Karla Sofen’s Story
A power-seeking Moonstone stole Curt Connors, AKA Lizard’s Enervator, but Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, defeated and imprisoned her. Recruited into Elihas Starr, AKA Egghead’s Masters of Evil, she helped discredit and abduct Egghead’s old enemy Hank Pym; when the Masters were captured, Moonstone offered information in exchange for a lighter sentence. She was imprisoned at Project: PEGASUS (Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/United States) so its energy specialists could analyze her power, until an attack by the Lava Men freed her along with fellow test subjects Marcus Daniels, AKA Blackout, Max Dillon, AKA Electro, and Alexei Sytsevich, Rhino. Moonstone and her new allies battled the Avengers, but Moonstone and Blackout escaped into the Darkforce dimension. Landing on the Blue Area of the Moon, Moonstone searched the Moon’s surface for further Moongems, but was defeated by Alison Blaire, AKA Dazzler, who was visiting the Inhumans’ home of Attilan, and returned to Project: PEGASUS.
Defeated by the Avengers again after trying to turn the public against the team, Moonstone joined Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil and persuaded Zemo to free Blackout from Project: PEGASUS. Exploiting Blackout’s mental instability, Moonstone combined technological devices and her own psychological conditioning talents to make Blackout responsive to her commands, while enhancing Blackout’s control of his powers. Realizing the ambitious Moonstone threatened his leadership, Zemo had Paul Ebersol, AKA Fixer, create a device that enabled Zemo to override Moonstone’s influence over the powerful Blackout. Zemo’s Masters invaded and occupied Avengers Mansion but were ultimately driven out, and Moonstone broke her own neck while fleeing Monica Rambeau. A failed attempt at revenge against Rambeau left Moonstone temporarily quadriplegic.
Later, Marsha Rosenberg, AKA Volcana, inadvertently used a fragment of Cosmic Cube power that Owen Reece, AKA Molecule Man, had given her to heal her injured friend Annie Arnold, unwittingly healing everyone else nearby in that hospital, including Moonstone. When the police who had been guarding Sofen’s room tried to take the newly mobile Karla back into custody, she fought them off but ran afoul of Volcana, who subdued Moonstone for the authorities. Imprisoned in the Vault maximum security superhuman prison, Moonstone joined other prisoners in a mass escape attempt foiled by the Avengers and Freedom Force. Around this same time, Moonstone was pulled forward in time by a dimension-hopping madman as one of many criminals pitted against the Avengers and the heroes of a distant cosmos in a galactic game of life, but the villains were defeated and Moonstone returned to her own time.
Having gained massive power akin to Count Nefaria and renamed himself Nefarius, Lloyd Bloch sought revenge against Moonstone for stealing his Moongem. Karla tricked him into thinking they could be lovers, distracting him and allowing her to incapacitate him until Captain America and Quasar could arrest them. Moonstone briefly joined Superia’s army of superwomen, the Femizons, until Captain America, BAD Girls Inc. and Paladin stopped their world domination plans. Moonstone escaped and attended an annual Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) weapons exposition, battling Captain America, the Falcon and Shang-Chi.
She later returned voluntarily to the Vault, where an obsessed Nefarius again tried to kill her before the Avengers recaptured him. During Nefarius’ rampage, Moonstone nearly escaped, but Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, convinced Moonstone to surrender and finish out her sentence.
When Zemo reorganized his Masters of Evil to pose as the heroic Thunderbolts to amass public trust and resources in preparation for world conquest, he broke Moonstone out of the Vault and offered her either a role in his plans or a return to prison. Now a fugitive, Moonstone reluctantly accepted. Karla adopted a new costumed guise as Meteorite alongside fellow Thunderbolts John Watkins III, AKA Citizen V, Erik Josten, AKA Atlas, MACH-1, Melissa Gold, AKA Songbird, and Techno (fellow Masters Zemo, Goliath, Beetle, Screaming Mimi and Fixer in new identities). After rookie heroine Hallie Takahama, AKA Jolt, helped the team defeat Arnim Zola, Meteorite convinced Zemo that the idealistic girl would bring the team more respectability, and Jolt joined their ranks. Moonstone secretly hoped the purely heroic Jolt’s presence would undermine Zemo’s control over the group, a situation Moonstone could turn to her advantage. As the Thunderbolts became beloved celebrities, some of them wavered in their commitment to the group’s secret purpose and began to embrace their new lives, genuinely reforming.
