Once merged with the alien moonstone, Dr. Sofen could will herself to levitate, and quickly learnt to fly at up to about 100 mph. She could emit various types of potent energy beams from her hands including lasers, concussive force, blinding strobe beams, and heat beaMs.

Karla could modulate the frequency and other basic parameters of these beams - for instance to make her lasers pencil-thin and nearly invisible, or on the contrary to decohere then and turn them into a big flash of light dazzling everybody around her. She can also decohere her concussive and heat blasts into an explosion surging from her hands (Bomb).

These are her main powers - in super-combat she’s chiefly a flying blaster.

Moonstone is also able to walk through walls, provided she had taken a deep breath beforehand and concentrates - she has referred to this as her ’electromolecular phasing ability‘. She seldom does this - I would imagine that she’s not trained in breath control, and strong stress or being in a combat situation make her unable to hold her breath. As time goes by she becomes able to use her phasing in tense but not crazy situations - mostly to pass through simple obstacles, and by concentrating on breathing right and not panicking. During this entire era she phases about thrice.

Moonstone’s strength is enhanced, allowing her to lift about ten tons. Her durability has also been boosted to what can be considered a slightly superhuman degree for a 130 lbs. person. She is roughly similar to Spider-Man in terms of brawn - but not in endurance - and can lift and throw cars, though not very far. Moonstone can soak attacks such as the Wasp’s bio-electric sting, or being near a hand-clap of the Hulk, and keep fighting - though she can only do that a few times. She also was seen recuperating abnormally quickly from some wounds, including a broken neck that had nearly induced a paraplegic condition.

Moonstone doesn’t usually rely on her strength, unless she’s boxed in or fighting a single person whom she doesn’t think matches her strength.

The moonstone also seemed to enhance Sofen’s reflexes (DEX, Acrobatics (Dodging)), and could clad her in alien body armour. This shiny, metallic-looking costume includes thick, filtering eye protections, and shields her against both energy and impacts. It looks roughly similar to the one once worn by the first Moonstone, though it is customised for a female. Sofen can mentally change the layout of her costume, and near the end of this era briefly adopts a new look.

History

Though Sofen was now superhumanly strong and powerful, she realised that operating alone, with little training with her powers and no relevant experience, would likely result in her swift defeat at the hands of a super-hero.

She decided to join some sort of criminal organisation that could watch her back - and where she could manipulate decision-makers and reach the top of the food chain. This being the late 1970s, she soon joined the West Coast branch of the Corporation, a criminal enterprise organised like a modern, large business.

Murder incorporated

Dr. Sofen’s first mission for the Corporation was a bit of a mess. She was tasked with infiltrating Gamma Base to recover a classified gadget. She did so as Sofen, using her reputation as an unconventional shrink to charm Dr. Samson into letting her in to consult about his work with the Hulk.

After wrapping much of the security detail around her finger, she used her powers to waltz undetected through the security and steal what she needed.

However, the Hulk, who was being rehabilitated on-base by Samson, triggered an alarm by walking out of his room. The alarm spooked the inexperienced Sofen, who thought that she had been spotted. She ran right into the Hulk and panicked, using energy blasts and Faustus-style voice modulation tricks to anger the Hulk and get rid of him.

As she frantically tried to disorient him with her words, she wrecked Samson’s rehabilitative work, making the Hulk savage and angry again. She also ended up triggering a severe nervous breakdown in General “Thunderbolt” Ross when he tried to intervene. Though the damage was considerable and the Hulk fled Gamma Base, Sofen maintained her cover.

Up the ladder

These events led to a Senator, one Eugene Stivak, visiting Gamma Base. Stivak said a code phrase to Dr. Sofen identifying him as a senior Corporation executive. The Senator, running the East Coast division of the Corporation, wanted to recruit Moonstone. The abuses he had committed as a Senator had compromised him and he needed to destroy his fabricated Stivak identity to resume his Kligger identity. Interested in the pay and access, Sofen threw her lot with Kligger, destroying his Senate plane to help fake his death.

