Sodam? Better check your local laws and statutes about that.

I was searching for a bit, since I swore I had blogged more than a few issues of this series: yeah, after it became Avengers Spotlight, maybe. From 1989, Solo Avengers #16, featuring "The Sinister Secret of Sodam" Written by Tom DeFalco, pencils by Al Milgrom, inks by Jose Marzan; and "Seconds!" Written by Peter B. Gillis, pencils by Don Perlin, inks by Jack Abel.

On the trail of Hawkeye and watching some A.I.M. goons, Mockingbird wants to help out her estranged husband, but can't let on she was following him only because he was going to meet his ex, the Black Widow. "Ex" is probably too generous...While Mockingbird gets inside and then starts pummelling A.I.M. troops, Hawkeye and the Widow have been captured...by Hank Pym? No, a robot Hank. Not even a good Ultron one! Hawkeye had known the robot was a fake the whole time--because he turned his hearing-aid up and could hear it clanking internally? Wouldn't doing that make everything else unbearably loud?

The real Hank is also there: he had been kidnapped, while attempting to cure his long-thought-dead wife Maria of her artifically-enlarged brain. Think an even more unwieldy MODOK. But she does get a new sort-of rocket chair, and new name: SODAM! "A Specialized Organism Designed for Aggressive Manuevers!" Was she ever Maria Pym? We don't find out here; but in another area, Mockingbird kicks a guy into shooting a computer, causing a power failure, freeing Hawkeye and Widow! The Hank-bot tries to stop the real one from giving Hawkeye some info, but then gets thrown into one of SODAM's mind-blasts and blown up. Somewhere else, SODAM's bosses give the order to retreat, so she hits the base self-destruct. The Avengers get out in a rocket sled, while Mockingbird has to chance the teleporter she got there in. No one is really happy in the end: Hank wonders if his wife is really dead, and Hawkeye understands since he wishes he could see his, as Mockingbird, her involvement still unseen, walks away.

Next up, the return of Moondragon! A tough nut to crack, since she was turned to ash in Defenders #152, a last issue I have but have never managed to blog because...ugh. Business magazine editor Pamela Douglas is having severe psychological problems, paranoid delusions, culminating in shaving her head to prove her boyfriend/husband Tom didn't love her? She does get what, for the time, would be a surprising amount of support, and wigs! (Her haircut would've predated Sinead O'Connor's big American break, but those panels really made me think of Britney Spears...) She later has a near-breakdown in front of an anti-abortion billboard. You don't see those in the Marvel U. too often. Thank god. Tom doesn't understand why she thinks she saw a baby, she wasn't pregnant; but they're interrupted by a giant clawed hand coming through their bedroom skylight!

Still, fleeing in terror, Pamela does get some answers where the baby is: Titan. Of course, the answer comes from the voice in her head; the mind of Moondragon! Pamela was Heather Douglas's closest female relative, a cousin or something, so why not move in and stay for a bit while a new clone body was being grown on Titan? Heather had been too weak to help or make herself known before, but the giant hand wasn't her doing. Well, not directly, anyway: it's the Gargoyle, Isaac Christians. His soul, trapped in a crystal, possessed some army guy that found it. Heather feels bad for what she did to him--under the Dragon of the Moon's control, or not, she was always a little 'look-what-you-made-me-do'--but c'mon, she already died for it, let it go. Pamela, with Heather in her head and the Gargoyle's soul in her hand, beams up to Moondragon's spaceship, for a trip to Titan...maybe you should tell your boyfriend you're going? Maybe he'd be concerned or want to go or something; but looks like he's getting extra ghosted. This was allegedly to be continued later; but I'm not sure it was before she returned in Quasar. I swear there was maybe a brief stretch in the 70's, where Marvel was really pushing Moondragon as their female lead in merchandising? I don't think there was a Spider-Woman yet, Storm wasn't big yet, maybe the Invisible Girl and Wasp weren't doing it? As often, I could be wrong. (And I might be! I vividly remember getting stickers of the Thing and Moondragon from Cracker Jacks way back when; but looking it up, there were Wasp and Invisible Girl stickers as well! Maybe they wanted a better guy/girl split.)