Fascinated by this change of heart, Karla plotted to exploit it for personal gain. Becoming a mother figure to Jolt, Karla used Jolt’s enthusiasm to gain the trust of those attempting to reform. When Zemo enacted his world conquest scheme, exposing the Thunderbolts’ true identities in the process, Meteorite and the heroically inclined members soon turned on Zemo and foiled his plans, even rescuing the Avengers and the Fantastic Four in the process. Just as the Thunderbolts were ready to surrender to the authorities, they were transported to the extradimensional realm Kosmos, where Meteorite secretly assassinated the Kosmosian Primotur as part of a deal to return home. Back on Earth, Karla assumed leadership of the Thunderbolts and resumed her old Moonstone alias, no longer needing to hide it. The team became roving outlaw heroes, trying to earn redemption and the public’s forgiveness while eluding the authorities.
The Thunderbolts battled a Hulk robot (sent by Zemo), the Lightning Rods (later the Great Lakes Initiative), Franklin Hall, AKA Graviton (a vastly powerful foe whom Moonstone drove away by playing on his insecurities), Justine Hammer, AKA Crimson Cowl, and her Masters of Evil, and the Secret Empire’s Imperial Forces. Realizing the Thunderbolts were legitimately trying to redeem themselves, ex-criminal and Avengers veteran Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, resolved to help them and offered to lead the Thunderbolts, falsely claiming he could arrange pardons for them. Moonstone was confident she could continue to lead the Thunderbolts by manipulating Hawkeye. Mistakenly believing Hawkeye was mentally controlled by the Thunderbolts, the Avengers tried to “rescue” him; learning the truth, the two groups teamed up to stop giant alien Arcane/Quist robot Dominex. The Thunderbolts again teamed with the Avengers when Zemo and Techno aided Wolfgang Von Strucker, AKA Baron Strucker’s Hydra in using Heinrich Zemo, AKA Baron Zemo’s secrets to create the super-powered soldiers dubbed the Blitz Squad.
When the Crimson Cowl’s Masters of Evil threatened the entire world with a lucrative weather-control blackmail scheme, Hawkeye sent Moonstone, the least trustworthy member of the Thunderbolts, to infiltrate the group. Never wanting to rule the world, only to belong to an organization that could offer her the security and luxury she desired as a child, Moonstone pondered whether to side with the Masters or the Thunderbolts; in the end, Karla surprised everyone—herself included—by siding with the Thunderbolts, playing a key role in defeating the Cowl’s Masters. Later, Karla showed further oddly heroic behavior during the Thunderbolts’ rematch with Graviton, who had become the tyrannical monarch of his own floating Sky Island kingdom. After defeating and capturing the Thunderbolts and their ally Warren Worthington III, AKA Archangel, Graviton sentenced them to death; however, in a private audience with Moonstone, he offered to spare her life if she would become his lover. Karla shocked both herself and Graviton by literally laughing in his face, willing to die rather than submit to him. Graviton vowed to kill her with the others, but was ultimately defeated through the combined efforts of the Thunderbolts, Archangel and Machine Man.
