Acquiring

Target 23 of 30 · Thunderbolts*

Ghost

IdentityConfirmed

Real nameAva Starr

CodenameGhost

ContinentThunderbolts*

In DoomsdayHannah John-Kamen (on Marvel's cast list; role not yet named)¹

First seenIron Man #219, June 1987²

Created byDavid Michelinie, Bob Layton²

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Level 1 // The briefDecrypted · 30 seconds

WhoAva Starr, left unstable and able to phase through solid matter by the lab accident that killed her parents; she ends up among the New Avengers.³

AbilitiesPhasing through solid objects, plus assassination and infiltration skills.³

In DoomsdayMarvel lists Hannah John-Kamen in the cast but has not named her role; her most recent released role was Ava Starr / Ghost.¹

Last seenThunderbolts* (2025), as Ava Starr / Ghost: She frees Yelena and Bob inside the Void and ends up branded a New Avenger.⁷

Sources

Level 2 // Surveillance recordOn screen · 2 sightings, 2 in the MCU

Every live-action sighting of Ghost, and everything Marvel has confirmed.

2018
Ant-Man and the Wasp MCU
Hannah John-Kamen (RaeLynn Bratten as young Ava) Ava is the daughter of Elihas Starr, a scientist Hank Pym drove out of S.H.I.E.L.D.; one of her father's quantum experiments killed both her parents and left her body in constant, painful flux. Raised by Bill Foster and used by S.H.I.E.L.D. as a phasing operative, she steals Pym's shrinkable lab so she can drain Janet van Dyne's quantum energy for a cure, battling Ant-Man and the Wasp across San Francisco. In the end Janet chooses to share some of her energy, which steadies Ava, and she escapes with Foster.¹²³
2025
Thunderbolts* MCU
Hannah John-Kamen On the run and unstable again, Ava has been doing assassination and infiltration work for Valentina's O.X.E. in return for a new suit, and she is sent to a Utah vault where she kills Taskmaster before realising Valentina has set her operatives against each other. She escapes with Yelena Belova and John Walker, is thrown aside by the Sentry, and inside the Void uses Taskmaster's sword to free Yelena and Bob. Valentina then unveils the group to the press as the New Avengers.¹⁴⁵

What Marvel confirmed

The film. Avengers: Doomsday opens 18 December 2026.⁶

Sources

Level 3 // Deep archiveThe comics · since June 1987

Origin, the comics by era, abilities and recorded feats.

Origin

Read this first: the MCU's Ava Starr has no counterpart in Marvel's main comics universe. The Marvel Fandom wiki has no Earth-616 Ava Starr, and its Ava Starr page points to the film character. The first appearance and creators above belong to the comics villain she was adapted from: the Ghost, an unnamed man who debuted in Iron Man #219 (June 1987). He is a different person from Ava. By his own account, he was once a star data engineer at a large computer company and invented GhostTech, chips that could slip into an intangible state and keep working. The executives got rich on his ideas and kept him productive with perks, including pushing a female colleague into a relationship with him.

When the project was finished and the woman he loved threatened to reveal how the company had used her, the executives had her killed. Sunk in grief, he fused GhostTech into his own body and wired himself into the company's systems, where he found proof of the murder. Intangibility saved him from an attempt on his life, and he then killed the executives one by one, erased every trace of who he had been and became a full-time saboteur of big corporations. The wiki warns that this story may not be reliable: he told it to the manipulative Moonstone, and years spent in a phased state have damaged his mind. His first known job was for a Roxxon executive who hired him to drive the research firm Accutech out of business, which put him in Tony Stark's path when Stark bought the company.

