Origin

"I've always been a morning person. Rising with the sun before the world is awake brings me great peace... Affording me the opportunity to center myself... And prepare to become Ami Han, National Intelligence Service. Every job requires us to play a part... Wear a costume."

- White Fox

Ami Han is the last of the Kumiho, a mystical Korean shape shifting fox. Her grandmother was a Kumiho who fell in love with the man that helped her uncover her humanity. As an adult, Ami became an operative of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, both in her civilian identity and as the White Fox, one of South Korea's super-agents.

Creation

White Fox was created by Yong-Moon Gou for a Korean web-comic named Avengers: Electric Rain #1 (2014), but first appeared in print form in the American comic Contest of Champions Vol. 1 #1 (2015), written by Al Ewing. She was not given a civilian identity until Civil War II: Choosing Sides #6 (2016), where writer Christina Strain revealed her name to be Ami Han.

Major Story Arcs

The Last Kumiho

After the murder of her umma, a teenage Ami Han is living trepidatiously in Seoul with her uncle and aunt, who laments her brother marrying Ami's mother and leaving them with a problematic niece to look after. In her room Ami begins to shift into her fox form, but this triggers traumatic memories of the night her umma was savagely killed by hunters led by a samjokgu, supernatural three-legged dogs who prey on kumiho. As a child Ami was warned to hide her heritage lest the samjokgu find her, and the lingering PTSD of surviving the attack has cautioned Ami to repress her true self for her own safety.

In high school, Ami finds making friends difficult until she meets Yeji Sul, president of the school's Folklore Club. Other girls sense something "fake" about Ami, unknowingly clocking her secret of being kumiho taking human form. Ami and Yeji are targeted by the popular girls, revealing Yeji's father embezzled corporate money and borrowed from the dangerous Yongsan Brothers, the girls mock her father's downfall and predict her "inevitable" murder by the gang. After school Yeji is taken by Kyungtae Kim, lieutenant of the Yongsan Brothers, and the following day Ami grows concerned about her friend's safety. She taps into her kumiho powers to track Yeji to a warehouse, fighting off Yongsan mooks and gradually transforming into a kumiho-human hybrid form as she embraces her nature. Ami finds Yeji who is being held for ransom by Kyungtae, who reveals his true nature as a samjokgu and attacks Ami while taunting her inferiority. With encouragement from Yeji, Ami pushes through her trauma of the night her umma was killed and transforms fully into her fox form, forcing Kyungtae to retreat and freeing her friend from danger.

Ami recalls that, in all the legends, kumiho were depicted as heart-eating monsters, but this side of her was a gift passed down from mother to daughter and she owes it to her memory to use it as a force of good. Outside the warehouse Ami is approached by the Director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, who witnessed her powers and offers her an opportunity to work for them.

Electric Rain

Ami Han, now working for National Intelligence Service and going by the moniker White Fox, bears witness to a building in Downtown Seoul shift and move of its own will after being hit by electricity during a permanent rain storm. The NIS' newly formed think tank group do not possess the resources and technology required for deep data analysis, and so call upon the assistance of Stark Incorporated via the "Avengers Alliance" agreement. White Fox meets Iron Man at the National Assembly and head to his K-Stark headquarters in Seoul along with Haoon Kim (leader of the think tank), Bruce Banner and Captain America, where they respond to another building warped by the thunder storm with civilians trapped inside. Fox helps Iron Man and Cap rescue the people before the building collapses, and Dr Banner discovers that the rainfall and lightning trigger the metamorphosis. White Fox is ordered to patrol the epicenter of the storm surrounding Namsan Mountain, where she once lived with her mother before the samjokgu found them. Ami senses a disturbed presence on the mountain and discovers a hidden Hydra base containing Thor, whose powers are being used to cause the endless storm.

White Fox frees Thor and discovers the cause of the disasters is Haoon Kim, a secret Hydra agent whose experiments created human bombs that are triggered by the Asgardian's rain and lightning to explode and posses the buildings. Two such human bombs explode within K-Stark headquarters and the 63 Building, which the Avengers struggle to contain while White Fox and Captain America fight Haoon's Hydra robots. Haoon attempts to detonate himself and take the Avengers with him but is unsuccessful. The Avengers thank White Fox for fighting alongside them, and make her an international member of the Avengers Initiative.

Contest of Champions

Now considered South Korea's premier super agent, White Fox is charged with solving the mysterious disappearance and murder of her colleague, Gun-R. On investigation, she notes that the scent of matter of Gun-R's armor is not of this Earth and concludes that he must have been removed from this universe and murdered beyond. As her experience is limited in this area, Ami travels to the Triskelion in New York and seeks the help of The Ultimates. Black Panther's scans Gun-R's body reveal particulate matter from multiple dimensions and White Fox joins the team in confronting their key suspect The Grandmaster, who admits to kidnapping Gun-R as part of the first Contest of Champions of the 8th Cosmos. Fox attempts to arrest Grandmaster but he brokers a deal with the Ultimates, revealing the identity and location of the Contest's winner and Gun-R's killer: Maestro.

