The Marvel Super Heroes Podcast

The Marvel Super Heroes Podcast Episode 017

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To Hell with Mockingbird

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Note: We like our language NSFW salty, and there be spoilers here…

Face Front, True Believers! Agent 19 of S.H.I.E.L.D., A.K.A. Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Morse, is the subject of this week’s podcast! Long, long before she made the trip to weekly live action television star, the future Mockingbird was totally unrecognizable and unnamed in 1971’s Astonishing Tales #6 before becoming a supporting character to Ka-Zar with ties to the origin of Man-Thing! Who knew? Supposedly created by Len Wein and Neal Adams for a story in Savage Tales magazine that was long delayed in publication, Morse went through so many changes that a case could be made for her having a half dozen or more other pappies before becoming the character we kinda sorta know today. She’s the one who was married to Hawkeye, right? Mister Fixit, Illegal Machine and Diabolu Frank will take you to Hell and back with their discussion of Mockingbird, but not everybody will make it through the journey home. Huge debt for information relayed in this week’s episode owed to Brian Cronin’s 2011 Comics Should Be Good article A Hell of a Past – Mockingbird article, recently updated with major new developments, so check it out! Especially because his article is a defacto extended episode art gallery, though we added a few large images to the episode art tumblr.

On the back end, we discuss the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer and open the Mighty Marvel Mail Bag. That happened on Sunday night, so Frank took Mac’s advice to go slack ass on editing. Please excuse the mess of umms and awkward pauses. There’s a great big chunk of our discussion that took up too much time, so that’ll have to get plugged in somewhere else down the line. Somebody leave a comment about why the hell Bobbi’s codename is Mockingbird, k? Oh, hey, and yes Mac, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was published by Marvel Comics. It was adapted by Evan Dorkin of Milk and Cheese fame, as was the twelve issue ongoing series that followed. th’sheridans’ Health music video isn’t embeddable, but if you touch that different colored glowy text a few words back, it will take you on a short journey to YouTube.

As you can tell, we love a fierce conversation and a pretty picture, so why don’t you socialize with us, either by leaving a comment on this page or…

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9 thoughts on “The Marvel Super Heroes Podcast Episode 017”

  2. Thanks for another fun show, though having read Brian Cronin’s Mockingbird piece at CBR too, a lot of it was pretty repetitive; hopefully this will just be a one off – if you want to do a character and someone has just handily got there first, do someone else. It’s your spin I want, lads, your madness. Moments such as the outburst over people forming whole opinions on unseen films based on trailers – that’s the stuff!

    The knitting together of Unnamed Psychic Brunette and Barbara ‘Bobbi’ Morse worked not a all, I don’t know why Marvel didn’t just leave PB to one side until someone had a story for her. Not everything has to be tied up (see also Elf With a Gun as Android and the Rampaging Hulk Was All Bereet’s Movies).

    Now, you asked for requests for future focuses … you didn’t? Darn.

    Nighthawk, please!

