History
A self-made businesswoman, Grace Valentine initially appeared in the offices of New York Beat magazine to promote her new cell-phone application and her feature on "the power and potential of the individual." However, her article was bumped in favor of a inspirational piece focused on Carol Danvers and her hope-inspiring superheroics. Furious, she returned to her hotel room to meet with her partner Richard, who initially tried to console her before confronting Valentine on her use of the app to collect personal data from its users. When Richard threatened to go to the police, Valentine bludgeoned him with a lamp.
During a celebration in Times Square in which Mayor J. Jonah Jameson was to award Carol the Key to the City, Valentine attacked Carol with military drones that she had hacked into and programmed to specifically target her. She then hacked into the billboards and attempted to demoralize Carol by declaring her to be an "undisciplined, brain-damaged disaster," but the citizens of New York instead came to Carol's defense. Infuriated, Valentine set the drones to kill everybody and escaped, though Carol was able to destroy them without any casualties.[1]
While in prison, Valentine feigned being reformed and was given the opportunity to teach science classes to her fellow inmates. With these resources, Valentine built small mind-control devices on the lab rats to escape from prison, at which point she utilized ultrasonic emitters in New York's vector control network to drive of all 70 million rats in New York City to Carol's private residence within the Statue of Liberty. Jessica Drew managed to deactivate the transistor on the "lead rat," thus breaking the signal and scattering the rats. James Rhodes made his way to Carol's old apartment where he found Valentine waiting for him dressed in a Captain Marvel outfit. Valentine exploited Rhodey's unease by planting a bomb on his back, but Rhodey flew out into the Karman Line and safely detonated the bomb, while local authorities detained Valentine and escorted her to a psych ward for evaluation.[2]
Later that year, Carol took a break from her space-faring adventures and spent the day in Bellevue Hospital, tending to the bed-ridden Tracy Burke close to the holiday season. The next morning, Carol was promptly restrained with power-dampening cuffs by June Covington, having partnered with Valentine who has once again escaped capture and was seemingly masquerading as a doctor in Bellevue. Hours later, Carol regained consciousness to witness Valentine and Covington working to duplicate Captain Marvel-level powers for themselves and using a bound-and-gagged street Santa as their guinea pig. Carol broke from their bonds and attempted to fight back, kicking Covington's weapon from her hand and unintentionally breaking the street Santa from his bonds. Now free, the man revealed himself to be the real Santa Claus and broke Carol's cuffs. Knocking out Valentine and Covington, Carol made a call to Edwin Jarvis, who motions to contact Project Pegasus to detain the two criminals.[3]