As Moonstone she served as Kligger’s bodyguard and agent during his daring interference with the plans of Curtiss Jackson, the director of the West Coast branch of the Corporation and Sofen’s former boss. Kligger’s goal was to kill Captain America - and to do so he also activated his double agent within S.H.I.E.L.D. the Vamp.

With the Vamp and Moonstone at his side, Kligger’s takeover of Jackson’s plan nearly resulted in the deaths of Captain America, the Falcon and the Hulk. In the end it all failed, though - Kligger was killed, the Vamp was left in a vegetative state and Moonstone was forced to flee from overwhelming opposition.

Sofen’s encounters with the Hulk apparently impressed her - some years later she would use the Hulk as a symbol of something very scary whilst building up her mental defences.

Super-villainess

At this point the Corporation was falling apart due to the numerous defeats inflicted by super-heroes. Sofen tried to bail out and join another organisation, since her adventures had confirmed that she lacked the experience to be a successful solo villainess.

However, the stench of the Corporation’s failures clung to her, and Moonstone felt that she was being discriminated against since she was a woman in the macho underworld associated with super-villains. If our hypothesis about her age is correct, her youth likely also played a role.

Fearing that her Dr. Sofen identity had been compromised by the fall of the Corporation, Karla became Moonstone full-time, and started looking for an edge.

She found it in a device being built by Dr. Curtis Connors, which she decided to steal. Despite Spider-Man’s interference she was successful, delaying him by shocking and slightly burning Empire State University employee Marcy Kane. Connors’s power enervator worked like a charm on Moonstone, greatly amplifying her powers. However Spider-Man took it away, resulting in the enervator’s destruction and Moonstone’s arrest.

Her secret identity ruined, she was imprisoned on Ryker’s Island and decided to just call herself Moonstone, since that was all that she had left.

Moonstone is a harsh mistress (of evil)

In 1982, the Tiger Shark stormed Ryker’s and broke out the Scorpion, Whirlwind and Moonstone. He was working for Egghead, who assembled these villains as his version of the Masters of Evil - with Moonstone as his deputy leader.

The Masters prepared thefts of data and supplies for Egghead, but the undisciplined Whirlwind, obsessed by the Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) decided to go after her first. The other Masters came in to rein Whirlwind in, but the Avengers responded too quickly - and despite Moonstone’s fair leadership the Masters were soon defeated.

However, Egghead soon had Moonstone freed again, to become his research assistant and help him put together a new version of the Masters of Evil. He recruited the Tiger Shark anew, then the Beetle (Abner Jenkins), the Shocker and the Radioactive Man, with Moonstone again serving as deputy leader.

The Masters stormed the Henry Pym trial, and though the Shocker was captured they escaped with Pym. Egghead’s plan was to finish wrecking Pym’s reputation, and his machinations successfully branded him a criminal and a psychopath with whom nobody would associate. Egghead then told Pym that the only way he could ever work again was in his employ, and the fallen hero agreed to work in Egghead’s lab.

That was a ruse - as Moonstone suspected, Pym actually built weapons and a force field rather than collaborate with Egghead’s research. Using surprise and extensive preparation Pym defeated the Masters, shooting Moonstone in the back as she tried to flee.

Egghead was accidentally killed by Hawkeye, and Sofen plea-bargained by volunteering to tell everything she knew about his operations.

Blackout !

Presumably as part of her plea-bargaining strategy, Moonstone was soon transferred to a special cell at Project : PEGASUS, where her powers were studied - as were those of many super-humans. During one of the frequent crises at Pegasus (this time, a Lava Men invasion), prisoner Blackout was accidentally released, and Moonstone easily persuaded the unbalanced villain to free her too. She then decided to free Electro and the Rhino, and seize the nuclear research dome.

