Marvel announces new non-binary Hawkeye

They've been described as "undeniably 'Hawkeye'"

Charli Ramsey is a non-binary and Two-Spirit Native American, and has been introduced as the arrow-wielding Avenger in issue five of The Ultimates. The Ultimates is a string of Marvel comics that centres on Earth-6160, an alternate universe without any of the Marvel heroes which fans are familiar with.

For example, in this universe Peter Parker was never bitten by a radioactive spider to become Spider-Man, and Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne - a.k.a. Ant-Man and The Wasp - still just work as normal, everyday exterminators.

The story of this comic series is that Tony Stark is trying to populate Earth-6160 with heroes, so he and his allies are locating this Earth's would-be supes to turn them into world-savers.

In the comics, they locate Clinton Barton, the character that Jeremy Renner plays in the Marvel films. However, he declines the offer to become Hawkeye, despite a video message from Iron Man and a gift package containing loads of fancy archery kit.

When Charli Ramsey finds the package, they decide they will take on the Hawkeye mantle.

In a post on X, writer Denis Camp described the character as “cool, different, and yet undeniably Hawkeye.”

Speaking about Charli's gender identity, Camp said in a follow-up post that he was "wary to talk about this stuff outside the book itself" but wanted to comment on it as he knew it "means a lot to people."

He explained that he wanted to "make a statement" about Charli’s tribe as a Native American and gender as Two-Spirit, which is a term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender social role in their communities.

Camp wrote: “When I did my research into the water protectors/Standing Rock, something that was emphasised again and again was the importance of queer and “two spirit” organisers to the movement. I wanted to put that into the book.

“So, yes, Charli’s pronouns are they/them. I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, because it’s not in the book itself, and because I don’t think Charli would make a big deal out of it in that context."

The writer added that Charli/ Hawkeye’s identity will be made “explicit when it’s natural to the narrative,” PinkNews reports.

Marvel has introduced non-binary super heroes in the past, in the form of Jack of Knives and Reed Fox.

Ramsey is the first non-binary 'legacy hero' though - the term used to describe a character who takes on the mantle of a pre-existing super hero.