So this is a bit of an unconventional blog I am making, But when I feel passionate about something sometimes I just gotta do something about it, so today we are going to be doing a thorough look at Melissa Morbeck, one of the most embarrassingly executed villains I know in Marvel who I have never seen anyone talk about and am thus forced to take matters into my own hands in offering criticism where it is needed.
Melissa Morbeck is a villain belonging to the Rogues Gallery of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl who was first introduced in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl II Issue #17 in April of 2017, and was an antagonist of 8 of this run's 50 total issues. Their Reason for her appearing in so many issues, almost 20% of them, is because they fully intended Melissa to be an Arch Nemesis tier character to Doreen, equal to someone like Ratatoskr in terms of meaning to her.
Melissa is a BAD Villain, she has like no threat level, she constantly makes dumb decisions and her plans make no sense, but the thing that makes her really stand out as such a Bad and Frustrating character is not necessarily what she herself does, but how the Comic treats her. The Comic is totally unaware that she sucks, it constantly tries to paint her as this super competent, calculating and dangerous villain, and does this by having her be WAY more successful with her actions and plans than would ever be possible, by blatantly ignoring logic and introducing a lot of Plot AND Character Induced Stupidity. And to see what I mean, I am going to break down Melissa’s initial story arc throughout her first 4 issues in a Linkara style critique to really showcase what I am talking about.
Unbeatable Squirrel Girl 17 opens with Doreen and her friends going to attend a Lecture by none other than Melissa Morbeck herself! Who we learn is an alumni of Doreen’s college and is a very successful business woman in the field of programming technology.
The Comic in this first page already starts trying to hype her up saying that she should need no introduction, that she donates generously to this school and that she is giving this lecture for free even though big businesses apparently pay large sums of money just to talk to her for 10 minutes, already setting up that she is quite intelligent and successful, and as a result, wealthy and famous.
After giving a Lecture on how engineers and programmers have a responsibility to Public Safety, Melissa singles out Doreen citing her comments during the lecture impressed her and invites her to her home for High Tea.
AT said location, Melissa reveals to Doreen that she is aware of her true identity as Squirrel Girl, and for some reason chooses to do this by making a metric ton of animal related Word Play. How Melissa discovered her Identity is not revealed as of yet.
Melissa then tells Doreen that she too has superpowers, the ability to communicate with animals, and to prove this she brings out a personal friend of hers Named Alfredo the Chicken, who she appears to be able to communicate with, having him perform specific actions Doreen requests to prove he is able to understand her. Doreen thinks he's really cute and is excited to meet someone with similar abilities to her own.
Melissa then goes on to say that she is a huge fan of what Squirrel Girl is doing and wishes to help her by Bankrolling her with her tremendous funds. At first Doreen doesn’t find that necessary but Melissa piques her interest by saying she will be able to provide her with some cool crime fighting gadgets, most notably a flying squirrel suit.
The Comic then jumps to Doreen fighting crime in her super cool new Flying Squirrel suit. She gets into a battle with The Rhino using it to fight and it seems to work extremely well for her, being a useful tool as Flight is Never a bad ability to have, but all is not as it seems.
In the last page of the comic Melissa Morbuck’s true colors are revealed, showcasing her to actually be cartoonishly Evil, complete with having a checklist on her monitor talking about how she plans to either turn Doreen Evil or Kill her, and literally ordering her bear chef to kill her chicken from earlier so she can eat him for dinner just for good measure…..MUhahahahahah! Anyway I will have more to say about that later, but Melissa’s first Issue isn’t bad, her Lecture scene and how she provides Doreen with genuinely helpful technology are well done, and while the last page was quite goofy, it seems to be intentionally so to play into the Dun Dun DUNN moment of the reveal. They coulda done better for sure, but so far she hasn’t done anything a good writer couldn’t work with so let’s see how they continue.
Issue 18 picks up a few days after the previous one ends and Doreen is still loving the new flying squirrel suit, and uses it to help Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi stop some random dude robbing a store.
Impressed with the utility of the suit Doreen takes them to Melissa’s to get them flight capabilities as well which seems to go over nicely. Melissa immediately offers to make suits for them as well, literally having her door scan their measurements as they entered apparently, but Doreen’s roommate Nancy is suspicious of her.
Nancy starts grilling Melissa with logistical questions of how she apparently traveled to Europe with a live chicken before she came here, saying that Civilians are not allowed to bring chickens through Customs unless they have a Form CRS-4563, and when Melissa responds that she got one of those, Nancy reveals she just made that up. In Response to this Doreen asks where Alfredo Is, which doesn’t go over well as Melissa obviously no longer has him, and when Melissa responds by having her Polar Bear Butlers lock the door they both figure out that she's evil.