Using her verbal talents, Sofen kept the explosively angry Rhino and the irrational Blackout more or less focused. Elated to be proving that she wasn’t just a flunkie, she had her allies help her take over a PEGASUS master control station, keeping the Avengers at bay by having Electro redirect a generator’s output to electrify the walls with a massive charge. She then sacrificed her pawns by having them fight a holding action against the Avengers, while she sent the PEGASUS nuclear reactor into overdrive - just to gain her revenge over PEGASUS for studying her like a lab animal. She then fled, and Blackout came with her. Spider-Man, who was accompanying the Avengers at PEGASUS, narrowly stopped the nuclear meltdown.

Reasoning that the unstable but powerful Blackout could be her ticket to the big time, Dr. Sofen started therapy with him to help him deal with his problems - while of course making him dependent on her. She rebased in an old Egghead hideout and continued to work with Blackout, but the Vision detected them.

Take me to the moon

Surrounded by a full contingent of Avengers, Moonstone talked Blackout into pushing his powers, but that backfired and he only succeeded in shunting them both into another dimension. Though the Avengers assumed that they had ended up imprisoning themselves, Moonstone eventually had Blackout bring them back to Earth-616.

Sofen continued manipulating the sick Blackout and convinced him to take her to the Moon. She wanted to explore the Blue Area of the Moon to see if she could find more moonstones like Bloch’s, thus augmenting her powers.

However, they ran into Dazzler and the Inhumans, who overpowered the two criminals despite their spirited resistance. Moonstone and Blackout were handed over to the Fantastic Four.

Moonstone somehow got free, but her bitterness led her to seek revenge against the Avengers.

When protests arose over the Avengers’ recruitment of the infamous Namor the Sub-Mariner, Moonstone saw her opportunity. Pretending to be the grieving widow of a fictional fisherman killed by Namor, she expertly worked the crowd until they were quite wroth. Moonstone got unlucky, though, and a FBI agent spotted her, warning the Avengers of her presence.

Moonstone tried a number of clever ploys to escape, but nothing worked right and she was taken out. Her actions even led to the Sub-Mariner looking heroic and saving lives, mollifying the crowd.

Return of the Masters of Evil

Moonstone was handed over to the police but never arrested - the two ’cops’ who took her away were actually the Absorbing Man and Titania. They had come to recruit Moonstone for a new version of the Masters of Evil — this one assembled by Baron Helmut Zemo.

Zemo was building a small army of super-criminals, and his Masters had the largest roster ever seen for such an organisation. His goal was to kill Captain America to avenge the death of his father, Baron Heinrich Zemo. As a first step, he intended to storm and capture Avengers’s Mansion.

Moonstone was not recruited to be a foot soldier - to her delight, Zemo tasked her with a key part of his project. She was to find a means to completely seal off Avengers’s Mansion once the assault started ; this barrier would also have to contain Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau).

Moonstone had a team of villains break Blackout out of Project:PEGASUS, where he was being held in a quasi-catatonic state after further misadventures. Using technological means to stimulate his brain and condition him to respond to key words, Moonstone weaponised the hapless Blackout so he would erect impenetrable Darkforce fields at her command. Moonstone’s ministrations improved Blackout’s disastrous mental state, allowing him to move around (though in a haze) and lifting some of his inhibitions to improve the durability of his Darforce manifestations.

Finally having some leverage, Moonstone attempted to claw her way into every aspect of Zemo’s operation. She arranged to spend much time on monitor duty to deduce what was going on, tried to gain more bartering power by being the only one who could control the nearly-zombie-like Blackout, presented herself to other flunkies to make it look like she had special access to Zemo and was a de facto second-in-command, etc.

Zemo played his own games, however, and took away her greatest asset when he had the Fixer fix him a gadget allowing him to also control Blackout. The frustrated Moonstone made some more attempts to affirm herself, but basically had to toe the line from then on.

Assault on Avengers’s Mansion

The assault on Avenger’s Mansion went fine. The throng of super-criminals serving Zemo took over the building while it was practically empty, sequestering Jarvis and laying a trap for the Avengers, starting to take them out one by one as they came back. In between ambushes, Moonstone discreetly went though the Avengers’s rooms, hoping to find something juicy to exploit - and tried to work with Blackout to break Zemo’s hold on him and replace the German as the boss of the Masters of Evil.

