with his own.

This lines up with their other lifting strength feats; Green Arrow can pull himself up from the bottom of a lake while his feet were in a bucket of quick drying cement, but Hawkeye was able to lift a car up from himself while underneath it. Even accounting for his position and leverage, doing such a feat with one hand triumphs over Green Arrow’s personal feats, giving Hawkeye the edge in lifting strength. In addition, Hawkeye’s ‘normal’ arrows are probably stronger. They both have impressive feats of course, most notably being Oliver’s splitting a cinder block, but Clint’s can punch straight through three metal robots without stopping. Plus, considering the difference in draw bow weight, it kind of makes sense that Clint’s arrows are stronger as well, at least at a baseline.

Speed is where things definitely get dicey. Both have pretty directly comparable feats of combat speed, being able to draw their arrows and fire at speeds faster than eyesight, parrying or countering enemy arrow fire, catching other arrows, etc. But, no other way to put it, Oliver’s travel speed is much better. Clint has very little of his own personal travel speed feats to think of, just usually being considered fit for an olympic level athlete. Oliver would be too, had he not once ran so fast he intercepted an arrow after it was fired. This is a pretty big deal to have, since it ends up meaning Green Arrow is going to be running and making better movement than Hawkeye throughout the course of the fight, a vital advantage when constantly having to fire and dodge enemy shots.

On the flipside, the speed of their arrows is a bit more nebulous; both of them have arrows fast enough to match bullets or be too fast for the human eye to see. Though, at their best, Clint’s arrow speed feats are… probably better? At least provably. At a baseline, his arrows are directly said to be faster than bullets at close range, can make 50 yard shots in the time of a bowstring’s release, cross 50 feet in the span of a millisecond faster than a bullet, and match an early Quicksilver in speed with ‘lightning-fast motion’. Oliver does have supersonic arrows, but also can shoot out a drone meant to travel between satellites from the moon and earth. This last one is extremely notable and could match Clint’s other best feats arrow on arrow, but the lack of timeframe regarding the distance makes it a bit hard to prove that.

Durability is probably simpler, in that they basically have the same feats; thrown hard enough to break through rock or concrete, falling multiple building floors, or surviving large explosions comparable to buildings. Both can also survive pretty nasty wounds, like arrow wounds, gunshots, literal burning pain, etc. Hawkeye’s 42 hour stamina feat with his bow and arrow is likely better than Green Arrow’s other stamina feats, but like… come on, the fight’s never gonna last that long in the first place.

So overall, both have their own advantages in different ways; Clint has superior physical lifting strength and baseline arrow strength, alongside having more definitively faster arrows. Oliver has much faster travel speed and can match in terms of combat speed and striking power, and both match in durability and endurance. On paper, Hawkeye seems to hold more key advantages, but the best capabilities of these two is gonna come down to scaling to the other fighters they’ve tussled with in their history.

Due to being some of the most physically fit ‘peak humans’ you can ask for, both Green Arrow and Hawkeye should scale to feats done by similar or lesser humans. In Ollie’s case, Batman has directly survived shots from Quakemaster’s gun, which was shaking all of Gotham City at 848 tons of TNT. By comparison, the Punisher survived a blast from Shocker’s gauntlets, when weaker ones could make a 10 mile unidirectional earthquake, at 924 tons of TNT. Of course, one should note that Batman does have a feat of surviving a massive explosion that cratered a city block, set to 3 kilotons of TNT, notably higher than both feats. However, the fact that Batman was knocked out for a period of time from such a blast would only serve for this to be an upper limit durability showcase, and not the average level of power Batman, nor Green Arrow, are delivering with their punches. So overall, the power advantage should go to Hawkeye, albeit slightly, which lines up with their established direct feats.

