Mockingbird has one of the most disjointed introductions I can think of for a character in the Marvel Universe. She made her mark in the pages of West Coast Avengers as the wife of Hawkeye. She was a co-leader of the team and truth told was often more tactically adept than her husband, and she had the nerves to do what needed to be done. The long and convoluted story of Bobbie Morse is collected here but you can be forgiven if you forget it's about her while you read it. She spends a lot of time in the background.
She first appears in the pages of Astonishing Tales #6 as a desperate, seemingly weak brown-haired woman who shows up at the estate of Lord Kevin Plunder (aka Ka-Zar) desperate to find the savage lord of the Savage Land.
In the next issue we meet Barbara (Bobbi) Morse again as she decides to venture to the Savage Land to find Ka-Zar. Her mission remains an enigma. And frankly I'm reasonably sure that whatever Gerry Conway had in mind for the character, it got changed when others such as Roy Thomas and Gary Friedrich pitched in to write Ka-Zar stories.
She and a man named Paul fly into the Savage Land and end up needing Ka-Zar's help almost immediately. Herb Trimpe gives us some robust art for this issue.
Ka-Zar has his hands full rescuing the duo from a lost colony of WWII fanatics who want the war to rage perpetually. Barry Smith is on hand to wrap up this saga.
The pair cling to Ka-Zar for their health and convince him to travel with them to the United States. The reasons remain murky. Gil Kane's art for Mike Friedrich's story reprises the origin of Ka-Zar and Zabu. This collection only contains the framing sequence featuring Bobbie and Paul.
When finally, the trio arrives in Florida, in the Everglades to be specific, Ka-Zar learns for the first time that the Super-Soldier Serum is the maguffin which fires the mysteries. The mysterious Man-Thing is worked into the tapestry of his tale in a story originally intended for Savage Tales #2 by Len Wein and Neal Adams. A researcher named Dr. Calvin has been hurt and somehow or other it's imagined that Ka-Zar offers help. I never quite figured out how exactly to be honest.
But Ka-Zar and Zabu battle the Man-Thing, bringing the shambling creature into the MU mainstream. Paul proves to be duplicitous as an AIM agent and Bobbi turns out to be a SHIELD operative. John Buscema wraps up his two-issue stint on the comic.
Next stop is NYC where Ka-Zar is once again the savage man in the civilized jungle dispensing his hard justice. Mike Friedrich becomes the regular scribe on this series. This issue features some of Gil Kane's best work.
Bobbi Morse recedes a bit in the story as Ka-Zar spends his time battling a street gang. Rich Buckler fills in as artist.
Dan Adkins takes the art helm as the story focuses again on the Super-Soldier Serum which is wanted by a member of the Zodiac named Gemini. For the record Gemini is a strange blend of two brothers named Link who have their origin story told in Astonishing Tales #8.
It eventually turns out that an insane scientist gets exposed to the serum and becomes the imposing villain, Victorious. Dan Adkins is the artist of record though a young Jim Starlin steps in to finish up the issue.
The battle is a ferocious one and wraps up in Astonishing Tales #20, the final Ka-Zar issue before It, The Living Colossus took up residence. Bobbie Morse for her part has been tagging along helping out and actually gets a cover feature, the first since issue twelve. To be honest these stories are terrific and I'm happy to have them, but Bobbi Morse is a supporting character and supposed romantic interest for Ka-Zar. The latter role is never convincing really. For the record Marie Severin is the artist on the last chapter of this little epic.
Then follows a three-part tale in the new Ka-Zar series. Written by Mike Friedrich and drawn by Don Heck, this story has godlike figure battle Ka-Zar and Shanna the She-Devil. Bobbi Morse shows up out of the blue to lend a hand. She and Shanna hang out but truth told contribute little to the story. They seem to be here mostly to make things uncomfortable for Ka-Zar.
Bobbi and Shanna are both on hand in a black and white adventure in Savage Tales #8 which has Ka-Zar and Zabu battle a powerful alien force. John Buscema is the artist with Tony DeZuniga inks for this Gerry Conway yarn. Bobbi plays a small role and this is her last in these pages of Ka-Zar.
It is three hundred pages into this collection before we get Bobbi Morse in solo action. The story is from Marvel Super Action #1, a one-shot magazine which headlined the Punisher who was just beginning to hot up at Marvel. Dominic Fortune by Howie Chaykin makes a notable appearance. But the "Huntress" is the story by Mike Friedrich, George Evans and Frank Springer which interests us today. Bobbi Morse has gone underground again for SHIELD, specifically to ferret out a double-agent who is a threat to the organization. To do that she adopts the masked identity of the Huntress. She finds her man. This was apparently originally a two-part tale which was smashed together at the last moment to fit this new format.
Bobbi Morse disappears yet again, turning up of all places in Marvel Team-Up battling with and alongside Spider-Man. She has at long last adopted the codename Mockingbird. Turns out the character was originally to be a villain for Spider-Woman, but things changed when writer Steven Grant saw Mark Gruenwald's sketches and the Huntress became Mockingbird. Using her distinctive battle staves she is a worthy warrior but working again to uncover a SHIELD traitor she ends up at the finale of this story terribly wounded. This issue drawn by Jim Janes features one of my favorite Frank Miller covers.
The catch-as-catch-can career of Mockingbird takes its most significant turn when she shows up in the debut issue of one of Marvel's earliest limited series starring Hawkeye. Clint Barton is riding high as a security chief for Cross Technologies when sadly he learns he's been duped, and the place is producing criminal hardware. Mockingbird is back, recovered from her wounds and is more that happy to help Hawkeye fight the villians. The duo find themselves under assault and must rely on one another to battle the likes of the Crossfire, Silencer, Oddball and Bombshell. Mark Gruenwald both writes and draws this series with help from inkers Brett Breeding and Danny Bulanadi. And it features some real changes to the characters. Hawkeye's hearing damaged in these battles and to great surprise of readers at the time Clint Barton and Bobbi Morse get hitched. This series set the stage for the duo to take the helm of the West Coast Avengers where both served for over one hundred issues.
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