Jarvis was tortured and took months to recover ; Hercules was very nearly killed ; most of the Avengers were beaten up and wounded ; the Mansion was ransacked ; the city of New York was forced to lay siege to the Mansion (which Moonstone had Blackout trap in a Darkforce cube) ; and Zemo sadistically destroyed the few prized mementos Captain America kept from his pre-1945 life.

Eventually, all available Avengers and reservists broke the hold of the Masters of Evil. Doctor Druid and Captain Marvel broke Moonstone’s control over Blackout, and the Darkforce cube disappeared.

The furious Moonstone threw the zoned-out Blackout at her foes and fled. However the incomparably faster Captain Marvel caught up and disoriented her. The panicked Moonstone, thinking Captain Marvel wanted to kill her, accidentally crashed into a cliff at top speed. Though her durability, helmet and body armour allowed Sofen to survive the impact and fall, she broke her neck and had to receive extensive hospital care to recover.

Having lost control over everything, including her own body, Sofen seethed with hatred and blamed everybody but herself, repeatedly claiming that everything would have went fine had she been in charge of the Masters of Evil.

Spinal taps

Moonstone made a full recovery after but three months in traction. This superhumanly rapid recovery surprised the doctors and the police, allowing her to flee ; however her spinal column wasn’t fully healed when she flew out of the hospital, and resuming physical activities considerably lengthened the remaining recovery time.

Sofen started working as a flunkie for Kristina Ramos, a Brazilian crime lord, and procured Stark International amplifier circuits for her. However, as she landed in Rio with the contracted-for gear, Moonstone was accosted by the far more powerful Captain Marvel.

The heroine had recently been through major changes in her powers, allowing Moonstone to get the drop of her. Sofen intended to put her in the hospital to avenge her broken neck, but Rambeau made a Desperation Recovery and clobbered the surprised Moonstone.

The superhuman-strength blows suffered during that fight further damaged Sofen’s spine, and this time she ended up a paraplegic. The doctors assessing her state thought there was little chance of her ever recovering the use of her limbs, and she remained hospitalised for months, on a special bed and with her head held in a support rig. Her lush hair was shaved off and kept close-cropped to facilitate this.

When a friend of Volcana (Marsha Rosenberg) was hospitalised, the anxious Rosenberg unconsciously accessed a fragment of the Molecule Man’s power within her and healed everyone within the building without realising it. This feat of molecular manipulation fixed even Dr. Sofen’s spine.

Based on her previous healing, Sofen wrongly assumed that her moonstone had healed her and blasted through the wall, woozily flying out. Slightly hysterical and disoriented after her harrowing experiences, Sofen lashed out at cops for giving her orders and ended up fighting Volcana. She was groggier than she thought, however, and was soon defeated by Rosenberg.

Dr. Sofen was transferred to the Vault super-prison - but did not experience further problems with her spine.

Lloyd Bloch’s revenge

Moonstone spent several months locked within the Vault, but got lucky and was one of the first few prisoners who broke out when Venom escaped from his cell and started fighting guards. However the Avengers and Freedom Force narrowly brought the situation back under control, and Dr. Sofen was re-imprisoned.

Moonstone was later brought to trial, with power dampeners clamped on her. However, the courthouse was attacked by Lloyd Bloch - the previous Moonstone, whom she had traumatised to steal his powers. Now known as Nefarius and wielding colossal might, Bloch took Sofen away so he could act out his fantasies of revenge, rape and torture against her.

Though he had recovered from the trauma inflicted by Sofen years before, Bloch was less than stable. Moonstone managed to save herself through fast-talking, convincing Bloch that all the rage he felt about Dr. Sofen was actually repressed love - and that she admired him and wanted to become his lover.