What can go the other way, however, is speed. Both Marvel and DC street tiers have a few feats of reacting to natural beams of light, most notably Moon Knight and Batman, at some respectable percentage of lightspeed. At the highest, Wolverine can react to Cyclops’ optic blasts, and Azrael can intercept laser fire. However, both have caveats that are separate from one another; Wolverine’s feat lacks provable in-tandem movement, and we know it’s previously established that he dodges the blasts by sensing the pressure waves right before, which could lead to almost every instance of his interception or dodging being aim-blocking. By comparison, while Azrael’s feat is much more provable for in-tandem, the lasers themselves arguably don’t meet enough properties to be considered lightspeed, at least by comparison to something as direct as the Optic Blast. Still, those two feats may not be needed; Wolverine, when under Apocalypse’s control, was able to blatantly intercept an optic blast after it was fired, and Alanna Strange can react to a near lightspeed beam at speeds greater than it. Both of these round up to low FTL results, but given the margin of error with pixel scaling calcs, we can say these are broadly even. Of note, both Oliver and Clint’s arrows are able to tag people on this tier of speed… which sounds kind of stupid, but it does help with making specific arrow speed feats a bit negligible; both can reasonably tag or dodge each other’s shots if firing at a distance.

So, why give the advantage to Oliver here? Simple. Even setting aside the travel speed difference (which still remains), Clint has no statements as direct or impressive as Batman himself admitting that the emerald archer has better reaction timing than him. Both have instances of fighting against notably fast street tiers or enhanced supersoldiers (Daredevil and U.S. Agent VS Red Hood (Bum) and Deathstroke), but Green Arrow is the only one with a solid, direct statement highlighting him above these light timers. Hawkeye lacks it, with his only piece of comparison being that Angel didn’t want to risk the idea of who can think faster between him or Psylocke. Which, while notable, is far less direct and much more implicit by comparison, and shakier to say he can definitively match, compared to a statement said by Bruce himself. So, Green Arrow takes a slight, but important edge in speed. It should be noted this is purely in reactionary speeds, and their actual combat speeds are more comparable. Clint isn’t going to be completely overwhelmed by Oliver’s better timing, but it makes it so he’s going to at least struggle a bit.

So, the advantages in this category are shaking up to be a bit more even. Clint has slightly superior AP via raw numbers, whereas Ollie has slightly superior reaction speed via more definitive upscaling. Both of their arrows are also going to be piercing right through the other; with the numbers so close, it’s an obvious thing that both of their arrows have been able to stab, go through, or seriously injure people in similar weight classes. Even their direct feats like splitting cinder blocks or punching robots, while in Hawkeye’s favor, still ultimately mean one arrow from both is going straight through the other.

Admittedly, you can probably argue against certain aspects of the specific numbers; namely, that Moon Knight and Batman’s feats could still be aim-dodging (albeit just as likely regular dodging), and the respective earthquake feats and scaling for both aren’t the best, as we don’t know if Punisher or Batman are getting hit with the exact same force to shake miles of land. Still, for all intents and purposes, we’re considering these feats as viable, and the exact numbers or gap in both power and speed will likely remain the same due to the comparisons listed out above.

Ultimately, with things already this close and both having their own notable advantages, we feel it’s safest to call stats a tie. Hawkeye being the physically stronger fighter, both in attack potency and lifting, can be canceled out with Green Arrow’s greater travel speed and reaction times. Both are important advantages overall in the fight for different reasons when weighed against each other, making it unlikely to be a deciding factor.

Now, there is the elephant in the room, that being the Pym Particles. Hawkeye can always take a vial of the serum or hit himself with his own arrows to activate the effects and turn into Goliath, which, to be blunt, means he can easily grab Green Arrow and pull the Bane back breaker on him. But this is not his natural state of strength, relying on specific gear to drink or inject himself with to reach it, and not something he can stay in forever. And even so, it’s not game over for Ollie, because this fight was always going to come down to the one thing both of these guys are known for.

