In the Wild West, Matt Hawk is a lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, who is inspired to fight evil as a masked crime fighter of the 19th-century American West by the stories of the fictional Two-Gun Kid, Clay Harder. After being trained in combat by the gunfighter Ben Dancer, the character assumes the dual identities of Matt Hawk and the Two-Gun Kid. With his horse Thunder, his partner "Boom Boom" Brown, and a pair of pistols, he becomes one of the West's most prolific heroes, often teaming up with the Rawhide Kid, Kid Colt, or the Phantom Rider. In one of his first adventures, Matt fights an alien, and in other early outings he fights criminals who can only be called super-villains. During one adventure, he is brought to the present day via time travel and joins the superhero team of the Avengers. He fights alongside them before leaving to wander America alongside his teammate Hawkeye, and eventually returns to his own time, occasionally making a cameo appearance in other Western tales or stories of time travel.