White Fox and The Ultimates travel to the Battleworld in the remnants of the 7th Cosmos and confront Maestro, who uses the power of the ISO-8 sphere to send the team back to Earth 616 sans Fox. Ami - now trapped on Battleworld - teams up with the survivors of the Contest, where they are pitted against a variant of Tony Stark and his Mighty Avengers. White Fox clashes with variants of both Ragnarok and Captain Marvel before Maestro intervenes and kills multiple heroes, forcing a last ditch team-up of Contestants against the mad Hulk. Fox is one of the heroes about to be killed by Maestro before Outlaw uses the power of the ISO-8 sphere to end the Contest of Champions. She is teleported back to Earth 616 by Outlaw, alongside Guillotine and newly resurrected heroes Ares and Stick, where they agree to keep the peace and depart as comrades.

Millionaire with a Mouth

White Fox intercepts Deadpool, who attempts to steal the Cat's Paw flash drive from a company in Seoul. She is able to stop him but it turns out to be Solo in his Deadpool costume. Solo gets away but White Fox keeps the flash drive.

Civil War II

Captain Marvel and Abigail Brand propose that Agent Han recruit White Fox into the Ulysses Initiative, not realizing Agent Han is White Fox. Han requests a week for "White Fox" to consider the offer, and invites Brand to a sparring match on the roof of the National Intelligence Service HQ. There, she reveals that her grandmother would have been targeted under the Ulysses Initiative before she had the chance to fall in love with Ami's grandfather, thus changing her ways and become human. She also reminds Brand that no South Korean was permitted to sign the post-war Korean Armistice Agreement, highlighting the nation's continued struggle with oppression from outside forces. With that, White Fox formally declines their invitation to join the war.

Monsters Unleashed

As part of an investigation by the National Intelligence Service, White Fox hires Amadeus Cho to help determine the cause of a Korean Air plane's destruction mid-flight. The source is Xemnu, an extraterrestrial being who landed near Seoul and unleashed psychic chaos amongst the population, projecting psionic dreams into each person's mind. Cho was briefly trapped in one of Xemnu's hallucinations, but White Fox resisted and both heroes confront and defeat Xemnu. The next day, Fox reassures Cho that the monster inside does not make him less of a friend.

New Agents of Atlas

A volcano erupts in the centre of Seoul and the forces of Muspelheim emerge to conquer the region. White Fox is on the scene rescuing civilians and commands NIS soldiers to counter-attack the fire demons with the assistance of local hero Crescent with her magic bear spirit Io, and K-Idol turned superhero Luna Snow. The Agents of Atlas arrive to help, however the Queen of Muspelheim emerges from a portal to claim South Korea as her new seat of power on Midgard. White Fox orders an airstrike on Sindr but she defuses the missiles in mid-flight, rendering them useless and the ensuing battle forces the heroes to retreat.

The President surrenders and Sindr officially annexes South Korea, claiming Gyeongbokgung Palace as her seat of power. As the tactical leader of the new team, Fox formulates a plan for Amadeus Cho to infiltrate the palace, gather intel and retrieve the captured Luna Snow. The plan is a success, and the team's de facto leaders White Fox, Cho and Jimmy Woo where a trio of elemental heroes are sent to the Arctic to slow the Earth's rising temperature while the mystically-empowered members of the team - including Ami - teleport to Northern China to intercept Sindr. There they rendezvous with Sun Wukong who belittles Ami by calling her a dokkaebi (Korean goblin), however she proves her worth by holding Sindr at bay in her kumiho form until Wukong delivers a crushing blow to the Muspelheim Queen, sacrificing himself in the process. Sindr flees through a portal to the Great Wall of China north of Beijing, but the Agents of Atlas follow her and defeat her as an official team.

Abilities and Skills

Ami has all the powers associated with that of a superhuman with animal-based powers, including enhanced senses, supernatural tracking skills, strength & durability, reflexes and claws. She has also displayed the supernatural ability to communicate with Korean animals.

White Fox is the last of the kumiho, and as such possesses the ability to shift between her human and fox form.

As the Director of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, Han has numerous resources and technologies available to her. Han is also at least trilingual, being fluent in Korean, English and Greek. She has hinted at knowing more languages, but these are unconfirmed.

Other Media

Video Games

Marvel Future Fight

White Fox was added to Marvel Future Fight as part of the Morgan Le Fay event in 2019, alongside her own Heroic Quest. She is a Speed type character who benefits as the leader of the player's team, granting massive stat boosts against Super Villain type characters. Her bio reads: Ami Han is a super-agent for the South Korean National Intelligence service. As the last of the Kumiho, she brings the mystical powers of the nine-tailed fox to the battlefield.

She has received Tier 2 and Potential Unlock upgrades, and two costumes as part of the "Lifestyle Series" which highlights the game's South Korean heroes in fashionable outfits.

JeeHyung Lee's redesign of White Fox for the game has since become her standard costume in the Marvel 616 Universe.