Even though Bloch was now far less likely to torture and kill her, the situation was still less than ideal for Sofen. Thankfully, Captain America and Quasar intervened, but Nefarius managed to stun Quasar and rushed to grab Moonstone (who was trying to fight off Captain America despite her restraints) and fly off. Sofen then did what she intended to do all along - she put her hands over Bloch’s ears and blasted him full bore through his eardrums, knocking him out. Out of juice after having maxed out her Persuasion rolls and her Energy Blast, Moonstone was forced to surrender. She was returned to the Vault.

Free for the ladies

Moonstone was soon broken out of prison by Superia’s henchwomen, who assembled an impressive posse of adventuresses and female super-criminals and invited them to a free luxury cruise. Superia pitched her project to create a better, female-dominated Earth - and Moonstone, sensing an opportunity for power, quickly worked her way into her inner circle of super-villainesses.

She and her colleague Blackbird were confronted by Captain America and Paladin, who were looking for a friend of theirs. Moonstone nearly managed to kill Captain America before a lucky shot by Paladin knocked her out. She ended up back at the Vault.

Meanwhile, obsessed with revenge, Nefarius arranged to have himself transferred the Vault, not far from Dr. Sofen’s cell. Corrections officers mistakenly wheeled Bloch’s containment unit past Moonstone’s cell, where she was enjoying the tanning lamp that she had somehow negotiated.

Nefarius had banked on being able to burn the knockout drugs in his system when needed, and seeing Sofen in a bikini allowed him to do that within seconds. The madman slaughtered half a dozen officers in Guardsman armour then assaulted Dr. Sofen, refusing to let her talk to him and manipulate him. He broke her right ulna to shut her up.

A small team of Avengers intervened to save Sofen’s life, thought they barely could contain Nefarius. Despite the pain, Sofen dragged herself out of her cell and into an elevator shaft, reactivating her powers as she fell out of range of her cell’s power dampeners. She then escaped from the Vision and hid within the prison until the fight wrecked an outer wall. Seeing that the Avengers probably couldn’t stop Nefarius, she flew out, taking down a weakened Vision as she did so. The Black Widow intercepted her, however, and as her teammates narrowly took out Nefarius she convinced Sofen to surrender.

Return of the Baron

Meanwhile, Baron Helmut Zemo was working on his project to assemble a new Masters of Evil roster that would pass themselves for super-heroes under the name Thunderbolts. Moonstone was on his shopping list ; once again he needed her expertise despite the risks she posed.

A small team of Thunderbolts (Zemo as Citizen V, Goliath as Atlas and Screaming Mimi as Songbird) foiled a breakout at the Vaults. It was all a set-up to break Moonstone out and make the Thunderbolts look good - the battle had been fixed using a special gas to weaken the escapees. Two Thunderbolts in their villainous identities, the Beetle and the Fixer, smuggled Sofen out of the Vault in the confusion.

Sofen recognised Zemo despite his disguise. Though she had prepared herself to serve her full sentence she took his offer to join, sensing potential for power and dominance.

A short time after Dr. Sofen was broken out of prison, her mother died when her house caught fire. It has since been established that Karla Sofen killed her because she could no longer bear the thought of her mother knowing what she had become and her life as a villainess. Karla killed Marion Sofen by smothering her with a pillow, then setting fire to the house.

While this murder is perplexing given Karla Sofen’s previous behaviour, it is possible that Dr. Sofen had developed a neurotic obsession about her mother’s opinion of her while in prison, and made a quick, covert trip to murder her within a day or two of being freed.

Sofen would later come to identify this murder as the point where her life irredeemably took the path of villainy - but this will be chronicled in another writeup.

Description

The sort of disk on her armour’s chest is not the moonstone - it’s just part of the costume. The moonstone is merged within her body.

Personality

Moonstone fights dirty and in anger, and will never hesitate to endanger innocents and wantonly manipulate the psychologically vulnerable even if that ends up creating more problems for her than it solves. She’s smart and cunning, but it took a while for her to build up experience, and during her early career she definitely made mistakes. She had a discernible tendency to sabotage herself out of power lust, or greed, or insecurity, or bitterness, or the like - in DC Heroes terms those are her IAs and Unluck.