So this scene pretty solidly damages Melissa’s threat level to me, she was just easily outsmarted by Nancy who is not a super genius but a Civilian College Student, and even if you wanna discount that as a Nancy intelligence feat rather than a Melissa Anti Feat, what is undeniable is that Alfredo the Chicken was a pretty crucial part of her charade with Doreen, and yet apparently she didn’t think for a second it would be a good idea to keep said chicken around, as she tried to kill and eat him seconds after she showed him to Doreen, which just royally came back to bite her here.
Anyway, Doreen jumps out the window with Nancy, and summons every squirrel on campus to her side to overtake Melissa’s home and bring her in. Melissa “counters” this however by summoning forth an army of Rats with her own abilities preparing to get into an all out war. This is treated as a huge threat by Doreen and the comic because, and I quote Melissa on this, “Rats Eat Squirrels For Breakfast.”
….ok, so when I read this comic for the first time, that really didn’t sound right to me, so I looked into it online, and after researching this subject I can safely say that that is Complete BULLSH*T. Rats are scavengers by nature, they are capable of being predatory but they aren’t designed for it and they don’t hunt and regularly eat living squirrels. And as to who would win in a fight between a Rat and a Squirrel, well it does somewhat depend on which species of both, but on average, Squirrels are notably larger than Rats. Since this takes place in New York City these would almost certainly be Brown Rats and Eastern Grey Squirrels, said squirrel species actually being 40% larger than the rat. Squirrels are more intelligent than Rats are, and proportionally are known for their insane athleticism, having much higher upper body strength, running speed and overall agility than Rats. And I have seen Biologists, the vast majority of online polls on the subject, and actual video proof that a Squirrel would dominate a rat in a confrontation like this.
But that's not even going into the WAY Larger Elephant in the Room and that is, slight spoilers for Melissa’s abilities, but apart from being mind controlled…..these are just completely Normal Rats. Melissa isn’t able to raise the stats of the animals she controls like Doreen can. Meaning this is an army of normal Rats….fighting Squirrels strong and fast enough to tear through Doctor Doom’s Armor or injure the Abomination or other things like that!
Despite these facts I am telling you, Doreen does in fact NOT continue with her first plan to have the Squirrels defeat Melissa, and instead immediately caves to this threat and has all her Squirrels retreat. She then tries to escape the area herself using her flying suit, but because Melissa invented it she gave herself a way to remotely disable the suit, preventing her from doing this.
Melissa then comes outside in her Robe and tells Doreen to come back inside so they can talk, and Doreen listens to her and goes, sending Nancy off who calls the Police and tells them everything. Melissa just lets that happen however as she doesn’t think Nancy doing that matters because she's so smart.
Once inside, Melissa starts basically just insulting Doreen’s intelligence for being a goodie two shoes hero, and how she’s small minded and misinterpreted her message about responsibility and that she was really meaning the responsibility of Queens, Presidents and Dictators, in her words, “The Responsibility of deciding what gets built, what gets destroyed, who gets to live, and who dies” ya know, really compelling argument.
In this conversation she also reveals what’s been going on. Melissa controls a company that manufactures GPS Tracking chips for Animals, which secretly double as Mind Control devices that allow her to make them do whatever she wants. And how she sold them for Dirt cheap to a staggering amount of Zoos and Pet Owners giving her control over most of the animals humanity has in captivity.
And the comic ends with Melissa stating how she has given herself power over the whole world, and she unleashes all the animals in the central park zoo to go on a rampage with Nancy and the cops reacting to this in fear. Okay so, I have a few problems with this plan, the first and foremost being that again, these are still just Normal Animals, and as sad as it is to say people have Guns, and if someone did this even In Real Life, the world's Police Forces and Militaries would easily stop this. Especially in this scenario where we know the identity of the one who is causing this and can just arrest her to end it. And That’s Real Life, this is the mother freaking Marvel Universe, the world is full of Superheros, of gods, magic, super science etc, how on EARTH is this supposed to be a remote threat?
Issue 18 is really where the cracks with Melissa start to form. The Comic portrays her as having Doreen by the Nuts here trying to say she's a genius mastermind who can hold the world hostage. But if you think about it for 10 seconds you see all of her threats are empty with zero logical chance of working, and she was so dumb that a college student exposed her as evil within 60 seconds of meeting her. The only reason she's not already defeated seems to be just because Doreen refused to act via Character Induced Stupidity, and not just because of being intimidated by the Rats. Half of this comic Melissa, the normal human CEO lady, is sitting right in front of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl face to face, with no special defenses or hostages of any kind…..and Doreen doesn’t just Knock her out and Arrest her, for no explained reason. I am making a big point of this now by the way, because this exact scenario is also going to happen a LOT in the next two issues, Melissa is at Doreen’s mercy and she just doesn’t do anything, the comic seeming to think there's a good reason she can’t when one really doesn’t exist.
