Issue(s): Marvel Team-Up #95
Cover Date: Jul 80
Title: "...And no birds sing!"
Credits:
Steven Grant - Writer
Jimmy Janes - Penciler
Bruce D. Patterson - Inker

Review/plot:
This issue introduces Mockingbird (formerly SHIELD agent Bobbi Morse).

Spidey runs into her as she's being pursued by SHIELD agents.

There's a few twists but it turns out she's helping Nick Fury root out some corruption in SHIELD.

Not a particularly great story, but of course Mockingbird will become a relatively important character.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - first Bobbi Morse as Mockingbird

Chronological Placement Considerations: Pushed way back in publication time because Peter Parker starts this issue returning from his trip to Los Angeles that began in Spider-Woman #20 and continued in the last couple issues of Team-Up.

References:

• Bobbi Morse previously appeared as a SHIELD agent in the Ka-Zar stories in Astonishing Tales, starting with Astonishing Tales #6. She also appeared in Marvel Super Action #1 using the name Huntress, which Marvel had to abandon for copyright reasons.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

DC had a villainess called the Huntress in the 1940s, but she hadn't been used too recently by 1976. Marvel's Huntress showed up next, but since she didn't have a 2nd story, DC created another Huntress in 1977 that got her own solo backup series in Wonder Woman, causing Marvel to lose out on the name.

interesting, that panel refers to her as "Roberta" Morse rather than Barbora.

"Bobbi Morse previously appeared as a SHIELD agent in the Ka-Zar stories in Astonishing Tales, starting with Astonishing Tales #6. She also apparently appeared in the Marvel Super Action Magazine one-shot using the name Huntress, which Marvel had to abandon for copyright reasons".

What did they have planned for Morse as the Huntress?

Marvel Super Action Magazine (which I take it you do not have due to the high price it has, featuring one of the first solo appearances of a certain Mack Bolan derivative, and in fact that issue featured an article on Remo with Chiun, Mack Bolan, and possibly other paperback heroes) also featured:

Dominic Fortune (1930's set adventurer-bring in the Doc Savage and Tarzan, and to a lesser degree the Shadow reprint crowd)

Weird World (Tolkien) reminiscent of Tolkien

So, did they plan on having Morse/The Huntress as their counterpart to Modesty Blaise or the Baroness or Emma Peel or Cathy Gale? Interesting that they did not think of using Sharon Carter. (They had tried to present the Black Widow as a solo adventurer, of course.)

I have had an opportunity to peek at the Huntress story, and storywise, she plays a role similar to the one here; she's rooting out corruption in SHIELD from the outside. And she's a very physical character, a big jump from her supporting scientist role as Bobbie Morse in Ka-Zar. You're right that Sharon Carter (or the Widow) would have fit nicely into the role, so it is interesting that they went with the much more obscure Morse.

I have had an opportunity to peek at the Huntress story, and storywise, she plays a role similar to the one here; she's rooting out corruption in SHIELD from the outside. And she's a very physical character, a big jump from her supporting scientist role as Bobbie Morse in Ka-Zar. You're right that Sharon Carter (or the Widow) would have fit nicely into the role, so it is interesting that they went with the much more obscure Morse.

Posted by: fnord12 | April 22, 2013 10:45 PM
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I have to wonder what trend they wanted to tie-in to with the Huntress. As I have detailed above, they tried to tie-in with various trends.

That shot of "the Huntress" does look like something out of the 1960s Avengers TV series, but with the mask, it ironically makes her look more like a throwback to the original 1940s Black Canary than the current 1970s version (although there's a strong resemblance there, too, especially with the "karate hands"). BC wasn't mad popular at this time, but she did have a series somewhere drawn by Alex Toth and a run in World's Finest as well (may have been the same series for all I know).

And the original DC Huntress had made a few appearances just prior to this. She appeared in one of the JLA/JSA teamups in the early 70s, as well as a weird "DC Super-Stars of Sports" story that came out about this time.

Black Canary had a few sporadic solo stories in Adventure Comics in the early 1970s, one of which Toth did. Her World's Finest series started in 1977, but after about a year she wound up having to alternate with Green Arrow rather than having side-by-side stories.

DC's Huntress appeared in a DC Special first in 1977, than almost immediately became a regular in the Justice Society in All-Star Comics before shifting to the Wonder Woman backup. She was seen pretty much monthly until DC's Crisis in 1985, which pretty much guaranteed no more Bobbi Morse-Huntress.

It’s a bit amusing in retrospect that Bobbi’s first appearance as Mockingbird was in a title headlined by her future boyfriend.

I never caught the connection between Mockingbird and Black Canary before, but when you stop to think about it, it's pretty obvious, especially considering that she later became the girlfriend of Hawkeye (like Black Canary with Green Arrow).

Even before Mockingbird, I always thought it was interesting that Hawkeye's first (on-panel) paramour was the Black Widow...then a few years later over in DC we get GA paired with the Black Canary. (BW's first superhero costume resembled BC's.) Ah, those archers and their fishnetted femmes:)

It was right in front of my eyes but I didn't see it. Mockingbird was like a replacement for Black Widow, but a bit closer to Black Canary than the Widow was, since like Canary she also has the bird theme. Plus Mockingbird was more obviously heroic, and more susceptible to Hawkeye's charms-- whereas Black Widow seemed more like a manipulator/dominatrix type back in her KGB spy days. Black Widow is thematically a loner; can't see her marrying Hawkeye ha or really anybody. She was initially also a villain type, but then outgrew her bogus criminal partnership with Hawkeye pretty quickly. As did he. Marvel was just making their character profiles up as they went along, like they did with most of their characters really. Like playing make-believe.

If ONLY Gru, who put them together, had a long record of DC-izing Marvel so we knew what the deal was, there. ;)

Well it seems DC mighta kinda started it all, when they put their Earth-One versions of Black Canary and Green Arrow together. By '63, Marvel already had Black Widow and Hawkeye together (sans fishnets). Then in '64, DC brought back the Golden Age/Earth-2 version of Black Canary, and in '69, O'Neil & Adams put Earth-1's Black Canary & Green Arrow together in their GL/GA series.

By then, Black Widow had already started wearing her own fishnetted costume (since around the time she semi-joined the Avengers I think).

Then we jump up to around '79 here, when Marvel brought in Mockingbird and may have used her as a (hypothetically) closer swipe on the Canary. Just a theory. Might not have been an intentional swipe, I dunno; it might plausibly have been a subconscious swipe, or even a total coincidence, that they put this totally redesigned, bird-themed character together with Hawkeye--? An unlikely coincidence, seems to me, but it plausibly could be...

Gruenwald. Mark "Squadron Supreme" Gruenwald doing it removes all possible doubt.