Arsenal

Let’s get two things out of the way before we compare their trick arrows; their other gear that could impact the fight, and the literal elephant in the room, the previously mentioned Pym Particles. On paper, the fact that Clint can gain such a large physical boost may seem like an immediate game over. For a lot of people, it kind of has when it comes to this matchup. But it’s not as simple as you would assume. As mentioned before, the form isn’t permanent, but additionally, Clint doesn’t exactly use Pym Particles nowadays unless his back is against the wall. So Oliver taking him out before he decides to use them is entirely possible, especially given just how dangerous his arsenal is. But let’s say Clint goes all Humungosaur here; can Green Arrow take him out then?

Definitely. David here has multiple arrows useful for taking out people competing with Justice League heavy hitters, more than a match for Goliath. This would include his wall smasher arrow that took out someone beating up Aquaman, and an explosive arrow that could both knock out Hawkman from a distance and take out the Shaggyman, a monster who fought Justice League members like Superman and Martian Manhunter. Not to mention Oliver’s more gimmicky arrows, including instantly lethal poisons and transmutation magic. If Clint transforms at a distance, while he could move fast to take out Ollie quickly, Ollie could also be quick on the draw and shoot him down with his best arrows. Oliver knows to take out the big guns from the big guys after all. If Clint tried transforming up close, he’d basically auto win if he pulled it off, but taking time to take a drink or stab yourself when right next to the guy with a CQC advantage and several one shot methods doesn’t seem like the best idea.

So while the Pym Particles are incredibly useful, and Clint deciding to use them will probably win him the fight more than half the time, they are not an immediate in-character option, and Oliver should still be able to win his own fair share of possible outcomes. Thus, they are by no means an automatic win, and there’s still plenty to discuss. Now, the other thing before the arrows, their other gear. Both have a lot of miscellaneous stuff, but most of it isn’t going to do too much here. Random holo-guns, decoys, nunchucks and knives will help, but by no means enough to seal the deal. Clint technically has better armor since he can endure bullets via chainmail whereas bullets will hurt Oliver more since he just has kevlar, but both of their arrow shots have been shown to beat bullets anyways. Plus, Oliver’s gauntlets have shown to be able to parry arrows. What does matter a lot though in a projectile based fight are their methods of transportation; Oliver has a on foot travel speed advantage, but that can be beaten out if Clint has good enough mobility through the Sky Cycle.

On paper, said Sky Cycle is less versatile than say, the Arrow Car. However, its excellent aerial mobility more than makes up for that, and Hawkeye has enough versatility in the quiver on his back anyways. If anything, as durable as the arrow car is, Oliver using it is probably just going to leave him a sitting duck against Clint’s toughest arrows. That said, Oliver does have multiple jetpacks capable of high speed flight during fights, so this brings us back to square one and equalizes the two archers’ mobility. Clint’s Sky Cycle technically has a higher confirmed max speed then anything Oliver has, but it’s not a speed he uses in active combat, more so just for traveling to get to where he’s got to be.

So with all that out of the way, time for the big attraction: who’s got the better trick arrows? With every other advantage in this match either being minor or being able to be dealt with through some other advantage, arsenal is going to be the determining factor here, so every arrow matters.

So to start, let’s jump from zero to a hundred and check out their most dangerous arrows, the ones that could win them the fight instantly if they land. Obviously, with how good of marksmen these two are, technically any arrow could be lethal if it hits the right vital spot. But with how nimble Green Arrow and Hawkeye can be, and with how good of quickdraws they are, they’re realistically going to be able to both dodge or just shoot each other’s arrows out of the air. So, something that can win with just a graze or even by activating in close proximity to either is extremely useful here.