Though she tried to deny it, Karla had begun experiencing other uncharacteristically noble emotions: feelings of loyalty and heroism, guilt over past misdeeds, an unspoken love for Hawkeye that grew into a volatile romance between them. At the same time, she was haunted by recurring dreams of a Kree warrior woman who seemed to be an alternate version of herself, perhaps the better person she might become if she could accept that role. When the Thunderbolts invaded arch-demon Mephisto’s realm to aid Hawkeye in a doomed effort to rescue his long-lost wife Bobbi Morse, AKA Mockingbird, Moonstone fought a demonic manifestation of her Kree dream-self, defeating the ghostly warrior by accepting the possibility that she might someday become her. Afterwards, struggling with increasingly uncontrollable heroic impulses, an overwhelmed Karla fled during a battle with the V-Battalion’s Penance Council.
Unable to reconcile her internal conflict, Moonstone sought answers from the Kree Supreme Intelligence. Karla learned the woman in her dreams was Ajes’ha, a member of the Chosen Eight of Fate, an ancient group of galactic guardians and a past wielder of Karla’s Moongem. Genis-Vell, AKA Captain Marvel (later Photon) offered to help Moonstone, taking the Thunderbolts to the Eternals of Titan. ISAAC, Titan’s guiding artificial intelligence, revealed that the Moongems are biosynaptic processors that store the memories and personalities of past users such as Ajes’ha. Morally and emotionally confused by her emerging love for Hawkeye and her growing enthusiasm for heroics, Karla had unwittingly, subconsciously accessed her Moongem’s memory archive to seek guidance from the Ajes’ha personality. ISAAC and Mentor’s ruler Titan believed Karla to be unworthy of her Moongem and briefly tried to remove it, but Genis-Vell and the Thunderbolts convinced them Moonstone had the potential to reform, and promised to watch over her. Setting Karla free, ISAAC also cut off her access to the Moongem’s memory archive, ensuring her memories and feelings would be strictly her own from then on.
When the Thunderbolts and other heroes helped foil an anti-superhuman conspiracy run by Baron Strucker’s unwitting puppet Henry Gyrich of the Commission on Superhuman Activities (CSA), Hawkeye agreed to conceal Gyrich’s role in the debacle in return for the CSA arranging federal pardons for his fellow Thunderbolts. The CSA agreed, though a vindictive Gyrich refused to go along with the deal unless Hawkeye went to jail for his vigilante conduct as a Thunderbolt. Accepting these terms, Hawkeye went to prison, telling Karla he loved her as he was taken into custody. “I do, too,” Karla replied during their farewell kiss. As part of the terms of their pardons, the Thunderbolts disbanded and most of them were forced to abandon their costumed guises, including Karla. Lost, directionless and frustrated by her involuntary return to an ordinary life, Sofen searched in vain for civilian employment while trying to forget the Thunderbolts in general and Hawkeye in particular.
When Graviton began another attempted conquest of Earth, he sought Moonstone’s guidance out of fear of her ability to manipulate him, hoping to win her love as well. Wary of Graviton’s vast power, Karla agreed to serve as his advisor, hoping an opportunity to defeat him might arise. Under Karla’s guidance, Graviton gained greater control over his powers than ever, though he still remained petty on an emotional level–for instance, showing off his power during one of their sessions by murdering a seemingly random woman from afar; he later admitted this woman was Karla’s old friend Deanna Stockbridge, part of his ongoing attempts to intimidate Sofen. When Graviton finally moved to seize global power, he slaughtered the Redeemers super-team (including Moonstone’s fellow ex-Thunderbolt Charcoal), immobilized most of the world’s other Super Heroes and began literally reshaping the Earth in his own image.
Meanwhile, his longtime extradimensional allies, the P’tah, were secretly tapping Graviton’s powers to enable their own attempted conquest of Earth. In the end, the Thunderbolts reunited (minus Hawkeye) and Moonstone manipulated Graviton into abandoning his conquest efforts and helping them save the world; however, Graviton was seemingly slain by the retreating P’tah in the process, while Moonstone and most of the Thunderbolts disappeared in an implosion, presumed dead. In reality, Graviton’s power had transported Moonstone and the others to the Counter-Earth created by Franklin Richards, where they became that troubled planet’s leading Super Heroes.
