Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Characters Case File #526: Songbird

The new Thunderbolts+ movie came out this past weekend, and one thing purists will note is none of the original, classic Thunderbolts appeared in the movie.  Now, I considered covering one of the characters that was in the movie, but I have already covered a number of them.  But then, there’s this fan theory that one of them actually was.  Sort of.  Maybe.  I don’t know.

So, here’s Songbird.

Songbird, sort of, first appeared in Marvel Two-in-One #54 in August of 1979.  Created by Mark Gruenwald, Ralph Macchio (not that one), and John Byrne, Melissa Gold had some bionically-enhanced vocal cords, but she earned those later.  After running away from home, she was homeless for a while and called herself “Mimi” to sound extra tough even though that name doesn’t sound particularly tough to me.  After going to prison, she meets up with lady wrestler Poundcakes who convinces Mimi to join her wrestling team alongside such reputable women as Titania and Letha.  Poor pay let the ladies, calling themselves the Grapplers, to crime and run-ins with different superheroes, and that would be about when Mimi got her vocal cords enhanced and took to calling herself “Screaming Mimi.”

With the Grapplers, Mimi would fight the likes of the Thing, Quasar, and Dazzler, but Mimi was something of a joiner, even spending time with Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil and having a relationship with fellow sound-based baddie Angar the Screamer.  And that would be it were it not for Zemo’s great plan to take advantage of the Avengers’ disappearance.  Yes, Zemo decided the thing to do when a lot of heroes are missing was to reassemble the Masters of Evil, but he’d give them new looks and identities and pretend to be a superhero team, namely the “Thunderbolts,” with Mimi taking on the new identity of Songbird, using some of Klaw’s tech to revamp her powers into sonic constructs.

Now, Zemo’s plan was to use the group’s new identity as heroes to eventually take over the world.  There was just one little problem:  some of the Thunderbolts actually decided they liked being heroes, Songbird among them.  It helped that Melissa was in something of a relationship with fellow Thunderbolt Abner Jenkins, AKA the Beetle, AKA MACH-1.  When Zemo finally did enact his world domination plan, taking mental control over the returned Avengers except for Iron Man, Songbird, MACH-1, and a couple of the others helped Iron Man save the world, giving the reformed Thunderbolts an extended chance to be heroes.

And that is essentially where Songbird went, becoming perhaps the best of the reformed Thunderbolts (MACH-1 is a close second), where she was even a member of the Avengers herself in an alternate timeline seen in the Avengers Forever mini-series.  The Thunderbolts team has been all kinds of different groups, and Melissa Gold isn’t in every incarnation, but she’s in enough of them to make her one of the team’s mainstays.

So, was she in Thunderbolts*?

Well, actress Geraldine Viswanathan played a character named “Mel” who was on the wrong side of the moral line for much of the movie but may have been reformed by the end of it.

Does that make her Songbird?  Well…I don’t know.  Maybe.

But it sure is nice to maybe think she is.