Valerie "Val" Cooper is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character works for the Office of National Emergency as the liaison for mutant affairs. She once claimed to have been inspired to government service by the interesting cases her brother, an FBI agent, encountered in his work. Publication history Valerie Cooper was created by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr., and first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #176 (Dec. 1983). Dr. Valerie Cooper received an entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Update '89 #2. She appeared sporadically as a secondary character, often an antagonist, in various Marvel series through the 1980s, primarily Uncanny X-Men (written by Claremont) and Captain America (written by Mark Gruenwald). When writer Peter David and artist Larry Stroman took over X-Factor in 1991, they added Cooper as a major character, and she was featured in the majority of the series until its cancellation in 1998. The character reached additional prominence in the mid-2000s, appearing in dozens of issues in 2006 at the height of Marvel's "Decimation" and "Civil War" events. Also in 2006, Peter David returned to write a relaunched X-Factor and eventually featured her in the series during the period 2007-2009. In the 2010s she made few appearances. Fictional character biography Dr. Valerie Cooper was originally a special National Security Advisor on national security issues, which include metahuman affairs. Originally, Valerie Cooper took a hard-line concern on the problem of the threat that superhumans and mutants posed to the United States. Freedom Force This position changed slightly when Valerie Cooper oversaw Mystique's team, the former Brotherhood of Mutants, which operated as government agents under the new name of Freedom Force. Around this time Cooper was also involved in a project to create government sponsored superheroes which resulted in the creation of the second version of Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) as well as three villains that would become her enemies Deathweb. Carpenter would subsequently be assigned by Cooper to join Freedom Force. Meanwhile, Valerie Cooper and the Commission were directly involved in the events of the government demanding the identity of Captain America under the argument that he was their property. With Steve Rogers giving up the identity of Captain America, Cooper supervised the recruitment of John Walker and Battlestar. The two of them became the new Captain America and the new Bucky, respectively. Valerie Cooper's next