Issue #19 picks up directly after the previous one left off and believe me it is the worst issue so far and I have a lot to say about it so let's get into it. It opens on a monologue delivered by Melissa on the history of her family as a way to explain her villainous origins and motives.
In it we learn that Melissa’s grandmother was a colleague of the great American Scientist Grace Hopper who, jealous of Hopper's accomplishments, attempted to sabotage her work by controlling Moths to fly into her machinery. She says that even after being fired, her grandmother never gave up trying to control animals, and her Mother continued this work but neither of them ever were fully successful, considering it impossible.
Melissa then mocks her grandmother's accomplishments saying how she only controlled Moths for sabotage while she currently has a bunch of Zoo animals preventing the authorities from entering and how she is much more impressive. So that's a complicated question, on the one hand I guess it is more impressive to control a wide variety of species, but on the other, controlling Insects to sabotage stuff is smart because it's subtle, no one who finds a bug inside their tech is going to immediately jump to ‘They were being controlled by some evil mastermind’, having a bunch of zoo animals openly fight the cops is insanely conspicuous, like you are basically asking to be caught here. Like despite Melissa’s grandios bolstering, controlling Normal Animals is not a very impressive ability for a series like MARVEL. We got Gods and Sci-Fi tech and Magic and shit, if you don’t stay completely under the radar they are GOING to catch you, that's just a fact.
So then we get to this page and I really have a lot to say on this one. So here Melissa tells us she was extremely ashamed and embarrassed of her Elders failures in trying to control animals, and she wanted nothing to do with trying to succeed in this task that she assumed was impossible, but then she heard about a girl in canada who had the ability to control Squirrels, which served as proof that what they were trying to do Was possible and now that she knew it could be done it inspired her to actually pull it off. Alright so a few calls for concern here. One, do you seriously expect me to believe that You had NO knowledge of any person in the Marvel universe who had control over Animals of any kind before Squirrel Girl? I mean there are SO Many of them? Ever heard of ANTMAN? He is a founding Member of the Avengers, and controls Ants through Tech he invented rather than an unreplicatable genetic power like Doreen’s, and you didn’t know about him? Yet you also apparently had heard about Doreen, even when she was back in Canada as a child before officially becoming a superhero? On top of that this page gives us Melissa’s entire motivation as a Villain. That her Grandma was an Envious cheater who failed to control animals, and that fact Embarrassed Melissa so bad that she invented animal control herself to prove she's better……and then started committing crimes with it just because? That IS seriously all we get. Oh and one last thing, Doreen brings up that she Totally Can Arrest Mellissa right now but is just letting her monologue, to which I ask, WHY?!
She reveals to Doreen that she has been using animals to spy on corporate and government secrets, and sabotage events for her own personal benefit. She also reveals that she was the one who made it so Doreen, Tomas and Ken all just happened to attend the same college, as she considered other people who can control animals her biggest threat, and thus wanted to study them closely.
So then we get another page of Melissa gloating and insulting Doreen. She says a lotta very specific things in this page I take issue with, first and foremost being “I thought you might be my protêgê, Doreen Green. Failing that, I thought you might be a threat. Turns out you were neither.” Excuse me? You don’t consider Squirrel Girl to be a threat? The girl who even in this comic run has already defeated countless cosmic threats including Gods, Celestials and Time Travelers is of no threat to you? A Woman who can control animals? Secondly, she goes on about how Doreen is stupid and small minded for using her power to help people instead of herself, ya know typical villain speak and her superiority complex. And most weirdly, that she gave her that Flight Suit with the hopes that providing her with MORE power would Make Doreen see things Melissa’s way. How exactly does giving her flight help with that? Melissa’s whole point is that controlling animals makes it easy to gather lots of intel for herself and Doreen should to, so how does Flight help with that? I Wouldn’t be harping on this much but the Flight Suit was EXPLICITLY Melissa’s Idea, it's not something Doreen thought of that she simply went along with.
After this Doreen seems to wake up from the weirdly passive mood she was in and again says that she can just get up and arrest her, but Melissa just laughs this off and is all ‘I Thought you could be a threat, but you’ve proven yourself to be Wholly Incapable of Stopping me’ to which I Completely fail to see how unless Melissa is also commenting on how Doreen seems to just not want to make a move on her for no reason right now. She then opens a secret passageway revealing two more bears armed with GUNS :O and forces Doreen to follow her at gunpoint, saying they will fire if she tries anything, and Doreen, seeming to take this as a serious threat, complies.
Okay, So I understand that comics do stupid stuff like this all the time, I understand it's kinda the verses debater in me talking, but seriously, what in the actual hell is this? Squirrel Girl is Bullet Proof, I know she hasn’t actually Been Shot By a Bullet before to prove it, but Just in this same line of comics, she has had a giant communication satellite fall on her from orbit, she has been shot point blank by multiple blasts from Doctor Doom with intent to kill,
Hell she was able to Tank a point Blank Explosion that would have Killed Dormammu! I don’t care what kinda generic guns those are, they aren’t a threat to Doreen. And hell even if Doreen COULD be hurt by the bullets, how on Earth 616 do they expect to HIT her? Squirrel Girl is ridiculously faster than light, remember that time she Sucker Punched the Silver Surfer before he could react?