Let’s take turns here with how they could instantly win, keeping in mind their natural defenses and resistances, and how each could counter said instant wins. Starting with Oliver, he could instantly take out Clint with his Aquaman level wall smasher arrow, paralyze him fully with the paralysis arrow, freeze him instantly and entirely with his best freezing arrows, instantly kill him with deadly poison arrows, melt him with acid arrows, shake him apart with the tuning fork arrow, freeze him in time via Chronopause tech, or transmute him with magic arrows. Possible wins are hitting the right spot with his Nth or Diamond arrows, hitting an uninterrupted shock with his electric arrows, or burning him with close enough Greek Fire or explosive arrows. Clint could counter Ollie’s traditional shots with strong stuff like Adamantium or Vibranium arrows, push through shocks with enough effort, and reduce flames if he’s a safe enough distance away from them with gear like foam arrows. He lacks proper counters apart from dodging against everything else.

Shoe on the other foot, Clint’s turn. His electric arrows can even paralyze Captain America so they should insta win here, he has similar full body giant freezing arrows, can burn through Oliver’s resistance with his strongest acid arrows, pierce through and shock Ollie with Adamantium, crush his skull with the Concussive Magnetic arrow, and obliterate him with the raw power of Chaos Magic amped arrows. Diamond and Vibranium (both normal and Antarctic), or high degree fire and explosion arrows being set off close enough to Oliver to catch him are also possible. Same as Clint, Oliver can counter specific shots via raw power (though he lacks anything on par with Chaos Magic arrows), weaker shocks through resistance if they’re not continuous enough, and reduce flames from a distance. Some of the stronger options, he has to rely on dodging (or in the case of the concussive magnetic arrow, shooting it down) to avoid fatal damage.

Directly comparing their big guns, you’ll notice they roughly have a similar amount of arrows that are both one shots if they land anywhere, and can potentially win if they land in the right spot. Clint technically has been shown having more of his types of strongest arrows than Oliver has his, but given both have similar variety and Oliver still has a good amount, it isn’t too important. They even match in other forms of offense, such as faster than normal arrows and traps. You can point to small advantages here and there with that kind of stuff, but it’s not going to be game winning for either.

None of their comparatively minor arrows are going to be that important, at least in the grand scheme of things. Clint’s Pym Particle arrows fire more arrows and cover greater area than Oliver’s scatter arrows, but Ollie has dealt with similar arrow rain fire before. Oliver has homing or tracking arrows that aren’t magnetic based to prove a problem, but Clint can react to and shoot them down. Both have speed-based arrows, though Oliver’s are more numerous, albeit nothing Clint can’t react to. Both have similar methods of traversal with various grappling, rocket, or line arrows, and have a variety of ways to restrain the other that they can reasonably break free of (bolos, putty, adhesives, titanium coil / nets), albeit with effort. They can adapt to or match each other’s arrows fairly well, and a lot of their other tricks are either inconsequential or nothing the other hasn’t seen before.

So if their offenses are on par, aren’t we back to square one with things being too even? Wouldn’t Clint win at this point due to the usefulness of Pym Particles breaking the tie? The thing is though, if they can’t win with their strongest arrows, we have to look at their best arrows. Yes, that sounds like the same thing, but wait a bit and you’ll catch on.

So what’s in each of those quivers besides just things that hit hard (or hit weird, same thing)? Despite the arrow’s functionality as a weapon, both have arrows that show off incredible defensive and disruption utility. Granted, while Green Arrow has more of the former, neither of their defenses are going to stack up to the best things the other’s got. A missile shield for example isn’t going to do much against an Adamantium arrow. So what do each of them have for disruption? There’s smoke bombs, but both have cowls and goggles to see through that. There’s toxic gasses, though both have gas masks. There’s slippery liquids, but both are competent. There’s high level sounds, but both have gear to resist that and can power through some high level sounds they’ve dealt with. There’s flashbangs… there, that sticks out.