Generally, at this point she’s trying to make it as a master villain - but despite her intelligence, talent and power this is simply not working out and she can’t get any traction. Things always go south, she’s not taken seriously enough, she can’t get proper training in super-powers use, she keeps running into upper-tier super-heroes, etc. No matter how hard and smart she works, she can’t get the one contact and the one opportunity that could take her to the proper level, further burying her in her own bitterness and sociopathic certainty that she deserves better and is gonna get what the world owes her no matter what the consequences… for other people.

She’s thus confined to the hated role of the flunkie, and has been forced to craft a reputation as a reliable and serious hire who obeys orders well and poses no discipline issues so she can get jobs. While she undoubtedly greatly resented this - being confined in the position of an elite servant much like her father had been - her secret identity was gone and she couldn’t find work any other way, bringing her back to square one despite all her efforts. Of course, she’s not actually loyal to anyone, and is good at fleeing when things are obviously breaking bad. She in fact seems to derive a sick feeling of pleasure when she betrays or abandon someone, since it means she’s the one who has power.

Moonstone starts veering toward her current characterisation when she is freed by Blackout at PEGASUS, and is a recognisable, if younger, version of the current Moonstone during the famous Masters of Evil onslaught on the Avengers’s mansion.

Moonstone hates not having control or losing control - even the thought of confinement or unconsciousness can make her nervous.

DC Universe History

The obvious equivalent of Moonstone I would be Doctor Light, though I’d assume that most people would prefer to steer clear from using him nowadays. Still, a parallel between Dr. Light I and Lloyd Bloch could work, implying some connection between Kimiyo Hoshi and the reformed Meteorite.

Moonstone does have the general look and feel of Green Lantern villain, though. Perhaps she merged with a sort of decayed, corrupted power battery abandoned by a Weaponeer of Qward, and tried to work her way into the Manhunter Cult with some success - before ditching them during Millennium. She’d later have naturally become a member of the Sinestro Corps, with a standard yellow power ring.

In the Marvel Universe the moonstone is one of various artifacts of power believed to be remnants of previous universes, having somehow survived the Big Bang. In addition to Basilisks’s Alpha and Omega Stones, the Blue Diamond’s namesake, Ulysses Bloodstone’s namesake, the Man-wolf’s God-gem, and others, DCU artifacts that might also be connected to them might include the Worlogog/Philosopher’s Stone and the Starheart. (OK, not really a gem - or an object - but Scott’s lantern and ring have *gotta* be connected.) Each of these artifacts could enhance the abilities of living beings. Many of these artifacts were used to enhance agents who served as intergalactic guardians. The artifacts eventually ended up scattered throughout the known universe.

In the DCU, the Oan Guardians of the Universe could have been the group that gathered these artifacts. If you still want connections with Kree-Lar (if the Kree are in your DCU), then the alien scientists who came to investigate the stones included Guardians (and possibly the Zamarons and Controllers). This was their first attempt at creating cosmic champions. Due to their low number, these agents were not as effective as the Guardians had hoped. In fact, pirates and thieves were a constant danger - the number of gems was low enough that it was theoretically possible that all the gems could fall into evil hands. 

They attempted to replace them with much more numerous Manhunter Androids, which ended disastrously as the Manhunters went rogue. The Guardians then attempted to create a synthetic master gem under their direct mental control to serve as a Power Battery. They infused the energies of the artifacts remaining in their possession into the Power Battery, which received enough energy to become self-regenerating, and continued as well to draw energies from the Guardians and (thanks to OA’s location) from the universe. The Guardians began to craft smaller gems with the knowledge gained by examining the alien artifacts, fashioning them into rings which could receive power form the Central Battery. This was the beginning of the Green Lantern Corps.

Many of the original artifacts had been lost when the Guardians sent out their first agents, long before the Manhunters were created. These artifacts, or fragments thereof, continue to be encountered by Green Lanterns and their heroic associates. One such artifact is the moonstone possessed by Dr. Karla Sofen.

Another possibility would be that her moonstone is from Gemworld (Amethyst’s magical world).