Hawkeye: 10 Things Only Comic Fans Know About Jacques Duquesne

Jacques Duquesne, better known as the Swordsman is one of Marvel’s earliest depicted anti-heroes. Originally created by Stan Lee in the first few years of The Avengers comics, he has been both a hero and a villain, with a complicated and intertwining history with the classic Avenger Hawkeye and Guardians of the Galaxy member Mantis.

Confirmed to be making his on-screen debut portrayed by Tony Dalton in the Disney+ Hawkeye series, it remains to be seen exactly how Jacques, who has been renamed “Jack” for the series, will affect Clint Barton’s television adventures. Despite his limited appearances, Duquesne’s comic book exploits have a lot of elements to pull from that would be fascinating to watch in the upcoming show.

10 Origin

Comic book Jacques Duquesne was born in the fictional Siancong, a southeast Asian country under French rule. Despite being of French descent, and having grown up amongst the country’s more privileged upper class, the young Duquesne fancied himself a swashbuckling freedom fighter, secretly training amongst the greatest combatants of the nation’s burgeoning social uprising.

When he used these skills to assist in the overthrow of their government, his efforts were lauded by the locals but resulted in the executions of the former ruling class, which included his family. This desire to do good at all costs, while lacking the foresight of potential consequences would become a recurring plot element throughout his later adventures.

9 Carnival Life & Training Hawkeye

After fleeing the Siancongese civil war, Duquesne settled in America, where he eventually came to work for the traveling Carson Carnival. It was there that he met a young Clint Barton, the future Avenger Hawkeye. While a fellow carnival performer called Trickshot helped to hone Barton’s now-legendary archery skills, Duquesne taught him sword-fighting and hand-to-hand combat.

Despite being an important influence and mentor to the young Clint Barton, by this point in his life Duquesne had lost much of his youthful optimism and was eventually kicked out of Carson’s Carnival after being caught stealing. As most comic fans know about Hawkeye, the Swordsman was integral in shaping the archer’s career, first as a supervillain and then as a longtime Avenger.

8 Swordsman

While a handful of comics characters have used the name over the years, Jacques Duquesne was the first Marvel character to utilize the Swordsman alter ego, and remains the most well-known wielder of the role. Duquesne first reinvented himself as the Swordsman during his initial campaign as a revolutionary freedom fighter in Siancong but maintained the identity as a stage persona during his time with Carson’s Carnival.

After being ousted from the carnival, he briefly attempted to reinvent himself as a vigilante hero, but inevitably fell into villainy while chasing glory and monetary gain. This “two steps forward, one step back” trajectory would foreshadow much of his later history as a costumed adventurer.

7 Attempted Avenger

After learning that his former apprentice, Clint Barton, had become the Avenger Hawkeye, Duquesne saw an opportunity to re-establish himself as the hero he had longed to be, while also realizing the criminal advantages to be gained as a celebrity superhero. When his initial attempt to join the Avengers was denied, the Swordsman, overcome by yet another setback, reverted to his familiar ways and attempted to kill Captain America, the most skilled fighter in the Avengers.

The rest of the Avengers were able to rescue their leader, while Duquesne, meanwhile, fled from this failure, eventually backsliding once again towards villainy. At this point, there was nothing to suggest that Swordsman would later a hero would become tied to the Avengers. His selfishness and cruelty made him simply a routine B-grade Marvel villain.

6 Villainous Team-Ups

After his first failed attempt to join the Avengers, Swordsman teamed up with Iron Man’s coolest villain the Mandarin, who gifted him with significant upgrades to his weaponry, including stronger armor and a new sword capable of projecting various forms of energy blasts.

Completely abandoning his former idealism at this point, Duquesne went on to form a series of partnerships with other notable Avengers villains, including “Power Man” Erik Josten and Egghead’s Lethal Legion. He would spend the next several years as a recurring foe of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but would occasionally show glimpses of his buried heroic nature.

