Sally Avril, also known briefly as Bluebird, is a minor character in Marvel Comics's Spider-Man series. She is an attention seeking teenager who becomes a vigilante to become famous.
What Makes Her Pathetic?[]
- Sally used to be one of Peter Parker’s friends in elementary school but grew apart from him and ended up in Flash Thompson’s clique, where she then became an advocate for the bullying of her former friend.
- After Uncle Ben died, Sally showed Peter no sympathy or support, and even advised Liz Allan not to associate with Peter, further making him more alone.
- While she was not the one who came up with the idea of joining the hunt to unmask Spider-Man for J. Jonah Jameson’s reward money, she became the driving force of the idea as her ambitions grew, even after Jason, her friend who came up with the idea, wanted to back out since it was starting to get unsafe.
- While she has a mildly heroic moment of distracting a supervillain that was about to unmask Spider-Man, this action was not made with heroic intentions, as she revealed that she only did it because she didn’t want a villain to get the reward money that she wanted to get herself.
- She chose to become a vigilante after she “saved” Spider-Man, calling herself Bluebird, but never stopped any real crimes. She did it for fun and for fame rather than actually wanting to help anyone; to her it was just a game.
- She blackmailed Peter Parker when she learned he was the one who took photos of Spider-Man at the Daily Bugle, and tried to force him to take photos of her so she could receive fame just like the webhead.
- To explain what she used to blackmail him, Peter did not want anyone being able to connect him to Spider-Man at all since he was worried that villains might take advantage of this knowledge to try and take people he cared about hostage in order to get "leverage" against Spider-Man; basically the same reason why he keeps his identity a secret - to protect those he cares about. But, because of Sally, he was forced to openly reveal this information.
- Sally, as Bluebird, began to force herself into crime scenes with Spider-Man. However, she just tried to put the spotlight on her, and her actions ended up accidentally letting villains get away.
- She also accused Spider-Man of hogging the spotlight whenever they "worked together", proving that she only cares about herself, as while Peter was trying to save lives, she only wanted to take credit for the heroics.
- She was so incompetent at being a vigilante that Peter had to save her life multiple times, eventually giving her an invincibility complex where she believed that nothing could harm her because Spider-Man would always save her no matter what.
- Peter eventually had to purposefully not save her one time in order to get that idea out of her head, and when he did and she got hit for the first time, she went down and was instantly out of the fight.
- While she did agree to stop being Bluebird after she realized she was not cut out to be a vigilante, it didn't take her long before she started putting herself in danger again, this time by following Spider-Man so she could be the first reporter to get photos of battles and crime scenes. While forcing her friend Jason to drive quickly and recklessly to get to a crime scene quicker, she made him run through a red light, which resulted in them both ending up in a car accident. Jason survived, but Sally did not.
What Makes Her a Pinhead?[]
- Her choice to become a “vigilante” was inspired by the fact that she got lucky one night because she “saved” Spider-Man.
- She was extremely arrogant during her time as a vigilante, and she even declared "I'll be an Avenger in no time", despite not even stopping any crimes yet.
- Her actions while “helping” Spider-Man only ever made things worse, as she ended up letting villains get away.
- When her incompetence as a vigilante resulted in her constantly getting saved by Spider-Man, she believed she was untouchable now since Spider-Man would always save her.
- When Spider-Man realized he needed to snap Sally back to reality so she didn't continue to think she were invincible, and chose to stop saving her for literally ten seconds, she gets hit once by a villain, goes down, and starts crying.
- Her death was entirely her fault, as she forced Jason to run a red light so they could get to Spider-Man’s location faster, resulting in the car accident that killed her.
- Furthermore, not only was she not wearing her seatbelt in the car, but she was also standing on her car seat rather than sitting, possibly for dramatic effect as she was currently monologuing about how famous she wanted to be, which caused her to get launched from the car upon impact, resulting in her death rather than just severe injuries like Jason got.