The only comics Ava Starr is a separate character from another reality, Earth-52635, created by Steve Foxe and Luca Maresca and introduced (under the Ghost mask) in Superior Avengers #1 (June 2025); the wiki says she was inspired by the film version. In her world Doctor Doom ruled for decades and sent dissidents to labour camps in the Negative Zone. Ava was locked up there at fourteen and spent more than ten years, later with a young son, under a cruel female warden who called herself the Ghost. When Doom was murdered by his own champions and Annihilus overran the prisons, Ava killed the warden and took her suit and her identity, but lost her son to the invaders. Still posing as the Ghost, she joined the circle of Doom's former champions, keeping her real name hidden.¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷

The record, by era

1987
Haunting Stark Enterprises The comics Ghost (unnamed man, not Ava): debut
Hired to sabotage Accutech, the Ghost turns his attention to Tony Stark once Stark buys the firm and drives him off. Accutech then sends the Spymaster to kill the rogue saboteur, and the Ghost murders him by leaving him half phased through a wall. Iron Man finally corners him beside Accutech's beta particle generator, which scrambles his suit; overheating, the Ghost melts through the floor and leaves behind only a scorched costume.¹²⁸⁹
Key issues: Iron Man #219 (1987) · Iron Man #220 (1987) · Iron Man #221 (1987)
1989
Trouble in Rome The comics Ghost: Justin Hammer's saboteur
Back from apparent death, the Ghost turns up at Electronica Fabbrizi, an Italian front company of Justin Hammer's, and runs rings around Hammer's hired guns. Stark and Hammer make an uneasy deal to deal with him together, and the Ghost nearly finishes Iron Man by clamping on a device that leaves his armour permanently intangible. When the Ghost then comes for Hammer, the businessman springs defences built to stop him, but the saboteur blasts his way out and promises to carry on his war.¹¹⁰¹¹
Key issues: Iron Man #239 (1989) · Iron Man #240 (1989)
2001-2006
Bombs in the machines The comics Ghost: gun for hire
Working for an A.I.M. front called Advanced Corp, the Ghost wipes out rival companies with explosives hidden inside their computers. In a rematch he tries to reach into Iron Man's chest, but Stark's artificial heart fights back and knocks him out, and he is arrested without ever being unmasked. Later, in an upgraded suit, he takes a contract from a new Spymaster to break the Living Laser out of Stark's custody, destroys what turns out to be an Iron Man decoy and is left behind by his employer.¹¹²¹³¹⁴
Key issues: Iron Man Vol 3 #44 (2001) · Iron Man: Inevitable #1 (2006) · Iron Man: Inevitable #4 (2006)
2009
Sabotage from the inside The comics Ghost: Osborn's Thunderbolts
Norman Osborn recruits the Ghost into his covert Thunderbolts, and on one early mission the Ghost slips aboard Air Force One to steal the disc of incriminating security footage from Thunderbolts Mountain. He has his own reasons for signing on: he sees Osborn as the perfect union of military, corporate and political power he despises, and means to undermine him. When the team is ordered to kill Black Widow, posing as Yelena Belova, and Songbird, he joins Headsman and Paladin in letting them go, then wipes the memories of Mister X and Scourge to cover it up.¹¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷
Key issues: Thunderbolts #128 (2009) · Thunderbolts #133 (2009) · Thunderbolts #134 (2009)
2010
Hunting a helpless Tony Stark The comics Ghost: Stark Disassembled
With Stark lying brain-wiped in a coma, Madame Masque hires the Ghost to finish him off and gives him a Tinkerer-built phone that lets him phase himself anywhere in the world. He tracks Stark to Broxton, Oklahoma, and twice gets close enough to stab and choke him, condemning him as a capitalist. Stark wakes in time and turns the Ghost's own phone against him, dumping him in a facility in Seoul.¹¹⁸¹⁹
Key issues: Invincible Iron Man Vol 2 #22 (2010) · Invincible Iron Man Vol 2 #24 (2010)
2010-2011
A paranoid on parole The comics Ghost: Luke Cage's Thunderbolts
Now a Raft inmate on Luke Cage's supervised Thunderbolts, the Ghost shrugs off Baron Zemo's breakout offer, which turns out to be a test, and goes on missions against trolls and ninjas. When Iron Man joins one assignment, Stark explains that his company is now a small independent outfit, and the Ghost, who thinks in strict either-or terms, decides Stark is no longer an enemy. Stuck in Thunderbolts Tower with Moonstone afterwards, he finally tells her the story of how he became the Ghost.¹²⁰²¹³
Key issues: Thunderbolts #145 (2010) · Thunderbolts #150 (2011) · Thunderbolts #151 (2011)
2019
War on the Punisher The comics Ghost: Zemo and Fisk's Thunderbolts
Baron Zemo and Mayor Wilson Fisk assemble a new Thunderbolts to finish off the Punisher, and the Ghost is presented at a press conference as one of the team's public faces. In the final showdown he pulls Zemo out of the Punisher's grip, but once Zemo is beaten, Fisk turns the Ghost on his former boss and he appears to kill him before phasing away.¹²²²³
Key issues: The Punisher Vol 12 #13 (2019) · The Punisher Vol 12 #16 (2019)
2020
A lost love in a data chip The comics Ghost: Project Aaru
The Ghost learns that Roxxon had secretly uploaded the mind of the woman he loved, and that Moonstone now holds the copy. She uses it to make him help with her project to upload human minds into a digital afterlife, until he discovers she is using hospital patients without consent and has no real plan to make it work. He switches sides, helps the Strikeforce team bring her down and slips away with the chip holding his lover's mind.¹²⁴
Key issues: Strikeforce #6 (2020)
2025
The Superior Avengers Ava Starr of Earth-52635 (a different character, not the MCU Ava)
Kristoff Vernard, Doom's adopted son, uses a time platform to pull the champions of a future Doom-ruled world back to the present as his Superior Avengers, unaware they are the ones who killed his father there. Still masquerading as the warden Ghost, Ava teleports her teammates into the Negative Zone so they can secretly build a magical warhead meant for Annihilus. To fool them she builds a robot double of herself from Doctor Octopus's technology, and when the Vision accidentally destroys it in a clash with the real Avengers, her cover is blown; hunted by her own team, she goes to Kristoff and tells him what his Avengers really are.⁵⁶²⁵⁷
Key issues: Superior Avengers #1 (2025) · Superior Avengers #3 (2025) · Superior Avengers #4 (2025)