Both have several flashbang arrows meant for blinding people with harsh, instant lights. The key difference here is that Oliver is completely immune to these, given his mask having flash resistance, even against his own arrows that can blind people for hours. If Clint did try to blind him, he’d only be wasting crucial time. In contrast, Clint has no defense besides hoping he looked the other way when it went off. Can’t really dodge an all direction wave of light, even if you have the reaction speeds for it. Hawkeye has fought blind before, but when he did, he still slowed down a lot, had the advantage of the space he was fighting in not being too expansive, and was fighting someone FAR less versatile than Oliver. And as said before, Green Arrow’s best flashbangs can blind someone for hours. If one hits Clint, he isn’t seeing anything else for the rest of the fight.

To add on to this, Oliver has a second dangerous disruption arrow that Clint lacks a proper counter to, being his strongest magnetism arrow. Now, both have a couple magnet arrows, good for redirecting knives and pulling away guns, but Oliver’s strongest magnetism arrow is so capable that he can pull away the guns of an entire small army by just shooting it into the air. This is really bad for Clint, as a lot of his arrows have been shown to be magnetic before, pulled directly from his quiver without much resistance. Now, Clint has shown to have a good amount of wooden or aluminum arrows in the past, but that doesn’t change the fact Oliver has an option for massively reducing Clint’s arsenal that he doesn’t have to land.

That’s the key phrase here, doesn’t have to land. Both Oliver’s flashbang and magnetic arrows are options he can just sort of shoot wherever, and they’ll do their job. Given how good of shots these two are, their experience against high level foes and opposing master archers, they can reasonably shoot any of their opponent’s arrows before they hit their target, as well as dodge some shots. But Oliver’s best disruption arrows are not only things Clint lacks a strong counter to, but are arrows he doesn’t need to hit Clint with for them to do their job. Worst case scenario for G.A., Clint uses up a crucial instant on shooting an arrow he doesn’t know the effect of from the sky, instead of keeping pressure on Ollie. And sure, Clint could destroy Oliver’s aluminum shaft arrows as well with his anti-metal Antarctic Vibranium arrow, but said arrow has only been shown to destroy metallic targets in close proximity to it. So he has to land it, at least right next to Oliver.

The other reason this all matters is because of how Oliver’s disruption arrows handle the “information game” going on here, even if you want to use the official crossover to say they know each other. Both Green Arrow and Hawkeye have a lot of arrows the other is simply not going to know about, so the fact that Oliver has an option to greatly reduce how much he has to worry about is huge. It opens him up to go more on the offensive, especially when you consider that a lot of Clint’s big one shot tier arrows seem to be metallic and thus magnetic, or are straight up super metals like Adamantium that, well, come on. Hell, all of this is without considering the potential for the magnetism arrow to pull away the Pym Particle serum and/or arrow, removing Clint’s Goliath failsafe from the equation. Blinding Hawkeye also adds to this, as in contrast to Oliver dealing with Clint’s gear becoming easier, Clint dealing with Oliver’s becomes way harder. It becomes a lot more difficult to know what’s coming when you can’t see it, whereas when he fought blind VS Barney, there weren’t any unknown options in Barney’s arsenal Clint didn’t know about. Additionally, while they can both counter high level sound attacks through temporarily blocking out all sound, that’s a much bigger problem for Clint if he’s also blinded.

Hawkeye has an absurd arsenal on his back that is more than a match for Green Arrow, but the fact that Oliver has such strong options to limit said arsenal, as well as make his own twice as hard to deal with, finally demonstrates a strong advantage the other can’t match or compensate for in some way. Oliver Queen takes Arsenal.

Conclusion

“They can drag me down… call me what they want… even kill me. But they can’t beat me… unless I let them.”

Advantages

Better reaction and travel speed
Superior at close quarters combat
Better with ricochet shots
Stronger disruption arrows, which can take away most of Hawkeye’s arrows and his Pym Particles

Disadvantages

Inferior lifting strength
Not as good at dynamic movement while firing at top speed
Can fire slightly less arrows at once
In serious danger if Clint use his Pym Particles on himself

“It ain’t gonna be easy, fixing everything Barney’s done. Or cleaning up my own messes I’ve left behind. But at least I’m not going in blind. Or alone.”

