Origin
Laura Wright was born on December 4, 1920. She began her crime-fighting as the masked Blue Bulleteer using a pair of revolvers as her main weapon. In the 1960’s she became the pupil of the wizard Azagoth. He took her to another dimension called Limbo for her magic training. She later reappeared on earth as Nightveil, with her youth regained and ready to fight crime again.
Creation
The story of Nightveil’s creation is a complicated one. In the early 1970’s, AC Comics began using the Golden Age character of Phantom Lady (aka Sandra Knight) in their titles, believing that the character was now in the Public Domain. They starting out by reprinting her Fox Feature era issues from the 1950’s, and eventually began featuring Phantom Lady in their own original stories. However, DC Comics had claimed ownership of the Phantom Lady, stating they had purchased the copyrights of Golden Age Quality Comics characters, including Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, Doll Man and others.
Not wanting to engage in a lawsuit with the larger publisher, AC rewrote their version of the Phantom Lady, changing her name to the Blue Bulleteer and giving her pistols as weapons. They further decided to modernize her character by placing her in the extra-dimensional plane of Limbo with a magical mentor named Azagoth, while decades passed in our world. Laura emerged from Limbo in modern times with new powers and a new identity, calling herself Nightveil, and has since adapted to the current time period.
As it turns out, the copyright to some of Phantom Lady’s earlier appearances are now in the Public Domain, while DC continues to maintain that the original Golden Age version published by Quality Comics is owned by their company (this version can be easily distinguished from the Public Domain version since she wears a yellow and green costume, rather than red and blue).
Powers and Paraphernalia
Nightveil wields formidable magical powers including teleportation, levitation, and retrocognition, to name a few. Her powers are connected to her Cloak of Darkness, an inherently evil magical artifact. While this makes her arguably among the most powerful beings on earth, Laura must constantly struggle to keep the evil influence of her Cloak in check. She is at times insecure in her own ability to do so and is disturbed by the possibility that the Cloak may already be corrupting her in some way. Because of this, she has developed a brooding personality and her FemForce teammates often have difficulty relating to her. She spends much of her time in solitude in her private sanctum, located somewhere in the Everglades. She is responsible for bringing Thunderfox, originally a fictional character, to life.
Laura seems to maintain the athleticism and agility from her earlier days as the Blue Bulleteer, but now tends to avoid hand-to-hand combat. How much of her previous fighting proficiency remains is uncertain.