I Do. Bullets would appear frozen in time relative to Squirrel Girl, she could read an entire dictionary and check it for spelling mistakes before that bear could even THINK of pulling the trigger, let alone knockout everyone here and win. I WISH she would do that, if nothing else just to wipe that Smug demeanor off Melissa’s face. Melissa’s powers are pathetic by Marvel standards, she is completely screwed right now and at Doreen’s Mercy, but she thinks she has the entire World screwed right now and at HER Mercy, and against all logic both Doreen and the comic itself thinks she's right, it's so frustrating!
Anyway, next Melissa, like the unstoppable Genius mastermind woman that she is, brings her foe directly to the machine she's controlling all the animals from and explains that’s exactly what it is. I am Stunned by the Brilliance this character consistently displays.
But don’t worry, lucky for Melissa, Doreen yet again refuses to spring into action right now. So Melissa monologues more about the device saying it allows her to send her thoughts directly to the animals that had chips installed in them as orders, and the chips enhance the intelligence of these animals enough to understand them. In this panel Doreen notes that the device seems to use stolen tech from the likes of Tony Stark and FREAKING Doctor Doom, with Melissa in response to the latter saying “Victor’s such a charmer when he thinks he has the advantage.” Alright, yeah, this comic did straight up have this character say she is comparable to if not more wise and calculating than DOOM, and also expects us to believe that. She is making light of Doom while acting like he is beneath her. Ya know, Doom, the villain who is so OP Doreen got this whole revival after not appearing in a comic for 15 years simply because fans found her beating him so crazy they never forgot her? Oh yeah and Melissa also takes another opportunity to insult Doreen’s intelligence for thinking maybe she can destroy the device, specifically saying again “Even if you’re not a threat.” to which Lady, yes she freaking is, hell in the bottom right panel she can just headbutt you and win. You just said your animals need your conscious thoughts to do ANYTHING, so your bears literally couldn’t even fire their supposedly dangerous guns if she did so.
Anyway Melissa reveals that she stole Pym Particles from Antman and uses them to shrink her device and ….wait, so you DID know who Antman was?! And worse than that, Holy Shit first Tony Stark, then Doctor Doom and now Hank Pym? This comic REALLY wants you to believe that 3 of the Smartest AND Most Paranoid Super Geniuses in the history of Marvel with the most advanced security systems known to man, simply have No means of stopping normal Animals from stealing their stuff? Melissa isn’t doing something ridiculous like controlling bacteria to scan and send her blueprint data or something, she literally showed a bird with a camera around its neck fly up to Tony Stark’s tower and record his stuff, that is freaking Asinine that that would work. Anyway Doreen finally decides to do something and attacks the bears, easily disarming them of their guns.
But she's too late! As despite her best efforts, Melissa still managed to win by……having cockroaches insert the shrunken device into her Ear Canal? A move that does absolutely nothing to stop Doreen from punching her in the face. After some more gloating, Melissa orders her Bears to restrain Doreen and after a witty line from Squirrel Girl, we get one of the Dumbest and most Memeable pages I have seen in a LONG Time.
Doreen Green, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, quickly loses a fight to Three Bears. These are Not statistically amplified Bears, these are 3 apart from being mind controlled, completely Normal Bears. Squirrel Girl.
The girl who casually Beat Thanos in a Fist Fight, OFF Screen cause of how Onesided it was, which this comic brings up all the time, is not able to Overcome Three Bears! Who the F*ck Wrote this that thinks a Polar Bear is Significantly Stronger than THANOS? Even Little Kids Don’t think Bears can fight Superheroes, why on Earth do They?
Doreen can lift a Bulldozer or an entire building, How can the weight of 3 bears pin her? This is SO Ridiculous, it actually can distract someone from the other huge problems in this page. Like how Melissa starts mocking Doreen for the ability to control squirrels being Lame and that her controlling any animal is better. Isn’t that like, directly contradictory to everything she said this entire comic and hypocritical as all hell? And then capitalized on by Melissa doubling down on the end saying No one can Stop her because SHE controls animals.
Anyway Melissa escapes through a Teleporter she stole from Avengers Tower, cause of course, and Doreen’s friends come back soon after and they stop the bears. After this the heroes try to find Melissa for weeks but to no avail.
But then after all of that Melissa has crows fly a Big Banner over the city, claiming to be Doctor Doom, threatening the populace with deadly mosquitos if they do not surrender. Really a Big Banner in the sky? That is a Really inefficient manner for a supervillain to deliver their demands but what do I know.