When the unstable Counter-Earth’s Lloyd Bloch, AKA Phantom Eagle, went on a murder spree, Moonstone stopped him by absorbing his Moongem. Now armed with two gems, she found her powers greatly increased in terms of both variety and intensity. Eventually, the Thunderbolts saved Counter-Earth from an all-consuming void, and they found themselves hurled back to their native Earth as a result. As a result, they encountered a new team of Thunderbolts that Hawkeye and Songbird had organized in the original team’s absence. Reunited with Hawkeye, Moonstone admitted how lost she had felt without him, how she had begun to judge herself by his higher standards, and how she wanted to genuinely change for the better; but she also said she needed to want that change for herself instead of just trying to please Hawkeye, and that she would never be certain she was reforming for the right reasons if she stayed with him. They parted amicably, though Karla only admitted she loved Hawkeye after he was gone. Moonstone decided to remain with the Thunderbolts when the two rosters reorganized under the leadership of a supposedly reformed Zemo. She did this partly to prove she could be noble without the influence of Hawkeye, who had obtained his own pardon and soon rejoined the Avengers, confident the Thunderbolts he had trained could succeed without him.
Zemo’s new Thunderbolts were initially successful, neutralizing various high-profile threats and garnering ever-greater acclaim, and Zemo developed an increasingly personal admiration for his old rival Moonstone; however, none of the team fully trusted Zemo, and most of the Avengers regarded him with even greater suspicion. When the Thunderbolts sought to impose world peace by creating the global energy-absorbing Liberator project, Moonstone feared Zemo might betray them and secretly designed a failsafe device to steal Liberator’s power if necessary. When the Avengers uncovered evidence of this secret failsafe, they assumed it was Zemo’s handiwork; however, after the Avengers interfered in the Liberator’s test run, Moonstone accidentally absorbed the Liberator energies and went on a power-mad rampage until she was stopped by the combined efforts of both teams, including a reluctant Hawkeye. In the end, Zemo’s Thunderbolts broke up, Moonstone was left comatose, and Zemo absconded with Karla’s vastly powerful alien Moongems.
A paroled Abe Jenkins, AKA MACH-4 (later Mach-V), re-formed the Thunderbolts while Karla remained comatose in CSA custody. Zemo later manipulated his way back into the Thunderbolts’ leadership, briefly using the still-comatose Moonstone and the brain-dead Blackout as human weapons animated by Zemo’s Moongems, though Karla was soon returned to her hospital bed after fulfilling her part in Zemo’s plan. When the Thunderbolts stopped the Grandmaster’s plans to create armies of superhumans as pawns for his games, Zemo took control of the Wellspring of Power; however, Songbird shattered Zemo’s Moongems, breaking Zemo’s hold over the Wellspring and temporarily linking her mind to Moonstone’s mind. Songbird released Karla from her coma by freeing Karla’s subconscious mind, which had been stored in the Moongem’s archives. Once again wielding a single gem, Karla resumed her Moonstone identity; however, the post-coma Sofen had apparently lost much of her recent idealism, rapidly growing more cynical and ruthless than ever.
