What happened to Monica is one of the few eye sores to Mark Gruenwald's legacy. His shenanigans derailed Monica, and lost one of the best writers to Avengers in Roger Stern. Even back then, I liked Monica over Storm. Even though I did not appreciate it then (I was in grade school), it was great that Monica & Storm were capable team leaders. I absolutely loved Monica during the Assault on Olympus story. That was the story that got me hooked on the Avengers as a kid. IMO, the franchise got derailed when John Byrne took over, and did not recover until Kurt Busiek. As I understand it, Roger told Mark that presenting Monica as fail-prone so Cap can be the team leader again would be seen as both sexist, and racist. I did not find that out the behind the scenes stuff until years later. Although I do recall that during the Thor story written by Tom DeFalco where Steve Rogers first lifts Mjolnir, Monica was shown having self-doubt while Cap was present. I thought it was a one-off thing, or a sub-plot to continue building her up, but it was part of a plan to remove her. Outside of Storm, Monica was a true powerhouse, with cosmic potential. It is still rare to see genuine black powerhouse characters.
Weirdly enough, the grade school version of me was made aware of the reasons for the identity switch of Lemar Hoskins from Bucky to Battlestar. A fan wrote to Mark explaining how the name "Bucky" or "Buck" was offensive to black people. I never knew the history of the word until reading that story. Mark printed the letter on Captain America's fan page, IIRC.
Mark used that enlightenment to create a new identity for Lemar. He even used the fan's letter as a story beat. Yeah, it is mind boggling how close-minded Mark was to Monica, yet receptive to Lemar. Monica always had the potential to be a big tie character over Lemar.