The Cobweb
Laurel Lakeland
| Fighting |
Excellent |
| Agility |
Good |
| Strength |
Typical |
| Endurance |
Excellent |
| Reason |
Excellent |
| Intuition |
Remarkable |
| Psyche |
Good |
| Health |
90 |
| Karma |
36 |
| Resources |
Not Applicable |
| Popularity |
0 |
Powers
- Allure, She is a smart, skilled and tenacious fighter
Talents
None
Contacts
None
History
Laurel Lakeland is a rich millionaire's heiress, living together with her driver Clarice in Indigo City. Her motivation for fighting crime is boredom and a yearning for thrills.
The Cobweb stories are, as mentioned above, mostly vehicles for Melinda Gebbie's feminist erotica writing style, as well as an opportunity for her to do stories in multiple styles, regardless of any sense of continuity, even going so far as to take place in different time periods. Nevertheless, a recent pair of ABC specials have attempted to flesh out the origin of Cobweb and Clarice, as well as to explain their often-changing stories.
A series of pin-up art calendar pages in the ABC: A-Z special as well as a World's Finest Comics-homage in Tomorrow Stories Special #1 explain that Cobweb and Clarice are the latest in a long line of parthenogenetically produced daughters, their mutual mothers and their ancestors both fulfilling the roles of the masked adventuress and her loving sidekick for centuries. (Already an often taboo-breaking series, this also injects a sense of incestuousness between the two figures, who are ostensibly raised as sisters, in addition to lesbianism.)
Their lineage begins in the 16th century, when all the males of an Incan village in the remote Valley of Inca-Fingas are all slain by an avalanche while on their way to battle Spanish conquistadors. In order to continue their village, the high priestess Lula Lacalan and her stuttering handmaiden Cla- Cla-Cla emulate the local Desert Grassland Whiptail Lizards, which simulate sex to trigger pregnancy, and are miraculously successful. Their daughters are later able to escape the Valley and, also capable of parthenogenesis, both continue Lula's and Cla-Cla-Cla's lineages. They and their descendants becoming legendary pirates, highwaymen, and other such ne'er-do-wells, both to fund and as part of their lives of debauchery.
No matter how far their escapades take them around the world, however, each generation of sisters always return to the Peruvian valley their ancestors came from, taking up a place in the so-called Graveyard of Glamour, a cavern where the chilled air of the high Andes preserves their bodies. (A very... original take on the practice of succession by Lee Falk's The Phantom and his predecessors. While not specifically stated, that the sisters do this soon after their daughters reach adulthood, and that the bodies are pictured as relatively young, presumably this is not done in anticipation of natural expiration but rather a ritualistic lovers' suicide pact occurs in this cavern.)
This continues until the beginning of the 20th century when the current Cobweb's great-grandmother, La Toile the "mistress of villainy", embarks on a life of espionage after an encounter with Mata Hari. Disillusioned with her mistress' down-spiral into drug abuse and Satanism (rather than the usual amount), her partner Clothilde flees to America with their daughters, using stolen money to found the Lakeland Ornamental Gardens. As adults, La Toile's daughter Lorelei becomes the first Cobweb, with Clothilde's daughter Claudia as her sidekick, attempting to make up for their ancestors' crimes as vigilantes, battling criminals and later saboteurs from 1928 until 1945. Their daughters Laverne and Clara then take over in 1953, operating in Indigo as well as fighting evil worldwide as part of Tom Strong's science hero team, America's Best. They retire in 1971 to raise Laurel and Clarice, and soon after return to the lost valley in Peru to join their ancestors when their daughters come of age.
The current Cobweb and Clarice operate out of the Lakeland Pagoda, the former site of the Ornamental Gardens, underneath is located the Vaults of Voluptuousnes, a send-up of Superman's Fortress of Solitude and varying versions of Batman's Batcave, particularly the TV version as the hidden "Passion-Poles" on which Laurel and Clarice slide down to the Vaults automatically changes their clothes while in transit. The pastiches of the two super-heroes continue, as the Vaults contain a gallery of Cobweb's rogues including the wholesome, monogamous Perverso-Cobweb (an homage to Bizarro), Cobweb's arsenal of billy-clubs (actually a collection of bizarre dildos reminiscent of such super-hero gadgets as Batman's batarangs or Hawkeye's trick-arrows), samples of the debilitating substance chocolatite (a chocolate-version of kryptonite), and the Nano-Bordello of Zontar (the bottle city of Kandor).
Laurel apparently started her crimefighting careers at a very early age, although as Li'l Cobweb she was less than successful, and not taken seriously by adults.
The tale in Tomorrow Stories Special #1 reveals most of the story on the Vaults as mentioned above, as well as revealing that, despite their close relationship, Cobweb and Clarice's relationship has only recently blossomed. The story explains that their first kiss occurred on June 14th of the previous year, having revealed their true feelings while caught in an apparently inescapable trap, which they are able to escape from when the villain deactivates it to watch them make-out. Prior to this, Clarice had apparently only loved Cobweb from afar, despite her constant fawning, and Cobweb had often formed a latently sexual relationship with many of her foes, if not outright become a lover at some point. During this time, she also formed an at first antagonistic relationship with another Tomorrow Stories feature character, Greyshirt, the two of them eventually recognizing the other as their equal. This may have ended completely, or remains an on-again/off-again romance that Clarice remains silently jealous of, although no story has been definitive on this point.
As stated, the current mythos of this character place her and her partner as eventually having children together parthenogenetically, passing along their identities to their children when they reach adulthood, and then joining their ancestors in Peru. This is a tradition that the current Cobweb and Clarice both accept, although no story as of yet has shown them in a rush to fulfill these obligations.
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