And the issue closes on a swarm of Mosquitos encroaching on the city. A wise man once said,
‘THIS COMIC SUCKS!’ This is the issue that cemented in my Mind just how Awful a character Melissa is in literally every facet. Melissa is laughably pathetic, but the writers try to make her threatening by severely Nerfing the physicality, intellect and competence of every established character she comes across to make it look like she’s walking all over them. You are making Characters people know, and like already, look stupid and weak for the sake of making your new character look good and that alone would already be terrible. But the thing that makes this issue truly insufferable for me is just how much of an Arrogant, Vain Egomaniac Melissa is about the whole thing, basically rubbing the readers face in the fact that she's getting away with all of this even though it doesn’t make any sense. It's less like seeing a confident Antagonist mock the heroes, and exactly like seeing someone openly cheating do so, I am not feeling intimidated, I am feeling frustrated and annoyed.
Issue #20 is the final part of the initial Melissa Morbeck storyline. It IS better than the previous Issue I will say, but the difference isn’t too big in my humble opinion.
Continuing immediately after the last issue again, Doreen, Nancy, Tomas, Ken, Mary and Tippy Toe put their heads together trying to figure out how best to deal with Melissa’s insane Mosquito threat.
But that quickly becomes irrelevant as what seems to be Melissa Morbeck, disguised as Doctor Doom shows up with an army of animals to confront our heroes. So for the sake of efficiency and ease of explaining, I am going to summarize the next several pages of the comic as they happen without offering much of my two cents on it, and then I am going to give my full thoughts on Melissa’s plan after it is all established.
Melissa tries to tell them she is Doctor Doom, but they do not buy it as they have met him multiple times. Melissa however states that even though They know she's fake, everyone else will believe that it's the real Doom, and all she has to do is yell “Curse you, Reed Richards” a couple times. Doreen and co tell Melissa that the REAL Doctor Doom isn’t going to like this, and that he’ll probably kill her, but Melissa counters that Doom would never believe Doreen, which I found a little odd, I think there's a Powerpuff girls joke that will sum up how that convo would go.
Doom: You Will Tell me, Who Dared Impersonate DOOM, Squirrel Girl!
SG: How do you know I won’t Lie?
Doom: Because you’re Squirrel Girl.
SG: NUTS!
But Melissa leads into her trump card moment with the line, “Afterall. YOU’RE the one who caused the animals to attack.
Melissa then exposites that her plan is to Frame Squirrel Girl for being the one who is truly responsible for this attack, saying that this is what people will naturally assume since she is the only person who lives in New York who is known for having the ability to control animals. Doreen brings up the fact that she only has the ability to control Squirrels, but Melissa snaps back “or so you Claim” with the implication being that for all the public knows she could have had the ability to control other animals this whole time and kept it secret.
Nancy then pulls off The Doom Mask to reveal that it is merely one of Melissa’s mind controlled bears and she has been talking to them wirelessly this whole time. Melissa cackles and tells them that there is no attack of diseased Mosquitoes actually coming, and reveals that the plan was to make it seem as though Squirrel Girl used animal control powers to fabricate this fake Doctor Doom attack so she can stop it and get all sorts of praise and glory as a result.
Doreen Vehemently argues that she is not in the Superhero Business for fame or glory, and that she merely wants a world that is safe and everyone can be friends. But Melissa just laughs at this charade she thinks Doreen is playing, finding the very idea of someone who gives themself the moniker “Unbeatable” isn’t in it for marketing unbelievable. She says that this is obviously what everyone who witnesses this will think, about how she set this whole fake crime up and then planned to kidnap the real Doom so he couldn’t expose her, and how she should just accept she was bested by someone smarter. Nancy says people won’t believe her so Melissa counters with “It’s not a hard call for people to choose between Doreen-an animal talking egomaniac, and me, a concerned citizen who wants to make a difference.”
And that is the whole sequence of Melissa’s evil plan reveal, here's a cute picture of Squirrel Girl while I gather my thoughts.
Holy Nuts on a Nut Sandwich! That is one of the single most Stupid, Dense, Brainless, Mindless, Foolish, Dimwitted, Empty-Headed, Vapid, Moronic, Idiotic, Imbecilic, Nonsensical, Absurd, Ludicrous, Insane, Dumb, Asinine and Halfwitted plans I have EVER Heard in my ENTIRE LIFE! Melissa you Complete Ignoramus!
Alright let's break down exactly WHY this is the dumbest plan ever. So first is the overall concept of the plan is to frame Doreen as having secretly been a bad guy, so It is important to establish what Doreen’s reputation is in the eyes of the public so we can assess how realistic it would be for someone to think she is evil.
