A Mockingbird’s-Eye View
Believing the Super-Soldier project had been infiltrated, Fury promoted Morse to field agent (Agent 19) and sent her undercover at the project, led by her mentor Dr. Wilma Calvin and Dr. Ted Sallis, to romance Dr. Paul Allen, the suspected spy. After Sallis vanished and Calvin was shot, Allen suggested recruiting tracker/adventurer Kevin Plunder, AKA Ka-Zar, to find Sallis. Morse, posing as a distressed psychic, deceived Plunder’s servants into revealing that Ka-Zar was in the Savage Land, a hidden tropical region of prehistoric animals in Antarctica. Paul and Bobbi flew there, but attacking pterodactyls forced their plane down and Morse became embroiled in a war between dinosaur-mounted descendants of British and German World War II veterans; however, Ka- Zar rescued them, and Bobbi soon convinced him to return to civilization with her.
As the trio (plus Ka-Zar’s saber-toothed tiger, Zabu) reached the Florida lab, Advanced Idea Mechanics’ (A.I.M.) operatives attacked the camp, but Ka-Zar and the monstrous Ted Sallis, AKA Man-Thing, drove them off. After the recovering Calvin revealed that she thought Sallis might actually be the Man-Thing, Allen kidnapped and brought her to A.I.M.’s base. In the end, Bobbi, Ka-Zar and the Man-Thing destroyed the base and rescued Calvin; Allen died in the battle. Bobbi and Ka-Zar brought Calvin back to New York, where she eventually revealed she had one completed Super-Soldier serum batch. Morse helped Ka-Zar retrieve it after Gemini (Joshua Link), the Plunderer (Ka-Zar’s brother Parnival Plunder) and the youthful Tsiln alien Gog stole it; however, A.I.M. had reproduced the original serum as well. Morse and Ka-Zar were sent to assault an upstate New York A.I.M. base in search of it. A.I.M. scientist Victor Conrad, AKA Victorius, had self-injected A.I.M.’s only known batch, and after Victorius’ defeat, Ka-Zar destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D.’s batch as well; Calvin refused to recreate it. Soon thereafter, Ka-Zar returned to the Savage Land despite his and Bobbi’s burgeoning emotional attachment.
Assigned to tail crimelord el Tigré in South America, Morse followed Tigré to the Savage Land, where she and Ka-Zar joined forces against Tigré and Maa-Gor the Man-Ape until the villains defeated themselves; Bobbi returned to civilization afterwards. When prehuman artifacts wreaking destruction in Denmark were later tied to the Savage Land, Bobbi led yet another S.H.I.E.L.D. mission there, assisted by jungle adventurer Shanna O’Hara, AKA Shanna. Morse, Ka-Zar, and Shanna determined the artifacts’ origins and destroyed them.
Loving the excitement of her earlier adventures, Bobbi became dissatisfied with S.H.I.E.L.D. after a series of boring bodyguard assignments. However, while she was protecting S.H.I.E.L.D. lawyer Orlando Zarate, a suitcase bomb killed him and nearly her as well. Congressman F.A. Kirk, a member of the S.H.I.E.L.D. oversight committee, privately informed Morse that rogue elements were running parts of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Bobbi agreed to go undercover and investigate. Tracing the bomb to Mexico City, Bobbi disrupted S.H.I.E.L.D. activity there as the costumed Huntress. She successfully uncovered rogue operative Rico Santana, but her efforts caused the death of four people, including Santana, two other criminals, and a loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. operative and close friend of Bobbi’s. Unaware of Santana’s crimes, Fury declared the Huntress a shoot-on-sight enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D..
Abandoning her Huntress identity, Bobbi developed a new one. Calling herself Mockingbird (partly in tribute to one of Fury’s old CIA operations), Bobbi wrecked the crooked S.H.I.E.L.D. base in Seattle and infiltrated a succession of other bases. S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives pursued her, and she was assaulted in New York only to have Spider-Man come to her aid. Corrupt Branch Director Carl Delandan soon convinced Spider-Man that Mockingbird was a S.H.I.E.L.D. enemy, then nearly killed both heroes before Nick Fury intervened. While conveying her evidence of corruption to Fury, Mockingbird was caught in S.H.I.E.L.D. crossfire and nearly killed.
