Top Cow Universe

The Top Cow Universe covers a multitude of comics and characters published by Top Cow Productions, the two most significant being The Darkness and Witchblade. The two key forces in this universe are The Darkness and The Angelus, each representations of the primal forces of chaos and order, respectively. Other common players are the thirteen artifacts, magical objects that bestow great power upon their owners, and ultrasapien, humans who have, naturally or otherwise, aquired supernatural powers.

Comics like Spirit of the Tao, despite being published by Top Cow, are not part of this universe. Lara Croft was briefly a part of this universe, but left when Top Cow's license for the character expired in 2006.

The Angelus
See article: The Angelus

Cathy Cthulhu
Cathy was an ultrasapien targeted by Hunter-Killer. She had the ability to suck out a person's life just by touching them, mimmicking their looks as well as absorbing their memories. She could also turn into a hulking beast with razor sharp claws. With her abilities she was able to skirt the edges for society for a time, but then she absorbed the memories of someone who knew the location of The Catalogue, a list of every ultrasapien. Soon thereafter she was hunted down by Wolf, who killed her to keep The Catalogue a secret.

Demons
While the Top Cow Universe might not have a Heaven, it certainly has a Hell, and it is populated by all manner of nasty demons. One such unnamed demon appears in an issue of Witchblade. She had come to earth to "corrupt the flock", but she runs afowl of The Magdelana and is destroyed by the Spear of Destiny.

Elinor
Elinor is a construct of The Darkness created by the then master of The Darkness, Cardinale, in the 1200s. Cardinale, upon the advise of the wizard Royale, decided to invade the Fairy realm. A Witchblade user and Medieval Spawn are caught up in the attack, and prove to be the downfall of the assault. Cardinale attempted to reclaim all his Darkness power to fight the two, which would have killed Elinor, but Royale "saves" her by imprisoning her in a magical prison designed to hold her for all eternity.

As it happens, eternity only lasts about 800 years, and Elinor appears next in modern times in the NYC sewers. There she was building an army of undead minions and magic adepts until Ripclaw stumbled into her den. With the aid of a few magical trinkets, and a little luck, Ripclaw manages to toss Elinor out of the sewers and onto the surface, where the sunlight destroyed her skin and caused her to revert to primal Darkness.

Elle
Being the living host of The Darkness has its downsides, such as instant death upon successfully impregnating a woman. To get around this shortcomming wielders of The Darkness learned to create concubines out of The Darkness the same way they would create imps and other nasty things. While staying in south america Jackie, with the help of a doctor, finally succeeds in creating a concubine of his own: Elle.

Elle is completely devoted to Jackie's wants and desires, but Jackie attempts to teach her how to have a will of her own. Unfortunately Elle is controlled in secret by the doctor and is nothing more than a tool to him. He plots to give The Darkness a mind of its own, and succeeds in getting Elle pregnant with Jackie's seed. The resulting rapid pregnancy apperantly kills Elle, and the malevolent Darkness spawn is soon thereafter killed by Jackie.

Elle actually managed to survive this bloody episode, and after healing travelled north in search of Jackie. She finally located him in the middle of a one-sided fight against a horde of Darkness-infected zombies. She then summons up an army of Darkness children, created from her many couplings with Jackie and birthed far less traumatically, to pull his ass out of the fire. The two manage to stop the apparent source of the infestation, a rogue clone of Jackie, only for Elle to get cut in half by the sudden reappearance of Jackie's Darkness-weilding sister Capris. She was destroyed utterly when a former wielder of the Darkness used his ability to purge all Darkness from the nearby area.

Glorianna Silver
See article: Glorianna Silver

Laura Moonsong
Laura Moonsong was a werewolf and ex-girlfriend of Ripclaw. She first got wrapped up in his adventures when a stone given to her by her mother turned out to be an artifact of great power. Killjoy's mercanary outfit attempted to take it from her, but she managed to hold on to it long enough for it to empower Ripclaw to destroy a recently unleashed demon. She began teaching at the same school as Ripclaw following that, and was kidnapped as bait by a group of mercenaries attempting to claim a bounty on Ripclaw's head. When she got the opprotunity to she transformed into a werewolf to deal with her kidnapper, but in this state it was easier for Misery to mind control her, and Ripclaw ended up killing her accidentally in self-defense.

Ruth
Appearing with the rest of her "family" in the Pilot Season issue of Angelus, Ruth is an ultra-sapien. While she can maintain a human guise, she can also take the form of a quilled, green-skinned mutant. In this form she can also spit acid. She is killed by the then current Angelus host, Celestine. Why she, or any of the "family" members, had their abilities is never resolved.