Songbird (comics)
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| Songbird | |
 Songbird Art by Marko Djurdjevic. |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Marvel Two-in-One #54 (August, 1979) |
| Created by | Mark Gruenwald Ralph Macchio John Byrne |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Melissa Joan Gold |
| Team affiliations | Thunderbolts Grapplers UCWF Masters of Evil Femizons |
| Notable aliases | Mimi Schwartz, Screaming Mimi |
| Abilities | Sound manipulation Ability to create "solid sound" constructs |
Songbird is a fictional character, a superheroine and reformed supervillainess in the Marvel Comics universe.
Contents |
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Early life and the Grapplers
Melissa Gold was a troubled runaway from an alcoholic father and incarcerated mother. In order to survive on the streets, Melissa developed a hard edge to her personality, referring to herself as "Mimi." She eventually found work as a costumed professional wrestler, taking the stage name Screaming Mimi, and joined the wrestling team known as the Grapplers. The Grapplers became renowned for their colorful personalities and ringside antics, but the wrestling federation denied them the opportunity to make the amount of money their male counterparts made. Instead, the group agreed to earn supplementary income by performing a covert operation for the Roxxon Oil Company. The Grapplers were given special paraphernalia to assist them in their mission; Mimi received an apparatus that converted her voice to high-frequency sonics for various effects. The mission failed due to the hero Quasar, and the Grapplers were tried and jailed for their misdeeds. When the Grapplers were finally paroled, they discovered that the women's wrestling movement had lost its momentum without them, so they continued to perform crimes to support themselves. Later, the Grapplers set their sights on a women's division of the super-powered Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation. Their manager, Auntie Freeze, arranged for the women to augment their natural abilities with artificial powers created by the agency Power Broker, Inc. While the other Grapplers received superhuman strength, Mimi instead had her vocal enhancements internalized as a throat implant. It was once believed that Mimi had also gained superhuman strength, but it was established after the fact in the Thunderbolts series (see below) that this was not the case. The all-new Grapplers made a legitimate professional comeback that proved short-lived. The team dissolved when two of their members, Titania and Letha, were killed by the vigilante Scourge.
[edit] Masters of Evil and the Thunderbolts
Melissa was later contacted by the criminal Baron Helmut Zemo to join his version of the Masters of Evil. Her first assignment was to help bust the female Yellowjacket out of prison, but Melissa was captured in the subsequent battle with the Wasp, Black Knight, and Paladin. Later, she formed a romantic and criminal partnership with the similarly-empowered Angar the Screamer, at one point battling the Avengers Hawkeye and Mockingbird. However, Angar was mortally wounded by a gunshot during a robbery attempt that went sour, and died in Melissa's arms after they escaped. Mad with grief, Melissa screamed, burning out her power. Immediately afterward, Melissa was contacted by Baron Zemo once more, and she accepted his offer to join a formative Masters of Evil. Zemo allowed Melissa to be nursed back to health, and his accomplice, the Fixer, gave her new powers via a voice-augmenting harness and high-tech implants in her neck based on technology from the villain Klaw. With her newly-transformed powers, Melissa adopted the identity of Songbird as a member of the Thunderbolts, a new Masters of Evil group posing as super-heroes to win the world's trust while secretly plotting world conquest under Zemo's direction. However, Melissa and most of the other Thunderbolts grew to like their heroic roles. In particular, Melissa began to truly grow into her own and even began a romance with her teammate Abner Jenkins, alias MACH-1, formerly the Beetle. Ultimately, the Thunderbolts turned against Zemo, foiling his attempt at world domination and rescuing the Avengers in the process. Melissa continued to serve with the team, who operated as a team of outlaw super-heroes.
Following the battle with Zemo, Songbird began gradually slipping back into her hard-edged Mimi-type persona, and was verbally abusive to Jenkins on several occasions and angrily rebuked him whenever he offered her any type of assistance, in stark contrast to her previous emotional dependence on him. When Jenkins' love and concern for her remained unaffected despite her treatment of him, Songbird finally explained to him that after repeatedly losing the things and people she most cared about, including Angar and the public adulation she had enjoyed before the Thunderbolts were exposed as villains, she had developed a fear of abandonment and felt that the only way she could cope would be to not care about anything or anybody that might abandon her, including Jenkins. Jenkins assured her that he would never abandon her, and the two became close once again.
