Two Belligerent Bowmen

Green Arrow - Hawkeye

Fairly obvious…

“Batman with a bow” was clearly what Mort Weisinger was after with Green Arrow. Like Weisinger’s other creation Aquaman but unlike most of DC’s super hero characters, GA stories were published throughout the ‘50s. Come the late ‘60s, Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams gave Oliver Queen a personality: he was now to be a man renouncing his riches in order to be fully invested in the plight of the “working man” and the downtrodden (more or less serving as O’Neil’s finger-pointing mouthpiece). Although his new persona is best displayed in the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series, he often antagonized his fellow JLAers along these lines from the ‘70s onward.

Thing is, this characterization seems inspired by a character across the pond that was directly inspired by Green Arrow—Hawkeye. Initially a crook bedeviling Iron Man, Clint Barton joined the Avengers as a member of “Cap’s Kooky Quartet,” and thereupon was played as a rough around the edges everyman given to challenge Iron Man and Cap. For four decades, he was a key Avenger.

Commonalities:
Both are often belligerent w/r/t to authority but are down to earth dudes with hearts of gold. Both the best bowmen in their respective disaporas, and both have “died.”

Differences:
Oliver Queen is an off and on again rich guy, whereas Clint Barton is a carny-turned-crook-turned-Avenger (here we must observe the “rich guy” rule stated below) . Unlike Queen, Barton has never been shown to have much in the way of a social conscience, but, also unlike Queen, he adopted another identity and accompanying abilities.

Alternate histories:

HE: Clint Barton is washed ashore on an unpopulated island and trains himself to become an unparalleled archer in order to survive. He returns to society and becomes a premiere crime fighter, joining the Avengers shortly after its founding, often serving as the group’s sociopolitical conscience. He travels America with another super-powered operative in order to address social ills and also fathers —but does not take part in raising— a child. While serving with the Avengers, Barton takes on a number of professions in his civilian guise —he “dies” for awhile but is revived. He is eventually betrothed to another crime-fighter and also joins another team, the Defenders.

GA: After antagonizing another crime-fighter, supremely gifted bowman Oliver Queen joins the Justice League of America with two others as a replacement for some of the more powerful founding members. He serves as a key member for many years, adopting size-changing abilities briefly and eventually heads up a West Coast satellite group w/r/t to the largely East Coast-centric team. Queen “died” a few years ago, has since been revived and is now working with a group opposing government registration of superhumans.