Doreen has constantly been praised by news media outlets and is cheered by huge swells of people for the good work she does as a hero even long before her revival in these new comics. She is recognized by S.H.I.E.L.D. as having taken down some of the biggest threats in the universe, and quite publicly saved, the city of new york, the Earth, the Universe and even the entire Omniverse at one point all before this comic took place. Some of these exploits included singlehandedly stopping Thanos, talking Galactus out of Consuming the Earth, reversed Enigmo taking over the rolls of every human on earth Invasion of the Body Snatchers style, and most relevantly, Stopped an Evil clone of herself from taking over the World and making Squirrels the dominant species.
That last one is most relevant because in order to accomplish it Doreen in front of the entire superhero community that she rescued and the world as a whole, actually achieved one of the single most impressive feats of goodness one can do in the Marvel Universe, proving yourself worthy to wield Mjolnir. The only way to do this is for you to be completely pure of heart and have the spirit of a true hero, and It means it to the point that the vast, vast majority of Marvel Heroes could never wield it, something that is fairly common knowledge in universe and Doreen blatantly did in front of everyone.
Doreen has an extremely good reputation with everyone she interacts with, having publicly worked with The Avengers as well as members of the Fantastic Four, The Spider-Family, The Rising Heroes and everyone in between and they all have nothing but good things to say about her. She has her own popular public access Radio channel where she offers self help advice to struggling people in her spare time. She is also known for actively redeeming and helping several villains reform, notably even if doing so makes her look kinda stupid, like the time she fought Kraven the Hunter and proceeded to just toss him super high into the air, catch him and repeat the process over and over to stop him from hurting any animals while she thought of a solution to his problem. On top of that, Unlike a lot of other Heroes, Doreen’s reputation has never been damaged before by someone impersonating her or using mind control. So yeah, in terms of sheer reputation, Doreens is basically as close to flawless as you can get especially at the time, being known as a super goodie two shoes, impressive and world saving hero, trusted by all their favorite heroes, Worthy of the power of Thor, and so dedicated to helping everyone she’ll make herself look like a total goof in public.
So naturally, someone with a public reputation like Doreen’s, would be someone people would have an extremely hard time believing she's done anything wrong, as it contradicts basically every piece of information they would know about her. Squirrel Girl being a villain who fabricates crimes for her to stop is an Extraordinary Claim, and naturally would require some Extraordinary Evidence to make people accept it. Melissa, notably has NO Evidence whatsoever, her entire plan simply relied on her making a false crisis, and revealing it to Be so once Doreen showed up, assuming that people will naturally assume she’s responsible, even though this does not implicate her in any real way. You might as well ask people to believe Batman went on a mass shooting, or Goku won a nobel prize, or Captain Marvel is a total sweetheart.
Then we get to the second and probably the dumbest aspect of this plan, Melissa committed this crime via controlling a huge variety of Non-Squirrel Animals, an ability Squirrel Girl does not have, and more importantly for this, has never showcased or claimed to be one of her powers. Melissa deflects this by saying that as far as the public knows she Could have had this power and kept it secret, and since she's already here and can control ONE kind of animal already, they would easily assume she has that power too. And that is where the conversation stops, but….No? We need to talk about how much of an Insane Leap of Logic that Is. First and foremost, literally ANYONE Can have ANY Power and just Not tell people about it, Squirrel Girl could secretly be able to shoot lasers from her eyes, Ghost Rider could have the power to turn into a magical girl, heck, Spider-Man might have the ability to Fart Fire and Teleport 2 Inches in Any Direction and just kept it on the downlow, but you cannot ever prove it one way or another. The fact of the matter is just because Squirrel-Control and Animal-Control are related powers, doesn’t make Doreen more likely to have it than anyone else, plenty of heroes in the Marvel universe have powers that are completely unconnected to each other, and this is a world that has MULTIPLE subspecies of humans that are just born with random superpowers. That means any man, woman and child on Earth is technically just as likely to have this power and be doing this, even if they are on the other side of the planet as their range is also dependent.
The Occam’s Razor notion comes to mind in situations like this. Melissa claims Doreen did this crime, using a superpower she always had but never once used before, which is not provable by example. Meanwhile Doreen would claim that Melissa did it, and like, if they investigated her at all they’d discover, ‘Hmmmm, Melissa Morbeck owned a company that sold GPS Chips to the owners of every single one of these animals, the sole commonality’ And then all it would take is one Marvel scientist to examine one of these chips to learn what’s going on here.
