Marvel & Mystique!

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Before Mystique menaced the X-Men, she went after Ms. Marvel.

Raven made her first appearance in Ms. Marvel #17, by Chris Claremont and Jim Mooney (though Dave Cockrum gets the credit for designing her character).





















Under Raven's orders, Ballard dons the Centurion armor and tries killing Ms. Marvel.

Ballard battled Ms. Marvel and the Avengers in #18.



In the end Ballard was defeated and unmasked, but Carol still didn't know why he was after her, or who had sent him.

In #22 Carol's friends threw her a party. The art here is by Mike Vosburg.




Before anyone asks about Carol's psychiatrist wanting to pursue her romantically; they were already friends before she started seeing him to help her with her migraines and blackouts (due to her Ms. Marvel split personality), and the only thing he tried helping her with was her superhero career.

Before Claremont could continue his Mystique storyline, the series was cancelled with #23. #24 and half of #25 was already finished, and in 1992 Marvel published the final issues in Marvel Super-Heroes #10 and #11, with Simon Furman and Michael Gustovich filling in the second half of #25 (why they couldn't get Claremont to come back, I don't know).

Most of #24 dealt with another storyline, but Mystique's threat was briefly followed up on.






And at end of the issue, Carol receives another precognition from her seventh sense ability.



#25 was when things finally start to pick up.


Iron Man helps Carol investigate Michael's murder.







Carol is able to trace the number Mystique was calling, and tracks it down to an arms smuggler named Peter Coehlo. She interrupts a meeting with him and the Hellfire Club, but Harry LeLand overpowers her by increasing her mass and she is forced to flee.

Later in her civilian identity she pulls some strings and is able to get on the same flight with Coehlo, where she pretends to befriend him.









Unbeknownst to her, the Hellfire Club's Tessa is on the plane and prepares to tell Sebastian Shaw that Danvers has made her move.

Later, Carol is staying at a hotel when Pyro and Avalance attack her (it's at this point in the issue that Furman and Gustovich take over).

Pyro mentions Mystique, and Carol realizes they're working for the woman who murdered Barnett. She defeats and them and when they're unwilling to talk she goes after Coehlo again for information. However, in the meantime, Tessa has informed Shaw that Coehlo was planning on selling the armaments meant for the Hellfire Club to the Brotherhood, and Shaw has killed him.












 

Chris Claremont  continued Carol's storyline in Avengers Annual #10, where Jessica Drew rescued Carol from being thrown off the bridge. Xavier was able to restore most of her memories, but she no longer had any emotional connections to them.  In the end she decided to stay with the X-Men, and became a supporting character in their book.

In Uncanny X-Men #156, by Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Carol helps Storm and Wolverine get into the pentagon to erase the files that the government has on the X-Men.



As Wolverine and Storm battle Rogue, Carol tries to complete their mission.



Despite all the bad blood between them, Carol and Mystique had no more interactions until 2010 at the end of Brian Reed's Ms. Marvel series. I might try posting that next, though I thought the story was pretty disappointing.