 | ||||||
Featuring the following heroine!
Mockingbird
by Sean McQuaid
Real name: Barbara "Bobbi" Morse Barton
First appearance: as Bobbi, Astonishing Tales 6; as Huntress, Marvel Super-Action 1; as Mockingbird, Marvel Team-Up 95.
Favorite quote: "Those tears for me, sport? Aw, shucks." -- Hawkeye 4. Mockingbird teases a tearful Hawkeye, who's holding what he thinks is her corpse until she regains consciousness.
Team affiliation: Wife and partner of Hawkeye, founding member of Avengers West, former SHIELD agent, ally to Ka-Zar and mentor to the Great Lakes Avengers.
Powers: A brilliant biochemist, Bobbi had extensive espionage training from SHIELD and was one of the Avengers' most formidable unarmed combatants. An acrobatically agile martial artist, Mockingbird was adept at verbally goading her foes into an agitated state while fighting them (hence her code-name). Her only weapons were her steel battle staves, which could be used as individual striking weapons or locked together into a telescoping shaft that she used as a bo staff and vaulting pole.
Favorite storyline: The original Hawkeye limited series, in which Bobbi saved Hawkeye from himself and then eloped with the big lug.
Least favorite storyline: Toss-up between Mockingbird's endless-estrangement-from-Hawkeye subplot (which reduced her to a grouchy AWC supporting character for about fifty issues or so) and her senseless murder by Mephisto shortly after she and Hawkeye had finally patched things up.
Future for the character: Death ain't final at Marvel, especially under supernatural circumstances. Like the similarly ill-used Hellcat, Mockingbird could easily be revived by a willing writer.
