Roosevelt Island, of course, was where Star's journey began. After Nuclear Man annexed the place and created a bubble reality within it, he captured journalist Ripley Ryan as part of his devious plan. After Carol Danvers teamed up with Spider-Woman, Hazmat, Echo, and a host of other rebels on the island—including Ripley herself—Nuclear Man was defeated, and the reality collapsed. But Ryan's story was just beginning...

As part of alien agent Minn-Erva's plan to recruit Captain Marvel to her Kree cause, she began experimenting with the creation of human-Kree hybrids. Ripley Ryan underwent the transformation, and soon began siphoning off Carol's abilities, becoming extremely powerful in her own right. Star was born.

After a lengthy tussle with Star, Captain Marvel de-powered her counterpart and sent her to prison in the Raft. There, Ryan united with the Reality Stone. And that's where the new story begins...

To prep for STAR #1 hitting comic shops on January 8, we caught up with character co-creator and series scribe Kelly Thompson to hear more about what to expect from the new book!

Star has been a crucial part of a hugely personal story that you’ve been telling in the pages of CAPTAIN MARVEL. They have a lot in common, but seem to have diverged in alignment at critical points in their lives. What elements of yourself do you draw upon to write Carol, and in contrast, what do you draw upon to write Star?

Initially, they DID seem to have a ton in common since Star’s powers were literally Carol’s since she was stealing them from her, and since they look quite a bit alike. But the real commonality I think is in how they suffered early on from traumas…and though I might argue Carol’s suffering is far greater, comparing trauma is a fool’s errand. Every experience is different.

Carol and Star are both tricky to write if I’m totally honest. But Carol’s flaws, while they initially felt like a hurdle to the character, eventually became, for me, the best way to humanize her and make her more relatable. And I tried to take the opposite approach with Star, trying to find some of her good qualities—her sense of humor and her sass—teasing those things out to build someone that was more relatable than just “Grrrr. Villain!”

Now that Star is moving into her own book, what’s excited you most about exploring this character in her own right? What have you learned about Ripley since starting her solo book?

Well, it’s incredibly difficult to launch a new character of any kind these days, so I was really surprised by the response we got from readers...although given the incredible design by Carmen Carnero perhaps I shouldn’t have been! I’ve created a bunch of characters over the years at Marvel, but this is the first time there’s been real demand to see them in their own series, it’s so rare!

It’s exciting to get to do a deep dive into a character and really build them into something significant. It’s also terrific to get a chance to dig in on a VILLAIN. So many of our villains get turned into anti-heroes (and we love them for it—#1 Emma Frost fan right here!) but we’re writing Super Hero comics, so we really need good villains! Heroes are only as good as their villains, it’s absolutely fundamental. I think I finally started to really understand Star more deeply as a character when I found her sense of humor. It’s sharp as hell.