Given her single-handed exposure of S.H.I.E.L.D. corruption, Fury offered Morse a promotion while she recovered. After six months of hospitalization and physical therapy, Morse turned down the offer and left S.H.I.E.L.D. to become a solo operative. Investigating rumors of a mass mind-control device being created at Cross Technological Enterprises (CTE), she clashed with CTE security chief Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, a longtime Avengers member. Captured after a brief skirmish with Barton, Mockingbird found herself imprisoned by CTE alongside Hawkeye after he looked into her claims of corruption at the company. Escaping, Hawkeye and Mockingbird set about investigating CTE, which quickly cost Hawkeye his job, belongings, and even his girlfriend Sheila Danning.
Mockingbird’s apartment was bombed, and the duo were soon captured by the brains behind CTE’s illegal enterprises, freelancer Crossfire, whose ultrasonic mind control set the two heroes at each other’s throats. Hawkeye used a sonic arrowhead to overcome the control, defeating Cross but largely deafening himself in the process. In the aftermath, a battered Mockingbird proposed a more permanent partnership to Hawkeye. Trying to conceal his deafness since he didn’t want her pity, Hawkeye muttered something noncommittal and turned away, but the stunned Bobbi went after him anyway and forced him to explain himself. They were married shortly thereafter, only nine days after they first met.
After a honeymoon in the New York Poconos, Clint brought Bobbi to their temporary new home, Avengers Mansion; she soon helped the Avengers defeat the Mechano-Marauder during a taping of David Letterman’s TV show. A party thrown for the couple by the Avengers convinced her how important the Avengers were in Hawkeye’s life, and left her somewhat awestruck when the Asgardian god Thor blessed their union. When Hawkeye and most of the team vanished soon afterward, Mockingbird and several reserve Avengers tried to maintain order and investigate the disappearances, but Hawkeye and the others returned only a few days later from the cosmic Beyonder’s “secret war.” Given the quantity of Avengers now present, the team’s new chairman Vision (later “Victor Shade”) proposed the formation of a second Avengers roster, to be based in California and led by Hawkeye.
Clint and Bobbi flew to Los Angeles, where Bill Foster, AKA Giant Man, helped them seek a suitable headquarters. A vengeful Crossfire used aged starlet Moira Brandon to lure the newlyweds into a trap, but Moira helped them recapture the villain. The couple then purchased Brandon’s oceanside Palos Verdes estate, which became the new Avengers Compound. Carried along by Hawkeye’s enthusiasm despite her doubts, Mockingbird joined him, Wonder Man, Tigra, and Rhodes in forming the new West Coast Avengers team. Immediately successful, the western group defeated major menace Franklin Hall, AKA Graviton, and his accomplice the Blank, and worked with the east coast branch to oppose Maelstrom, an out-of-control Vision, a Dire Wraith invasion, and Victor von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom.
The western team evolved quickly with Tony Stark replacing Rhodes as Iron Man while the Thing, Bonita Juarez, AKA Firebird, and Dr. Henry Pym, AKA Hank Pym, associated with them, defeating foes such as the Lethal Legion, Martin Preston, AKA Master Pandemonium, Ghaur, the Hulk, an insane Quicksilver, and the android Zodiac. With Captain America’s aid, Mockingbird and Hawkeye also recaptured Crossfire yet again, defeating the Death-Throws team of criminal jugglers at the same time. Shortly thereafter, Mockingbird adopted a new costume appropriate for the hot California weather. During this period, Bobbi also lost both her parents in an as-yet unrevealed manner.
Critical of Hawkeye having overlooked the eager Firebird in favor of the Thing as a potential recruit, Mockingbird finally convinced Clint to offer Firebird Avengers membership. During a trip to New Mexico for this purpose, the team encountered the alien menace Dominus, who transported them via time machine to the year 1876. After teaming with heroes Johnny Clay/Bart, AKA Rawhide Kid, Matt Hawk, AKA Two-Gun Kid, and Lincoln Slade, AKA Phantom Rider, to defeat several Old West foes, the heroes came up with a plan to return to their own time. However, the Phantom Rider kidnapped Mockingbird as they departed, stranding her while her teammates uncontrollably shifted to another time period.