Capabilities

Intangibility

Harnesses polarised eternons to make himself, and whatever he touches, pass through solid matter; he turns partly see-through while phased.¹

Invisibility

Turns himself and what he touches invisible to eyes and most sensors; smoke or mist can still reveal his outline.¹

Electronics override

His suit can disrupt machines by touch, and once took control of MACH-V's armour by phasing into it.¹²⁶

Master hacker

A former data engineer who brushes past firewalls and breaks into most computer systems with ease.¹

Inventor

Designed nearly all of his own arsenal, and later upgraded his suit to mask sounds, even his heartbeat.¹

Weapons and explosives

Carries high-powered firearms and explosives, and his suit can deliver electric shocks strong enough to drop a man.¹

Scanners and levitation

His mask detects heartbeats and can read lips from afar; the suit lets him float and fly slowly.¹

Source of power

A former data engineer who infused his body with his own GhostTech phasing technology; his suit and mask control the intangibility and invisibility.¹³

Recorded feats

comics Used modified intangibility circuits to leave the assassin Spymaster half-phased into a wall, killing him. Iron Man Vol 1 #220 (July 1987)⁸
comics Working for A.I.M., nearly defeated Iron Man in one clash and escaped unharmed. Iron Man Vol 3 #44 (September 2001)¹²
comics Phased into teammate MACH-V's armour and took over control of the suit from the inside. Thunderbolts Vol 2 #146 (September 2010)²⁶
screen Kicked a full-size Ant-Man through several walls, then phased through Hank Pym's van to kick the Wasp into the street. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)²⁷²⁸
screen Forced Hank Pym to hand over his lab by threatening to solidify her phased hand inside his neck. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)²⁷²⁸
screen Held her own against Yelena Belova, John Walker and Taskmaster in the O.X.E. vault brawl. Thunderbolts* (2025)²⁹²⁸

Notes from the archive

Ava's first suit keeps a hood as a nod to the hooded cloak the comics Ghost wore in his debut in Iron Man #219, even though the rest of the design follows his later Thunderbolts look.²⁸²
Ghost was once planned for Iron Man 2 (2010) as another villain linked to Justin Hammer, echoing the comics character's stint working for Hammer, but was cut; a different version turned up only in the film's video game tie-in.²⁸¹
During development the character's first name was going to be Dawn rather than Ava.²⁸
The comics Ghost's long grudge against Tony Stark ends in an odd way: once Stark shows him that his business has shrunk to a small independent company, the Ghost simply stops treating him as a corporate target.²¹¹

Sources