SONGBIRD

 

SONGBIRD

Real Name: Melissa Gold

First Appearance: Marvel Two-In-One (Vol. 1) #54, August 1979 (as Screaming Mimi); The Incredible Hulk (Vol. 1) #449, January 1997 (as Songbird)

Powers: Melissa Gold was a member of the all-female wrestling team known as the Grapplers, who sold out their services as mercenaries and were bionically augmented by RoXXon Oil. Melissa became Screaming Mimi after she received cybernetically enhanced vocal chords, enabling her to amplify her own voice similar to a megaphone and scream consistently for nearly an hour without damaging her throat. She also could produce a variety of symptoms in nearby people by modulating a series of hypersonic frequencies. Mimi could induce panic, anxiety, blindness, deafness, nausea, vertigo, reality-warping hallucinations, and unconsciousness. When directed against solid structures, Screaming Mimi could shatter glass, weaken building foundations, and at her most intense actually liquefy matter within a few yards of her position. While partnered with Angar the Screamer, the two hypersonic villains learned how to create specific sensory illusions by harmonizing their twin scream-effects together. Thus, Mimi and Angar were once able to pose as Hawkeye and Mockingbird, committing crimes and anyone who saw them (and was affected by their harmonic pitch) saw two Avengers instead of two super-villains. After Angar was killed, however, Mimi overstrained her power: Damaging her bionics and tearing up her own vocal chords. Approached by Baron Zemo to join his Masters of Evil/Thunderbolts, Melissa agreed and her vocal powers were augmented by Techno, who had appropriated some of Klaw's solid sound technology.

As Songbird, Melissa wore mechanical nodes on her neck that allowed her to speak normally and were small enough to be concealed by a simple neckerchief. In combat, she wore a sonic carapace around her throat which enhanced and manipulated the sound generated by her augmented vocal chords to create solid sound constructs made of pink sonic energy. Adjustments to her cybernetic implants now enabled Songbird to mentally shape her sound waves into these constructs and direct their movements and actions psionically: She could even remove the carapace after creating a construct, and could still move the solid sound around mentally. Songbird used her power to create battering rams, storage pods, giant knives or scissors, protective shields, barriers, domes, or anything she could visualize. She quickly learned to use her powers for flight, manifesting a set of wings attached to her arms and mentally propelling the wings (and therefore herself) through the air. As time has passed, her throat has healed enough to restore her Screaming Mimi powers, lost to her ever since just before she became a member of the Thunderbolts. Besides the previous effects she exhibited, Songbird has demonstrated the power of subliminal influence, producing a sonic frequency which makes a person far more open to whatever is suggested to them next. She can also map her environment using sonar waves and cast sound in tight pulses, allowing her to speak directly to one person over a distance without anyone nearby hearing.