The Rider drugged Bobbi with a mystic herbal potion, making her believe she was a 19th-century woman who loved him. They returned to his home in Lordsburg, New Mexico Territory, and as Barbara Morse, she was introduced to the townsfolk as lawman Lincoln Slade’s intended bride. She also became the Phantom Rider’s crime-fighting partner in her Mockingbird guise. The Two-Gun Kid and Rawhide Kid soon tracked her down, and Two-Gun disguised himself as Hawkeye and successfully shocked her back to her senses. Outraged that Slade had brainwashed and raped her, Mockingbird fought the Phantom Rider alongside Two-Gun and Rawhide, insisted on pursuing Slade alone after that skirmish, and ultimately cornered him atop rain-swept Spirit Mountain. The Phantom Rider slipped during the ensuing fight, and clung by his fingertips to wet rocks over a fatal drop while Mockingbird considered his fate. “Woman,” he cried out, “you will pull me up—the Phantom Rider commands it!” ”Drop dead,” she replied, watching as Slade fell to his doom. Soon afterward, Hawkeye and the Avengers returned from their time travels to bring Bobbi back to the modern era.
Afraid to disappoint her husband, Bobbi told Clint that the Phantom Rider had killed himself, but she almost instantly regretted this lie. Agonizing over the decision, she eventually told Hawkeye the truth, but his surprising indifference to her confession helped expose “Clint” as the Zodiac’s android imposter Sagittarius, who had replaced Hawkeye and infiltrated the Avengers. The real Hawkeye was soon rescued, but when he told Bobbi how his faith in her had sustained him during this ordeal, a guilt-stricken Mockingbird could not confess the truth.
The present-day Hamilton Slade, AKA Phantom Rider, was unknowingly possessed by his great-great grandfather Lincoln’s ghost (as well as the ghost of Lincoln’s brother and predecessor as the Rider, Carter), who began haunting Mockingbird. She violently confronted Hamilton to no avail, secretly freeing the monstrous Yetrigar to occupy the Avengers while she did so. Shortly thereafter, Mockingbird was briefly jailed with most of her teammates during a mission to Hungary, and she confessed her role in Slade’s death to them. Invisibly observing their supportive reactions to her story, the Phantom Rider feared Hawkeye might forgive her, too. Intent on denying Bobbi happiness, the Rider told Hawkeye that Mockingbird had murdered him and lied to them about it. Hawkeye became furious at her lies, and Bobbi equally furious at Clint’s lack of support. Upon their return to California, Bobbi left the Avengers, accompanied by sympathetic teammates Tigra and Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight.
This trio teamed with Giant-Man to face Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary, in the Savage Land (encountering Ka-Zar and his wife Shanna along the way), investigated the criminal Night Shift gang, and fought the Phantom Rider. Their occult ally Daimon Hellstrom, AKA Hellstorm, exorcised Hamilton Slade, consigning Lincoln’s spirit to a nether-dimension, while Carter’s spirit and Hamilton formed a new, benevolent Phantom Rider. Mockingbird’s haunting was over, and her trio broke up. Bobbi then tried to reconcile with Hawkeye, but he stood her up to help a former girlfriend in trouble.
At loose ends, Bobbi was recruited into a supposed S.H.I.E.L.D. project devising means to neutralize the android Vision if he became a threat to national security. The project was actually run by Vigilance, a secret international intelligence coalition formed to target Vision after his brief attempt at world domination under the influence of alien computer ISAAC. Eventually realizing Vigilance was not a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation and that their plans posed a danger to the Avengers, Bobbi tried to leave but was imprisoned. She escaped weeks later, but not before parts of her plans had been used to capture and dismantle the Vision. Returning to the Avengers, she confessed her mistake and helped the team recover the Vision.
When Hawkeye quit the group soon thereafter, Bobbi tracked him down in hopes of reconciling, still angry at him but also still in love with him. Together, the fractious couple mentored the Midwestern novice heroes calling themselves the Great Lakes Avengers (GLA). After Crossfire made another attempt on Hawkeye’s life, Clint briefly considered letting Cross fall to his death, which gained him a small understanding of Bobbi’s past actions. He forgave Bobbi, telling her he still loved her; however, the duo soon split again, with Hawkeye returning to Palos Verdes while Mockingbird worked with the GLA. The couple reunited several times over the following months in an on-again, off-again manner. During this period, Mockingbird tried to discourage Hawkeye’s naive one-man crusade against Los Angeles street gangs, which resulted in many deaths and spurred an innocent boy to become the killer vigilante Terminizer.