5 Avenger At Last

Unhappy with his lot in life, and unsatisfied with villainy, Duquesne abandoned his costumed identity and began drinking heavily while slipping into depression. After meeting the enigmatic Avengers ally Mantis, he was finally convinced to attempt a true reformation. Following a handful of adventures in which he was able to prove his intent to honestly reform, Duquesne was finally accepted into the Avengers ranks as an official member.

While the team was initially hesitant to trust their former foe, Swordsman’s actions spoke loudly and, in one of Marvel Comics’ greatest redemption stories, his long path to becoming a superhero was earned despite his mistakes. Over time, he would become a valuable and trusted member of the team who once rejected and fought him.

4 Mantis

When Swordsman joined the Avengers alongside Mantis, he quickly realized his romantic feelings for her. Despite sponsoring his membership, and helping to lead him towards redemption, Mantis did not reciprocate these feelings.

This tension between teammates would become a central dramatic element of the Avengers comics during their membership, as Duquesne doubted whether or not he was fit to be a hero, while the unwaveringly altruistic Mantis attempted to keep him on his upward trajectory, without leading him on romantically. Years ahead of its time, the duo’s depiction of unrequited feelings between coworkers and the strained friendship it caused was mature for a superhero story in its time and added unexpected nuance to the book amidst changing industry attitudes towards women’s autonomy.

3 Heroic Sacrifice

After years of succumbing to his impulses and multiple mistakes of morality, Jacques Duquesne, as the Avenger, Swordsman, had finally begun to display his inherent heroic potential. While he still chased the affections of his teammate Mantis, he remained dedicated to his newfound heroism, even if he often doubted his own worth. His final act as an Avenger would prove to be his ultimate redemption, however.

As Mantis was revealed to be the potentially world-altering “Celestial Madonna,” she came to the attention of the time-traveling Kang the Conqueror, who recognized the influence she had upon potential futures, and sought to eliminate those possibilities. With the Avengers incapacitated, Duquesne sacrificed himself to save Mantis from an energy blast from Kang, and as he died Mantis finally admitted her own feelings for the long-troubled hero.

2 Cotati Clone

While the original Jacques Duquesne had sacrificed himself in a final heroic act, his story was not quite finished. Following his death, his body was inhabited by the Prime Cotati, leader of an alien race of telepathic plant people from the planet upon which Mantis had been raised. Possessing all of Duquesne’s memories, this “new Swordsman” eventually married Mantis and the two had a child, Sequoia, later known as “Quoi,” who himself would be destined to lead the Cotati race as the “Celestial Messiah.”

Despite having all of Duquesne’s memories, including his later efforts to reform, the Cotati Swordsman would prove to be singularly minded in his goals, displaying more of Duquesne’s early selfishness and impulsive tendencies. After being thwarted from attempting to replace Mantis with a plant-based Cotati clone of her own, he would disappear for years, eventually returning once again as a villain alongside a now-grown Quoi during Marvel’s recent Empyre event.

1 Dead Avengers

Although the majority of his more recent “appearances” have been in the form of his Cotati duplicate, the original Jacques Duquesne has made one major post-mortem appearance, in which he prominently showcased his hard-earned heroic glory. During Marvel’s 2010 Chaos War event, the original Swordsman was briefly resurrected alongside a collection of other deceased heroes, in a team aptly called “The Dead Avengers.”

Alongside undead allies such as the original Captain Marvel and master of the occult Doctor Druid, Duquesne assisted earth’s heroes against Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Japanese God of Death better known as the Chaos King. Returned to life against their will, the revived heroes fought valiantly nonetheless, before being returned to the afterlife following the Chaos King’s defeat at the hands of earth’s combined heroes.

About The Author

Drew Beaty
(53 Articles Published)

Drew Beaty is a third-generation superhero fan who was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He began his collection with hand-me-down comic books from a used book store owned by his father and grandfather in the late 1980s. Today, Drew owns and has read over 50,000 individual comics. He was once ranked “Best In The World” in the Marvel Comics category of the mobile trivia game Quiz-Up and still has the screenshots to prove it. When he’s not reading or writing about masks and capes, Drew spends his time with his wife and cats, or rubbing elbows with Portland’s music scene, where he has performed in the hip hop group Bad Habitat since 2008.

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