Here Be MOCKINGBIRD #1-5

MOCKINGBIRD #1-5
Story by Chelsea Cain
Art by Kate Niemczyk and Ibrahim Moustafa

This series is really well-written. It's fun, exciting, and genuine. Lots of humor throughout each issue that is genuinely funny, and we get to see Bobbi in lots of action in different locales. These first five issues are one giant puzzle box, or puzzle sphere (as mentioned in the letters page for issue five). They are a medical mystery, which helps differentiate this book and the Black Widow, which is mostly spy action. Mockingbird, aka Bobbi Morse, is a spy working for S.H.I.E.L.D., too, like the Widow, but Chelsea Cain crafts tales that are not your typical spy stories, which is nice.

This first arc is made up of three done-in-one stories and a two-parter. There's a serious trick in reading these issues. The two-parter starts in #1 but doesn't actually end until #5, with the three in the middle being the one-offs. You can read the stories in a variety of ways. You can read them in order. You can read #1 and jump straight to #5. You can read 2-4 in any order you want. You can read 2-4 first, and then read #1 and #5. Or, you can read them in chronological order, which would be #1 (to a point), #2, #1 (from a point to another point), #3, #1 (from the second point to a third), #4, #1 (the last few pages), and finally #5.

The entire story revolves around Bobbi's ordered visits to a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility. Because she contains the Super Soldier Serum and the Infinity Formula inside of her body (both injected into her at a time when she was dying and this was the only way to save her), Bobbi must attend weekly medical check-ups, where she gets her blood drawn and is tested psychologically for any signs of trouble, physically and/or mentally. During one of her visits, Bobbi is given an experimental drug to see if it can help her further. After her initial visit at the beginning of MOCKINGBIRD #1, we follow Bobbi chronologically into MOCKINGBIRD #2, where she heads to London, England to rescue her sarcastic, troublesome lover, Lance Hunter. It seems he infiltrated the Hellfire Club there and ended up involved in a ceremony intended to "induct" him into membership orchestrated by Emma Steed, the Black Queen, who amazingly was last seen over a decade ago in the original EXCALIBUR series during Warren Ellis's run. The art is amazing in this series. Kate Niemczyk is a delightful find. She draws all sorts of great details in every panel, including amusing bits and pieces to make you smile and chuckle. This issue in particular has her flipflopping gender sexualization. In this case, instead of seeing all the women in corsets and stockings and such, we see the men in tight black leather combinations, or barely anything at all.

When the Black Queen tries to use her telepathic abilities on Bobbi at one point, Bobbi actually absorbs the attack with a psychic ping pong ball, something that she can now do thanks to whatever the experimental drug did to her system. In the end, Bobbi saves Lance, and the Black Queen is defeated.

We follow Bobbi back into MOCKINGBIRD #1, where we see her a week later (from the previous scene in the issue) in her black leather attire, sitting in the waiting room. She gets her blood drawn and is psychologically tested. After the appointment, we follow Bobbi into MOCKINGBIRD #3, where she helps a young Inhuman girl named Rachel whose power involves color. Among other things, she can actually suck the color out of a person's red blood cells and kill them, although this is something she'd rather not do. Rachel also has her friends trapped in a color bubble, and the police are trying to save them, but Mockingbird discovers the girl trapped them accidentally and doesn't know how to turn off her power to free them. Ultimately, Bobbi saves the day. The friends are freed, although there was a cost: A reporter ends up dead after Rachel sucks the color out of his red blood cells.

After this incident, we follow Bobbi back to #1 again, where we see her in the waiting room wearing her costume. She again has her blood drawn and undergoes psychiatric evaluation, after which we follow her to MOCKINGBIRD #4. In this issue, Bobbi rescues her ex-husband Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) after his capture in an underwater base operated by T.I.M., a branch of A.I.M. that wears red beekeeper suits instead of yellow. While a group called T.I.M. may sound a bit silly, it's actually amusing and simultaneously series at the same time. T.I.M. stands for Total Idea Mechanics, and they have been messing with a biological virus that has been responsible for a series of unexplained mass animal deaths, such as the one Bobbi comes upon at the beginning of the issue.

So sad. In any case, Bobbi investigates and discovers through a blood sample that whatever killed the animals is in her own bloodstream as well! This takes her to the underwater base and her rescue of Clint. After messing around with Clint (they were once married, after all), Bobbi returns to the medical facility and to MOCKINGBIRD #1, where we see her responding to a disturbance involving what appears to be a horde of zombies!

So, in MOCKINGBIRD #5, Bobbi fights off the zombie hordes with her telepathic power, which has now seemed to evolve. But she isn't alone: Howard the Duck and Miles Morales/Spider-Man are also there...as patients. Howard amusingly mentions that the zombie attack must be the reason why he's been waiting 45 minutes for the doctor to show up. Miles has the measles. During the action, Bobbi discovers the truth: The experimental drug given to her by one of the doctors was a virus she created using Bobbi's own blood samples, and it has evolved into something that is responsible for all the mass deaths of various animals. Bobbi is rightfully infuriated that the doctor took her blood and crafted a biological WMD out of it. It's not only evil, but it also violated her patient rights.

In the end, Bobbi saves the day. There is an anti-viral that she can take that will eliminate the virus. However, Bobbi comes to the conclusion that the virus has evolved her. And she believes in human evolution, as she is a biochemist herself. And since the virus is not contagious and will die out in the system of its receivers, Bobbi destroys the anti-viral, thus keeping the new telepathic powers she obtained from the virus and the evolution it brought about within her.

Quite the complex storyline Chelsea Cain concocted. And fun, too. It's a different way to read a storyline, and it's the kind of thing that comics need so things won't get stale. I hope Marvel sees what it has with both Chelsea and the artist, Kate, and continues to utilize them. They are solid female creators and deserve the attention.

On a side note, I liked how Chelsea Cain wrote herself in the story by the end. We've seen this happen from time to time with other creators in various Marvel comics since the 70s. In this case, the scuba suit Bobbi wears in #4 and #5 was given to her by Chelsea, and a letter written by Chelsea at the beginning of #5 in the recap section asks Bobbi to please give her the suit back when she's done with it, as it is special to her.

This is definitely a book worth your time. I, myself, am looking forward to reading the next issue, a Civil War II tie-in story this time involving a murder mystery on a cruise ship hosting cos-players that is drifting dangerously near the Bermuda Triangle, which is the home to a portal that leads to Weirdworld!