this point Man-Thing had made only one previous appearance, in the 1971 black-and-white magazine Savage Tales #1. A follow-up seven-page Man-Thing story by writer Len Wein and artist Neal Adams was commissioned for a version of Savage Tales #2 that was ultimately never published. Finally seeing print in Astonishing Tales #12 the sequence is presented as a flashback and an interlude between the main action of the book. One of the characters in the Wein/Adams story is a blonde female scientist called "Dr. Barbara Morse". Morse is working on a research project in the Florida Everglades called Project: Gladiator, which is an attempt to replicate the Super-Soldier serum which was used to create Captain America. This is the same research which Ted Sallis had previously been working on when a flawed serum transformed him into the Man-Thing. In the story Morse is abducted by AIM thugs and is later liberated through the intervention of the Man-Thing. Framing the flashback is a sequence of newer material by writer Roy Thomas and artist John Buscema in which Barbara (now revealed to be "Dr. Barbara Morse" and thus the character from the Wein/Adams Man-Thing story) and Paul (now "Dr. Paul Allen") accompany Ka-Zar back to the United States and explain that they sought him out so that he could help them deal with the problems surrounding the appearance of the Man-Thing in Florida. In the next issue, the storyline is wrapped up and Paul reveals he is a double agent working for A.I.M. It is also revealed for the first time that Barbara has connections with S.H.I.E.L.D.; the spy agency asked her to pretend to love Allen to "learn what [she] could" about his activities with AIM. At the story's end Paul dies at the hands of the Man-Thing and Barbara expresses the hope that she can "go back to just being a scientist again". Bobbi Morse, Agent 19 of S.H.I.E.L.D. Mike Friedrich took over from Roy Thomas to become writer of Astonishing Tales with #15 (Dec. 1972). He introduces a new status-quo in which Ka-Zar is living in New York and "lady biologist" and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Barbara (who now prefers to be called "Bobbi") Morse is his constant companion. Friedrich remained the writer of the various color Ka-Zar series for the next two years and for most of that period he continued to feature Morse as Ka-Zar's sidekick and occasional love interest.