Then we get to my 3rd Note, where we ask the question, if we give the benefit of the doubt and assume that Doreen IS Evil and CAN control all Animal Species, would it make any sense for her to do this? Well frankly No it wouldn’t. Melissa claims that the motivation behind Doreen’s actions is for her brand, to increase her glory, reputation, ego and street cred so to speak, but as we have already established in the defense of Squirrel Girl’s character up there, Doreen already has an INSANELY Good reputation, she has defeated many of the strongest villains in Marvel, she has saved the world and beyond numerous times, S.H.I.E.L.D. Already considers her the greatest metahuman combatant they have ever seen. Doreen saving New York City yet again, against Doctor Doom, a villain she already beat when she was a 14 year old, would be pretty typical of her at this point and really wouldn’t do anything to improve such a reputation. On top of that, she would be risking EVERYTHING about this reputation she apparently values so much doing this. What are the chances this Fake Doctor Doom would get tackled by some other superhero while attacking NEW YORK in MARVEL? Basically this plan would be So High Risk/Low Reward that no reasonable person would ever attempt it. Especially when, This is Marvel, wait 4 hours and there will be SOMETHING real you can stop.
Now for my fourth and final note about this plan I’m just going to ask miscellaneous other questions that this plan raises, such as ‘Doreen in Melissa’s scenario clearly would not have planned for the fake doom to be revealed as a Bear, so what would be the point of keeping her animal manipulation secret all this time? Clearly it's easier to market yourself if you control every animal than just one kind’; ‘If Doreen could control every kind of animal but only publicly wanted to control 1, why did she pick Squirrels? Surely there would be a more logical option for crime fighting if you could choose’; ‘Why did Doreen and Co themselves unmask the fake Doom as a bear if they are the ones behind this plot?’; ‘Why was, oh she clearly was going to kidnap the REAL Doom after this just a throw away line Melissa, that sounds like an extremely hard to accomplish operation to pull off’; and most bafflingly Why on Earth does Melissa believe that everyone will totally believe her, some old rich fortune 500 lady, who is the granddaughter of a disgraced government saboteur apparently, over Squirrel Girl, the wholesome superhero and public servant who has been saving the day since she was a kid? In my personal experience people in America tend to think that the richest people on Earth are probably shady behind the scenes as a rule of thumb.
So Basically, Melissa Morbeck’s Genius plan relied on the General Public, News Media, Law Enforcement, The Superhero Community, and freaking Doctor Doom somehow, all collectively coming to the same conclusion that ‘Squirrel Girl, one of the Nicest Heros on Earth, was secretly a selfish, manipulative glory hog, who then risked her entire reputation to stage a fake crime, using Superpowers she’s never been established to have, to make herself look good when she already looked the maximum amount of good to start’ pretty much just based on her word.
Getting back to the comic, Melissa in all her infinite Wisdom then shows up on the scene in person in a Helicopter with J. Jonah Jameson and starts yelling into a speaker trying to spin this that her company developed technology that has overridden Doreen’s control and gave it to Melissa just now and she's here to personally stop her.
And my God, this is one of the most Cringe scenes I have read in Marvel as Melissa just keeps yelling all of these absurd lines trying SO Hard to convince people of her ruse, but she sounds like some kinda Alien the entire time and is clearly way more focused in spouting off her narrative than ya know, focusing on the supposed threat of Squirrel Girl she’s supposedly so invested in stopping.
Anyway, Squirrel Girl, Chipmunk Hunk and Koi Boi get into a big fight scene with the animals, which they really should win in 10 seconds but whatever at this point.
Meanwhile Nancy, Mary and Tippy Toe sneak off and invent a makeshift EMP device and sneak it over to Melissa, which then fries her invention she's using to control the animals and disables her powers, causing her to be defeated.
As they are arresting her Doreen tries to reach Melissa and have her come to learn a lesson about all this and Melissa is still super defiant and infact goes on to state that Squirrel Girl didn’t defeat her, she only got lucky and that all she needed to do is put EMP Shielding on her device and this would have ended completely different and OMG Shut the Hell Up Melissa. Not shielding your device from an EMP is far from the only mistake you made today, the second you arrived on the scene Doreen coulda just jumped into your Helicopter and knocked your teeth out, would have been the exact same effect as the EMP.
The Police then arrive on scene and Melissa as a desperate Hail Mary tries to sell her story to the cops and get them to arrest her, but then the first super logical thing happens in this storyline as every single Superhero in New York messages the Officers, giving their Testimonials of how Squirrel Girl is a true hero and would never be behind a plot like this. And that convinces the Officers to believe her side of the story and arrest Melissa. This is suppose to be a really triumphant moment that the whole superhero community rallied behind her and that's what let her win in the end, but I think it comes off as feeling rather hollow given that that was obviously the inevitable outcome as again, Doreen has a spotless track record and anyone with eyes can see how Sus this frame job is.
And so our comic Ends with Melissa in prison getting a visit from a woman who reveals herself to be none other than The Squirrel of the World Tree, Ratatoskr, the Asgardian God of Chaos and Squirrel Girl’s Arch Nemesis, who expresses interest in teaming up with Melissa. And THIS Plotline…..never goes anywhere. Like seriously, Ratatoskr does come back later WITHOUT Melissa, and offhandedly mentions this saying she quickly decided to change her mind about breaking her out.