The aftermath of the battle with En Dwi Gast, AKA Grandmaster and the super hero “Civil War” caused by the Superhuman Registration Act left the Thunderbolts in disarray. The CSA took charge of the group, reconfiguring them as CSA special marshals dedicated to capturing unregistered Super Heroes, with corrupt businessman Norman Osborn serving as the Thunderbolts’ director. Due to Karla’s experience in controlling violent super-criminals, as well as her lack of morals and ethics, Osborn hired Moonstone to replace Songbird as Thunderbolts field leader; Moonstone accepted the job after Osborn threatened to remove her Moongem and place her in a coma once again. The Thunderbolts, now composed of Bullseye, Penance, Chen Lu, AKA Radioactive Man, Andreas von Strucker, AKA Swordsman, Songbird, Mac Gargan, AKA Venom, and Moonstone, battled various unregistered superhumans including Jason Strongbow, AKA American Eagle, Americop, Jack Harrison, AKA Jack Flag, Jillian Woods, AKA Sepulchre (formerly Shadowoman), Ichigo Uzimaki, AKA Steel Spider, Richard Rider, AKA Nova, Brother Nature, the Jury, Arnim Zola, Fletcher Traynor, AKA Biohazard, Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight, and a quartet of mysterious psychics codenamed Blue Streak, Caprice, Mindwave and Mirage who briefly infiltrated Thunderbolts Mountain. During their CSA service, Moonstone feuded jealousy with the more popular and capable Songbird, who eventually blackmailed Osborn into reinstating her as field leader, demoting Sofen. Meanwhile, Karla’s old colleague Doc Samson denounced the unethical Sofen when he visited Thunderbolts Mountain to examine troubled team member Penance, who helped Samson violently subdue Moonstone after Blue Streak’s team of psychics manipulated Moonstone into attacking. Sofen soon recovered from her injuries, albeit nursing a bitter grudge.
After a failed invasion by the alien Skrulls caused further chaos, techno-tycoon Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, took the blame for the invasion and was stripped of his roles as leader of the Initiative, financier of the Avengers and director of a now defunct S.H.I.E.L.D. Osborn was appointed to replace Stark in all these capacities, and began consolidating his power. Helping Osborn purge problematic Thunderbolts, Karla had Penance committed, then aided teammates in trying to kill Songbird, who escaped.
Moonstone was subsequently promoted to Osborn’s newly reorganized Avengers, with Karla usurping the Ms. Marvel identity of Avengers veteran Carol Danvers, who had refused to serve Osborn’s new regime. Wearing Danvers’ original Ms. Marvel outfit, Sofen continued to engage in brutal and often criminal conduct, hiding behind Avengers credentials. Repeatedly battling the non-Osborn Avengers, the X-Men and other then-outlawed heroes, Karla suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Carol Danvers, who hoped this might motivate Sofen to change for the better, and was jailed alongside fellow “Avengers” after Osborn was discredited.
Moonstone has since rejoined the Thunderbolts, now run by Luke Cage. She time traveled with the Thunderbolts, due to a teleportation technology failure, but eventually ended up back in her time. Upon their return they were taken to prison but Ted Sallis, AKA Man-Thing, panicked and in opening a wormhole, they were transported to an alternate Earth were they were the Super Heroes and the Super Heroes they knew were warlords. Doctor Strange enslaved Moonstone and Skaar and used them to trick The Thing’s army into attacking Iron Man’s forces. Moonstone was captured by The Thing’s forces and used in his gladiator games. She fought and defeated his forces and survived being disintegrated thanks to her intangibility abilities. After Doctor Strange was killed by Ai Apaec, Moonstone, and Skaar were freed and they regrouped with their teammates and returned to their reality through a portal.
Moonstone was later captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and imprisoned at Pleasant Hill. Some of the inmates were being turned into model citizens by Kobik but Fixer was able to free Baron Zemo (Helmut) who then recruited Moonstone to lead an assault on Pleasant Hill. Though the Avengers eventually contained the escapees.
Moonstone though escaped eventually and joined Bucky Barnes, AKA Winter Soldier’s Thunderbolts despite her doubts at his leadership. When the War of the Realms began, Moonstone struck a deal with the Frost Giant Laufey so she could have servants but she was defeated by her former Thunderbolts teammate Atlas who was joined by Bill Foster, AKA Goliath, Giant-Man, Scott Lang, AKA Ant-Man, and his daughter Cassie. She was later recruited by Baron Zemo to join Thunderbolts with the expressed purpose of ending Frank Castle, AKA the Punisher’s reign of terror and seen at a press conference as Citizen V.