When veteran Avengers member Hawkeye joined the Thunderbolts as their new leader to help them regain the public's trust, Hawkeye insisted that MACH-1, as the team's only convicted murderer, would have to serve his prison sentence for the good of the group's image. Jenkins reluctantly agreed, separating him from Melissa. The timing of Hawkeye's demand was unfortunate, as it happened shortly after Melissa had ceased pushing Abe away, and after he had given his word that he would never leave her. When MACH-1 returned months later through a bargain struck with the Commission on Superhuman Activities (CSA), adopting a new identity as MACH-2, he underwent appearance-altering surgery to conceal his true identity. He was unexpectedly turned into a man with African-American features, and Melissa was initially disturbed by the change. However, she has since become accustomed to it, and their relationship survived. When the Thunderbolts uncovered and thwarted a CSA-connected conspiracy to exterminate all superhumans, Hawkeye blackmailed the CSA into giving the Thunderbolts full pardons in exchange for the group's silence; however, CSA agent Henry Peter Gyrich insisted that he would not go along with the deal unless Hawkeye went to prison for his technically illegal vigilante activities as a member of the Thunderbolts. Hawkeye agreed, despite the protests of his teammates, and surrendered to federal custody. Most of the rest of the Thunderbolts, including MACH-2 and Melissa, were pardoned and released. However, as part of the terms of their deal, they were forbidden from public use of superhuman powers or costumed identities. Melissa turned her equipment over to the authorities and the two started new civilian lives in the town of Burton Canyon, Colorado as Abe Jenkins and Melissa Gold.
Unfortunately, their quiet lives were shattered when the super-criminal Graviton launched his latest attempt at world conquest in Burton Canyon, imprisoning the world's superheroes and literally reshaping the planet in his own image. Despite their reluctance to risk their newfound freedom, MACH-2 and Melissa agreed to join Citizen V (secretly Baron Helmut Zemo controlling Citizen V's body) in attacking Graviton as part of a new team of Thunderbolts. Melissa was given a new power-harness provided by the Citizen V's financiers, the V-Battalion. Graviton was defeated and the world was saved, but MACH-3 and the other Thunderbolts disappeared in an implosion created by the dying Graviton's power, with the exception of Songbird, who appeared left behind as the sole survivor. In reality, MACH-3 and the other vanished Thunderbolts survived but were stranded on an alternate Earth. Melissa had little time to mourn, as immediately afterward, she was attacked by Scream, a rogue creation of the CSA who turned out to be Angar resurrected as an entity of pure sound. She helped the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D. destroy Scream, and she also destroyed her sound-shaping harness, apparently intending to retire her Songbird identity again.
[edit] Quest for Hawkeye
However, she was outfitted with new sound technology by SHIELD, who recruited her to help track down Hawkeye, who was officially an escaped fugitive but was unofficially pursuing a secret mission on behalf of SHIELD commander Dum Dum Dugan. After doing some undercover detective work in her old criminal persona as Mimi, Songbird was reunited with Hawkeye, joining forces with him and a captive Plantman to seek out the mysterious legacy of Justin Hammer on behalf of SHIELD. They discovered that Hammer's legacy was a biological toxin that had been ingested by every single villain who had ever worked for him and that one of the villains, Plantman, was the carrier. Hawkeye, Songbird, and Plantman began a new search for the trigger that would release Plantman's toxin. The search ended with Hammer's daughter, Justine, who turned out to be the Crimson Cowl, leader of the Masters of Evil. Hawkeye convinced several members of the Masters of Evil to side with him and Songbird against Crimson Cowl and their former allies. As a new team of Thunderbolts, the group ultimately defeated the Crimson Cowl and her Masters of Evil, and Plantman (now Blackheath) managed to release an antidote for the toxin into the atmosphere.
Songbird was often acting second-in-command to Hawkeye in keeping his Thunderbolts under control. They next helped the true Citizen V and the V-Battalion, whose ship was powered by an engine of alien technology that began distorting and threatened to suck the Earth into the null space of a white hole. The Thunderbolts were asked to move a great quantity of mass to plug the hole. In so doing, the Thunderbolts encountered Zemo's Thunderbolts, who emerged from the void after severing the alien ship's presence from Counter-Earth. The two teams combined forces to plug the void and shunt the alien ship from Earth, similar to the manner in which Zemo's team stopped the threat on Counter-Earth. Songbird's reunion with Jenkins was short-lived. After much discussion, MACH-3 once more remanded himself to police custody to serve the remainder of his sentence. Most of the other costumed heroes and villains chose to part company as well, and Songbird agreed to stay with the Thunderbolts under Zemo's leadership, despite his claim that their mission was to attempt to rule the world in order to save it.