Advantages

Superior lifting strength
Can move more dynamically when firing at top speed
Can fire slightly more arrows at once

Disadvantages

Inferior in reaction and travel speed
Not as skilled in close quarters combat
Worse ricochet shots overall
Has less effective debilitating disruption arrows and is far more susceptible to them than Green Arrow

Even

Comparable generally in the stat trinity
Similar in experience, as well as against other archers
Comparable marksmanship
Comparable max range (using special equipment in Hawkeye’s case)
Comparable mobility with jetpacks and the Skycycle
Several ways to one shot each other
Bums

To be blunt, this is one of the closest matchups not just for Marvel VS DC, but all of Death Battle, both back then and even now in a reexamination. The two match each other in many ways in terms of skill and experience, physical feats, and arsenal, and hold advantages over the other in those same aforementioned areas. It’s entirely likely Clint can pull off a win with his own wide variety of trick arrows, slightly greater strength, and better experience against other expert archers, and they present a constant challenge for Oliver to make this a very difficult win for him. But ultimately, the emerald archer proves himself the mightier marksman.

The simplest way to put it, is that in a match where both have them have a variety of one-shot options, what matters more is not who has the better one-shot options or more one-shot options, but who can actively defend or take away those one-shot options and disorient the other. And while both have similar ways to do that or disrupt or counter each other, Hawkeye’s are strictly worse and also less than Green Arrow’s. His antarctic vibranium arrow can absolutely debilitate Oliver’s arrows and quiver if it hit him or landed next to him thanks to its anti-metal vibrations, but they need to be in close proximity, and frankly, if it lands on Oliver directly, it’s already a win through sheer power. By comparison, the super magnetic arrow and Ollie’s own flash arrows don’t need to land on Clint and can severely limit his options, whereas Clint’s magnetic arrows aren’t as strong, and his flash arrows would prove ineffective thanks to Ollie’s flash resistant mask.

Of course, an arrow can be used to counter the powerful magnetic arrow, but that only means Clint is wasting a shot that Oliver can use the small time in opening to hit him with any one-shot arrow, like magic transmutation, Nth Metal, acid, etc, especially with his faster reaction time by comparison. Frankly, Oliver’s advantage in reaction speed and travel speed would make it so, contrary to the episode’s original claim, Oliver’s going to be harder to hit, both in close-close and long-range. Even with Hawkeye’s more dynamic movement in timing against enemy archers and rate of fire, Green Arrow’s faster reaction speed, combined with his own impressive firing speeds, can help him accommodate and adapt to it, especially with his own experience against master archers and his observational skills.

Clint has similar one-shot options of course, once again with his own Chaos Magic, Adamantium, acid, etc., and he similarly has his own disruption methods like sound arrows, but both have counters to most of those potential sabotaging options. It’s Oliver who has the better method to make dodging his arrows more difficult, and the better method to take away most of Clint’s arsenal, beyond just his arrows, like the Pym Particle serum. Clint may have arrows made of wood or aluminum that wouldn’t be pulled in, but these clearly do not make up most of his catalogue of arrows, and even ones with specific tips or properties (Adamantium, Antarctic Vibranium, Pym Particle arrows, etc.) will be taken away, removing some of Hawkeye’s strongest options. And again, a flash arrow that can potentially blind Clint for hours means he’s fighting without sight for the entire fight, a massive disadvantage against someone as skilled, resourceful, and versatile as Oliver, even with Clint’s established experience fighting in such conditions.

When both fighters are clearly more adept in their bread and butter of archery, regardless of their skill in other forms of combat, it’s only a matter of time before Hawkeye is put into too much of a disadvantage to reliably win more times than not. In the end, Oliver Queen’s superior speed, comparable offense and defense, and greater disruption arrows were just enough to score a win, as Green Arrow hit the bullseye.