Now Melissa DOES come back after this in the final 4 issue story of the Squirrel Girl run, but that's mostly because the plot of said story is all of Doreen’s villains coming back to get revenge on her, her being one of the most prominent that was actually made to BE a Squirrel Girl villain. And while Melissa was really dumb in that too, that story was overall very good and did actually show Melissa get massively shown up by Doctor Doom so that helps.
But Overall, the Melissa Morbeck storyline is EASILY the Worst Storyline in the entirety of the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl series, even including all of those GLX and Avengers Comics she was in. Melissa is basically some overconfident mcguffin of a villain who makes everyone else look like fools, NOT by being way smarter than them, but because everyone actually IS acting like fools.
One of the most sad things about these comics is The Flying Squirrel Suit, which if you read the fan letters in the backs of these comics before this storyline, you’ll see that tons of people really wanted her to Get a suit like this, it basically being a Fan creation, and they have a villain make it for her and destroy it the very next issue and she doesn’t get a new one for the entire rest of this comic run. Like really? Why can’t SHE build one? Doreen built a new Robot Suit for Brain Drain in 15 minutes once, she invented Time Travel when she was 10 years old. I THINK she can figure out how to build a flight suit. Hell one of her best friends is Tony Stark, the Billionaire Supergenius who makes flying suits as his Day Job? Can’t she get him to make one, I know he’d do it and it would probably take 10 minutes. Like This is the Marvel Universe, it’s full of INSANE Sci-Fi Tech and has the most impressive Intelligence feats of any series ever, A Jetpack is a piece of tech only Barely outside the reach of science IRL. This is the kinda tech that any random villain's Henchmen could have and you wouldn’t bat an eye so why can’t she get one from anywhere else?
My Good friend Imp has a way of judging villains that I think is really smart, ranking them in 3 total categories, so I thought a Good way to end this discussion is to give my rank for her.
Threatening: Melissa Morbeck is pitifully unthreatening. She herself is an untrained and powerless Old Lady, and her power is to control animals, something that realistically only the lowest street tier heroes could be even somewhat threatened by. Now there are more ways to Be threatening than just being physically tough, and Melissa in fact is set up to be more of an intelligent scheming mastermind villain. But she's also terrible in that aspect as well, she got found out for being Evil by a college student in minutes, immediately wrote Squirrel Girl off as being any kind of threat to her, and then tried to convince the Public she was Evil pretty much just by creating a weird situation with animals in the city, which only a conspiracy theorist would ever be able to connect back to her, despite her having Weeks of prep time to think of something better. The Reality of the situation is Melissa Morbeck is supposed to be a villain that can Rival Squirrel Girl, but I would have no trouble believing that Hawkeye would be able to defeat her, and that should be pretty telling of how much of a problem this is. At least in Stringleshanks storyline of the Zatanna comics they had him use manipulation and surprise to score his extremely uphill battle. Melissa basically ONLY gets by because characters act illogically.
Compelling: Compelling might actually be Melissa’s Weakest point, because if there is one thing she actually MIGHT Be able to give Doom a Run for his money in, it's how much of a Vain, Arrogant Egomaniac she is. Melissa constantly insults and belittles Doreen Green saying she is so much smarter and better than she is and similarly mocks and belittles basically everyone else she mentions in comparison to herself. Her entire motivation for being Evil is because her family was humiliated for not being able to control animals, and then she mocks her family Herself for not doing so. Melissa is already Rich, Famous and Powerful, but she now wants more and more power, and tries to hurt small animals just for good measure. I think the biggest nail in her coffin is that Squirrel Girl, despite her supernatural Charisma, able to redeem villains, Reform Celestial Gods, Create Galactic peace in a Waring Galaxy and Earn Doctor Doom’s respect, cannot Reach Melissa at all, she is the most stubborn and unapologetic of all the villains she has faced.
Entertaining: Lastly there is Entertaining and Melissa commits one of the worst crimes you can make in this category, being super Cringe. Melissa introduces herself to Doreen by making all these weird animal puns back to back and pretending to talk to a chicken, and I tell you I can barely stand reading her yelling into a megaphone these long overcomplicated narrations of what was happening in her narrative to try and convince people. When Melissa is not doing that, she's monologuing about how incredible she is and her plan is great, which just leaves me frustrated because Objectively no it is not. Melissa isn’t cool, or charismatic or funny or weird or interesting or other such things that would make a character score high, she's just an entitled old Karen. No I don’t wanna watch her make Breakfast, because I didn’t wanna see her try to take over the world even.
So Yeah, That's why I hate Melissa Morbeck, I hope you thought I made some good points or at the very least enjoyed my ranting. And Hey, if you like this content, feel free to let me know if you want me to try this with the Ghost Rider series. I don’t have any Ghost Rider villains I hate THIS Much….well okay I DO but the comic doesn’t consider her a villain :P.
