Unsurprisingly, Bullseye’s face-turn occurred with the Thunderbolts, that team of superheroes masquerading as heroes. Bullseye’s tenure began with a particularly fraught version of the team, one that came to be amidst a period of turmoil in the Marvel Universe. After the superhero Civil War that saw Tony Stark and others turn against their comrades in capes to enforce a superhuman registration act, the government used S.H.I.E.L.D. to take a stronger role in the affairs of heroes and villains.
Businessman and sometime Green Goblin Norman Osborn used the disruption of the Civil War to take control of the Thunderbolts, which had become Marvel’s answer to the Suicide Squad, a team of villains forced to do dangerous missions on behalf of the U.S. government. In that position, Osborn forced Bullseye onto the team and used him as a private assassin.
However, Osborn’s greatest move came at the end of the Secret Invasion, during which Earth’s leaders discovered that shapeshifting Skrulls have been living among us, waiting to launch a hostile takeover of the planet. Thanks to his public actions against the Skrull, including killing their leader on live television, Osborn was promoted to Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., from which he transformed his Thunderbolts into the new Avengers. Venom became the new Spider-Man. The White Widow Yelena Belova, more amoral than her MCU counterpart, became the new Black Widow. And Bullseye took the guise of Hawkeye.
In most Thunderbolts stories, the villain starts to imagine that they can find redemption and become heroes. Not so with Bullseye. Instead, he was simply thrilled to get the chance to kill people and not have to worry about heroes getting in the way.
His attitude is captured in 2009’s Dark Avengers #2, written by Brian Michael Bendis and penciled by Mike Deodato Jr. After the press conference that announces the new version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, the team gathers in Avengers Tower to bask in their new glory. “You know, it’s too bad I killed my mother in high school, she would have loved this,” Bullseye says as he pulls off his Hawkeye gear. In the next panel, he turns to his shocked teammates and says, “Just kidding. She wouldn’t a’ cared.”
As much as Bullseye seems to relish his new role, the conflict between his public persona as Hawkeye and his desires as a costumed killer create tension, which gets explored in the five-part miniseries Dark Reign: Hawkeye, written by Andy Diggle and penciled by Tom Raney. After he murders an innocent woman, the same woman he saved as Hawkeye, to keep his secret safe, Bullseye finds himself angry that Hawkeye is getting credit for his kills. He begins to hallucinate another Bullseye, his “true” self who mocks him for losing his identity to a weak Avenger.