Bonus Round:
Green Arrow VS Hawkeye (2015)

Behold the second time CW will be acknowledged in this blog. Try looking for the first if you haven’t seen it already.

Given just how close this matchup was, it’s to be expected that people would be curious if the original episode was right at the time of release. Despite how complicated of a discussion this fight is though, figuring out the winner for 2015 isn’t actually that hard. More so though just because the current modern analysis laid out the groundwork.

Oliver still has a lot of good tools, don’t get the wrong idea. The big thing though is that a lot of things that seal his win now just didn’t exist back then. Battlefield wide magnetism arrow? From his 2016 Rebirth run. Outrunning Merlyn’s arrow? Same run. Nth metal arrow? Same run, again. Flash resistant mask? 80th anniversary special from 2021, and 2023 Infinite Frontier run. Magic arrows? 2024 Birds of Prey run. Batman’s statement about Oliver having better pure reaction speed than him? From a Detective Comics issue that came out literally this year, etc etc, you get the idea. He’s weirdly had a lot of good buffs since the Death Battle originally released in 2015, whereas while Clint got new content, he didn’t get anything too substantial. If anything, weirdly, he got nerfed a tiny bit, as he had a poor showing against magnetism in 2022, which pairs really badly with the strong magnetism arrow Oliver got in his 2016 run.

Once you take all of those buffs away, that subtracts a lot of good advantages from Oliver. He isn’t the only one immune to flashbangs, he has less one shot level arrows, and his speed stat isn’t as good for both reaction and travel. He still has excellent training, a strong arsenal, good archery showings, you get it, it’s not like he forfeits all of his advantages all of a sudden. But he’s definitely a good bit weaker, which, when the matchup is close when he’s stronger, that paints a clear picture. Think of it like this: if Oliver wins 55 to 45 nowadays, Clint probably won 55 to 45 back then. It’s extremely difficult either way.

Death Battle Predictions: Green Arrow VS Hawkeye (2026)

In Case You Were Wondering…

Green Arrow

Hawkeye

Green Arrow

Background

Experience & Skill

Traditional Skills

Close Quarters Combat Mastery

Pain Tolerance & Endurance

Adaptation(Experience & Skill)

Archery

Training & Status

General Shooting Skills

Adaptation(Archery)

Range

Ricochet Shots

The Absurd

Traditional Equipment

Green Arrow Costumes

Other Wearable Gear

Bows

Quivers

Swords

Alternative Weapons

Arrowcar

Arrowplane

Arrowboat

Arrow Jet

Arrow Satellite Ship

Arrow Sub

Other Vehicles

Grenades & Explosives

Fake Green Arrow Dummies

Miscellaneous Tools

Useless

Useful

Lantern Rings

Trick Arrows

Initial Overview

Traditional Arrows

Blunt Force Arrows

Line Arrows

Trapping Arrows

Weapon & Tool Arrows

Rocket Arrows

Electric Arrows

Fire & Heat Arrows

Ice Arrows

Liquid & Aquatic Arrows

Gas Arrows

Toxic & Chemical Arrows

Explosive Arrows

Magnetic Arrows

Sound Arrows

Light Arrows

Tracking Arrows

Mobility Arrows

Defensive Arrows

Exotic Arrows

Combo Arrows

“Ollie was drunk and/or desperate” Arrows

Abilities

Chil- WHAT DO YOU MEAN CHILI?

Resistances

Feats

Overall

Power

Speed

Durability

Scaling

The Arrow Family

Other Street Level Fighters

Weaknesses

Hawkeye

Background

Experience & Skill

Traditional Skills

Close Quarters Combat Mastery

Pain Tolerance & Endurance

Adaptation
(Experience & Skill)

Adaptation
(Archery)

Adaptation
(Experience & Skill)

Adaptation
(Archery)

Bonus Round:
Green Arrow VS Hawkeye (2015)