For the last six months, while keeping an eye on Baron Zemo with Atlas and Vantage's help. Melissa fed information to Abe Jenkins while he was in prison. Following the Liberator project, in the course of which Moonstone was brain-damaged and Zemo was badly scarred, the Thunderbolts broke up again. The Avengers offered Songbird a reserve membership post, but she declined, feeling that she could not be on a team that she didn't trust and that didn't trust her.
[edit] New Thunderbolts
Eventually, she rejoined her lover, Abe Jenkins in reforming the Thunderbolts. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of stopping Baron Strucker, Melissa was displeased with Abe over his dealing with HYDRA and decided to quit the team. Melissa returned to school while trying to figure out the truth behind Atlas and Genis-Vell which caught the attention of Zebediah Killgrave a.k.a the Purple Man. Ambushed by Killgrave at her dormitory, Melissa was rescued by the Swordsman who told her that there was an even bigger plot to destroy the Thunderbolts in place. Following the Purple Man's defeat, Melissa agreed to return to the team on the condition that she was permitted to lead it.
During her tenure as team leader, she lead the Thunderbolts' attack on the Avengers and recently seems to have started a romantic relationship with the returned Baron Zemo. This was later revealed to be a ruse, in order for her to get revenge on Zemo for killing Genis.
[edit] Civil War
During the superhero Civil War, the Thunderbolts were approached by the government to catch super villains and rehabilitate them. The Thunderbolts is now a team of villains under government watch assigned to hunt down and incarcerate unregistered heroes. Norman Osborn became the director of the Thunderbolts and demoted Melissa because she was too moral, giving her leadership position to the recently recovered Moonstone. Melissa is clearly uncomfortable with the situation, and is only still on the team for fear of imprisonment. However, when the team yet again makes a mess of a job trying to capture Steel Spider and Moonstone is wounded, she and Radioactive Man decide to approach the matter the old way, and decides to temporarily act as leader in capturing the Steel Spider.[1] Melissa has been shown to dislike most of her teammates, as instead of villains seeking redemption, the new team of Thunderbolts are largely fighting for personal gain. She also misled Bullseye, leading him to be gravely injured.
Recently, Melissa was gravely injured by the Golden Age superhero Toro when he, along with the time-displaced Invaders attacked the Thunderbolts after witnessing them attempting to arrest Spider-Man and in Times Square, and thinking them to be Nazis. Interestingly enough, Toro displayed a slight attraction to Melissa, commenting that she was, "Too cute to be a Nazi", before engaging her in combat, and defending his remarks about her after Namor claims that his display of affection for an enemy was disgusting.
[edit] Powers and abilities
As Screaming Mimi, Gold's enhanced vocal cords could generate a high-pitched sonic "scream" that not only incapacitated others by deafening them, but could also generate disorienting hallucinatory effects, induce mental pain, cause distortion of sensory perceptions, and unconsciousness. At the upper limit of her scream's power, it could actually damage physical objects. Faced with the death of her lover, Angar the Screamer, she screamed for 43 minutes in a fit of hysteria, creating a large blast crater and literally liquefying nearby plant life (Thunderbolts Annual- 1997). This outburst nearly destroyed her vocal cords, and depowered her briefly until she assumed the Songbird alias.
As Songbird, Gold uses a derivation of technology created by the criminal Ulysses Klaw that converts sound into a malleable form of energy that has physical form and mass, termed "solid sound". She could initially create simple 3-dimensional sound/mass constructions, though as she has gained experience in her new powers, she has learned to create more complex forms. She shapes and animates these by mental command and they only remain in existence for as long as she wills them to. She can "fly" by generating solid sound "wings" attached to her body; initially, these were created as glider-style wings, stretching from wrists to feet, though more recently they are shown attached to her back. Presumably, she animates the wings to flap or somehow generates a propulsive force with her powers, since her airborne speed and maneuverability to date extend well beyond simple gliding.
Songbird has also occasionally exhibited an ability to influence others through sub-vocal (below the level of conscious human hearing) sonics; this is more of a subtle "nudge" or subconscious suggestion rather than outright mind control. This is apparently an effect generated by the remnants of her original sonic enhancements; it remains to be seen if her "Screaming Mimi" powers will ever return in full.
As a former wrestler, she has some skill in hand-to-hand combat.
[edit] Other versions
[edit] Marvel Zombies
Songbird appears alongside the Thunderbolts in the Dead Days one-shot of the Marvel Zombies miniseries attacking Thor and later Nova. She is quickly destroyed by the Invisible Woman when she tries to bite Nova.
[edit] References
- ^ Thunderbolts (vol. 2) #114
