Latisha Arnold

Powers and Abilities

Latisha has all the traditional skills and assets of a blaxploitation  movie heroine. She’s a badass sweet mama who ain’t got no time for The Man, stuff like that. She has strong leadership abilities.

Latisha often smears petroleum jelly on her face before she fights. That makes blows to her face likely to just slide along rather than connect. One good point is that opponents are unlikely to notice the jelly in combat conditions. One weak point is that the jelly will wear off pretty quickly.

History

Latisha is an hardcore criminal from Los Angeles, with her power base in Crenshaw . Her mad dog brother, Morris, also became the leader of a powerful gang in the area.

Latisha became an influential high roller among the L.A. sets, and the go-to woman for inter-gang negotiations. In 1993 or 1994, she was approached by Justin Hammer for the biggest operation in her life.

Gearing up

The plan was to unite a large number of sets, arm them to the teeth and rampage through Beverly Hills. This would utterly destroy property values, allowing Hammer to buy the area for a song. From there he would redevelop it for tremendous profit.

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Using tremendous amounts of Hammer money, Latisha united what might have been the largest, best-armed force in L.A.’s history. She then sent her troops on the rich neighborhood to kill, loot and burn. Her gangsters brutally clashed with the LAPD and deny them access to their new turf. The National Guard started moving toward L.A.

Since the National Guard was moving too slowly for their taste, survivors from Beverly Hills banded together. They made a lucrative offer to Silver Sable International, hiring them to move in and secure the area.

Silver Sable herself, her “A” team (Crippler, Powell, Chen, Battlestar, Quentino) and the Intruders spearheaded the operation. They took down opposing forces with mostly non-lethal means, since most of her opponents were but kids.

The war for Beverly Hills

Silver Sable and her squads were retaking the area. Latisha phoned Hammer to tell him about the bad news. Hammer jumped at the opportunity to take Silver Sable down, and sent in a number of minor super-villains such as the Beetle, Blacklash, Afterburner, Boomerang or Blizzard II.

Hammer changed his plans and let Latisha and her posses to hang. He now wanted to concentrate on Silver Sable, and thought the gangs had done enough damage for his original plan to succeed. Furious, Latisha geared up and led her troops to take down both Hammer’s super-villains and the Silver Sable International forces.

In the fray, Latisha’s brother Morris was killed by an ice spike from Blizzard II. Latisha attempted to kill Hammer’s men on the scene. This led her to fight Silver Sable, who defeated her despite her ferocious fighting. Latisha was taken away by the LAPD.

Jailhouse rock

Weeks later, Latisha was offered a deal. At that point, Silver Sable had been arrested and thrown into a tough women’s prison by a conspiracy within the US government. The plan was that Sable would do something self-incriminating so they could gain some leverage.

As Silver Sable didn’t stray from an faultless conduct, Latisha and another criminal named Seline were hired to kidnap her from within the prison. They were to make it look like she was a killer and attempted to escape.

Not only did the plan fail, but Latisha realised that Silver Sable was the only person she could trust within the prison. She thus confessed, helping exonerate Silver.

After Sable got out of prison, Latisha was sent back to solitary. She trusted Silver Sable International would do something to get her out of it.

Latisha Arnold has not been seen since.

Description

See illustration.

Personality

Tough, cold, authoritative, articulate, fearless, cool under pressure. Latisha sounds more like a military commander than a gang person. It’s not uncommon for her to talk and think like a mob lawyer, either.

She seems pretty big on giving gangs their dignity, no matter what the collateral damage, by putting them in control.

Although she is a skilled and resourceful leader who wants to genuinely uplift her community up, all she knows is crime.

Quotes

“I can’t believe we’re siblings, Morris. You still haven’t learned to think with anything but your baser instincts. Don’t forget who put this operation together.”

“This isn’t about White against Black. This is about power and money, and it’s a paying gig.”

“This isn’t over between us, Sable. I hold you responsible for my brother and my professional reputation !”

DC Universe History

She would be a perfectly cromulent opponent for Steel, who has an history of fighting against street gangs.

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Silver Sable #21-22 (Marvel comics).