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  3. Martin, cards on the table, this entire episode was a great big cock-up of circumstances. The plan was to cover several different Marvel horror properties in the weeks leading up to Halloween, starting with Tigra instead of ending with it. Tigra had already been a Friday night rush job for Tuesday “broadcast” in between Mac coming to his home from day work and my visiting his place on the way to night work. Ever since my vacation, we’ve been without any material buffer, so I haven’t had much breathing room. Anyway, the idea for Tigra was to have Mac do one story, and Fixit the other, but we were short a man and did the double as a duo. We had about a half hour left over before I had to split, so we recorded another horror-themed episode featuring a book I specifically had Fixit in mind to read, but he hadn’t and wasn’t available, and it didn’t play as well with Mac. Further, it was one book of three, and covered in haste, with our presentation of the material was so disorganized that the portions I’ve edited became a jigsaw puzzle of rearrangement yet to be solved, so that material may end up going nowhere ever. In another session with all three of us, I was going to give a rundown of the first dozen issues of Tomb of Dracula, interspersed with discussion of Fixit & Mac’s experiences with the property and a hazing of the Japanese animated adaptation. Turned out neither of my partners had any significant connection to the property, our intended “long hard day of recording” roughly spanned from 4-7:30 p.m., and we ran out of time to view Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dorakyura. Aborting, we just talked about recent news announcements for 45 minutes and that became NYCC 2014 FYI. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on a Patsy Walker special since August, and thought we might read Hellstorm: Prince of Lies as a lead-in. I got two issues into rereading that series before I realized that wasn’t going to work out. I’d already given Fixit a copy of Thunderbolts 2000 that was somewhat dependent on Hellstorm, so I was going to tell him not to read it after all. However, not only had he already read it, but he had taken diligent notes and ultimately delivered what I feel is one of his best vocal performances on the show to date. At one point, I was going to try to throw T-Bolts in with that shady Mac material and maybe a solo Ka-Zar the Grate*-rendering of Dracula talk and treat it as a half-assed Halloween anthology. Then Mac sent me that ridiculously long Mockingbird article that seemed a natural way to set up T-Bolts 2000, so I read it thinking I was going to catch up with Mac’s conversation since he’s the Avengers guy, but he hadn’t read it or a lot else on Mockingbird, so I hastily regurgitated key areas of the article over the phone along with the comics I’d found in my collection and Mac spoke to the ones he had in his. I also thought that was a 2011 article, so not as big a deal to lean on it, only to realize later the 2014 revision was up on CBR and fresh in people’s minds. For a swaggering podcast routinely sporting off-color jokes, all those rapey elements put us off our game. I’m frankly uncomfortable with the Mac/Me portions, but still proud of Fixit’s effort. Most ironically, Mockingbird was only the subject by T-Bolt-related accident, but with the TV show debut I figured fuck it, roll that shit. Pekita liked it, at least. That’s good, since I didn’t even get into the $400 worth of new useless garbage sound equipment I got ripped off by through a scumbag shitheel burn-in-HELL music store salesman and couldn’t return, followed by the $450 she spent on superior replacements as an anniversary/early Christmas present so I wouldn’t punch holes in our walls.

    All this is to say, I think the episode is okay, but it’s not the kind of deal I’d have dealt if things hadn’t been so busted up to begin with.

    *Not a typo.

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  4. Ah heck, Frank, putting together a podcast does sound like a proper headache. Thanks so much for all your hard work – you’re getting better all the time and soon you’ll be up there with the likes of Sean & Jim, and Rob & Shag… smooth talkers who make it all sounds so easy.

    I tried to do my bit for the podcast tonight, by learning exactly how ‘Clea’ is pronounced on TV. This meant sitting through the execrable Dr Strange TV film from 1978. I’ve only just woken up again. And while there is a character in the cast listed as ‘Clea Lake’ – give me strength – for most of the proceedings she’s in a state of amnesia, so I never actually heard her real name sounded. Hmmm, wasn’t there is a cartoon a few years back?

    Basically, it’s obviously Clea as in Patra (comin’ atcha).

    Please don’t make me do more research!

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  5. I think of myself as a Doctor Strange fan, saw the TV movie one time about 27 years ago, and still haven’t set up a Strange episode of the podcast in part because it brings me even one step closer to potentially revisiting that TV movie. Case in point, “Clea Lake.” Groan.

    I said Clee-AH growing up, Pronounce Names.com says Cle-ahh, and that’s how actress Clea DuVall pronounces it. Somehow, I started saying “Clee” years ago, and I don’t believe I would have done that if I hadn’t been “corrected” by some source, but the specifics escape me.

    I don’t know Sean & Jim, and I’ll never match Rob & Shag because I talk through my nose and can’t properly enunciate… but the mixer works wonders and I know how to pronounce “nuclear,” so we’ll play to our strengths.

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  8. My first exposure to Mockingbird was the West Coast Avengers mini-series and I’ve liked the character ever since, even after she broke up with Hawkeye which I remember being a upset about. Seeing those two fight was kind of like seeing your mom and dad going at it, wasn’t it? I dunno, maybe I’m a big romantic or a distraught child of divorce or something.

    The details are fuzzy right now (but I can check after work), but I think Bobbie DID get her revenge on Phantom Rider in the 2010 Hawkeye and Mockingbird mini-series. The Rider possessed like two of his descendents in that and gets exorcised for his trouble, I just don’t remember what part Mockingbird plays in that exactly. All I remember is that she was BADASS throughout and despite the weird-looking glasses, it made me fall in like with her all over again and followed her to Secret Avengers.

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  9. Take a close look at p.16 of Marvel Premiere #42. Greer “Garson”? I wonder if this was in Warner and Hannigan’s script, or if it’s a mistake by John Costanza?
    Mockingbird has been a favorite character of mine for a long time. One of the few good things to come from Secret Invasion was her return. I was disappointed when she was given the combination Super Soldier/Infinity serum in New Avengers. I wonder if her story will change again now that Original Sin has revealed the Infinity Formula wasn’t what we thought it was?
    Thanks!

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