When the Avengers voted on a revised western roster, Mockingbird received only one vote, and a resentful Hawkeye openly admitted it wasn’t his. The two worked together as Avengers, but an unplanned pregnancy ended when Bobbi suffered an early miscarriage. Despite this, Mockingbird occasionally served as an Avengers reservist, fending off unwanted romantic attention from John Walker, AKA U.S.Agent, and watching her estranged husband flirt with new member Julia Carpenter, AKA Spider-Woman (later Arachne). However, Tony Stark’s seeming demise prompted Hawkeye to rethink his attitude, and he once again sincerely apologized to Mockingbird for his actions. Unswayed, Bobbi filed the papers finalizing their divorce. While trying to tell Hawkeye this, they were interrupted by a crisis regarding the mad robot Ultron. Mockingbird was kidnapped by Ultron, who used her brain patterns to create his new robotic bride Alkhema, but the Avengers came to her rescue. While the other Avengers fought Ultron, shape-shifting extraterrestrial Skrulls abducted Mockingbird and replaced her with a doppelganger as part of their infiltration of Earth’s Super Hero community.
Overjoyed when “Bobbi” was recovered alive after her Ultron kidnapping, Clint reconciled with the duplicate, who soon died in action. Meanwhile, the true Bobbi was held captive on a Skrull world, where Skrulls posing as Avengers deceived her into thinking she was still on Earth in an attempt to extract information from her. Escaping, she was hunted for years by a Skrull impersonating Hawkeye, eventually killing him. She was later recaptured, but not before stealing vital Skrull information on corruption within the U.S. government, its covert agencies and various other nations and organizations.
Freed from captivity after the Skrulls’ failed invasion, Bobbi joined an outlaw Avengers faction alongside Clint, opposing corrupt security czar Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin, and forming the new World Counterterrorism Agency (WCA), comprised of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who were captured by the Skrulls, and using her stolen Skrull intelligence data to choose missions. Coming to terms with their past, the divorced but reconciled Bobbi and Clint are now dating while serving with both the WCA and the no longer outlawed Avengers. Bobbi was also recently reunited with her family after years of leading them to believe she was dead for their protection. Though, this soon led to the Morse family being targeted by a vengeful Crossfire and Phantom Rider, the latter using Hamilton’s daughter Jaime Slade as a host body.
After the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D. formed an alliance to destroy serious threats to the world, Bobbi joined this new incarnation of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Avengers. While on a mission to assassinate the leader of A.I.M., the Scientist Supreme, she suffered some amnesia and was stranded their for months impersonating one of their agents. She was eventually caught and brainwashed into working for them to eliminate her fellow teammate Taskmaster but broke free of their hold and escaped with her teammates.
Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., she received an assignment from Fury to be S.H.I.E.L.D.’s liaison to Parker Industries, who were working on S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. During her time working with Peter Parker, she helped Spider-Man against his enemies. She also took up the role of mentor and became Cindy Moon, AKA Silk’s handler. She had a romantic relationship with STRIKE agent Lancelot “Lance” Hunter, whom she often called Clint.
When the warped Steve Rogers conquered America, Bobbi joined the resistance, the Underground, against Hydra. Her mission was to retrieve the Cosmic Cube Kobik to restore the original Steve Rogers. She worked in secret with no-nonsense S.H.I.E.L.D. operative Maria Hill to retrieve Kobik, which was in shards. After Steve Rogers was restored, S.H.I.E.L.D. was no more and Bobbi embarked on a romantic relationship with Peter Parker, whose company also dissolved. She takes a job working security for Humanitech Robotics, and with Spider-Man’s help, discovers that their Artificial Intelligence was actually an imprisoned Quicksand. They freed him, and then broke off their relationship due to lack of common interests.
Bobbi then joined Nadia Van Dyne’s Genius in Action Research Labs (G.I.R.L.) project as the young scientists’ mentor. She grew close with Nadia and runaway Ying Liu, dedicating herself to helping Ying uncover her mysterious past.
