Characteristic

Cost

END

Cost

5

3

3

3

0

2

4

7

4

4

3

3

2

3

15

25

20

15

15

20

15

1

1

1

1

1

20

Born among Acapulco’s poorest families, Inez Escobar was luckier than most. Her parents ran a small street business, her mother knitting colorful blankets for the touristas and her father selling them. Her mother was particularly skillful, so the Escobars were able to scrape by, but with the pesos spread across eight children, a bad day meant that someone went hungry. As she and her siblings grew older and became able to help out more, other problems arose: Their father developed lung cancer and their mother developed arthritis. Inez, the oldest child, was fortunate enough to find a job as a maid in a run-down, roach-filled hotel. The money helped her family a great deal and, after their parents’ health worsened, Inez became the primary breadwinner.

She was working on the fourth story of the hotel when the earthquake hit Acapulco. Many buildings withstood the damage, but the poorly constructed hotel collapsed. Inez fell nearly twenty feet as the floor beneath her crumbled, then found herself pinned against a reinforced support beam while rubble and debris fell around her. With several ribs crushed and a lung punctured, she stared around at the ruin. She saw a bed on its side; a fat man with a bathroom mirror protruding from his pale, white back; and a large suitcase burst open, colorful vacation clothing pluming out like a bouquet. She noticed the wall beside her trembling and dozens of cockroaches scuttling out through the wallpaper. Inez had never read about irony, but she understood it, and, certain that she was going to die, she found a certain wry amusement in the fact that the cockroaches she so often squashed as part of her cleaning were going to escape the building while she did not.

Thinking about those cockroaches, she felt a strange rush in her skin. It began to grow thicker, and harder, and the rubble began to be pushed off of her. Trembling with fright, she started to squirm, barely noticing that the pain had stopped. Shortly afterward, Inez heard a woman’s scream. It was followed quickly by her own. Looking down, she saw what had become of her. She looked almost exactly like the cockroaches she had seen crawling out of the wall, only much larger. She had undergone a metamorphosis.

After a few terrible days of being chased in the streets by terrified people already reeling from the earthquake disaster, Inez was approached by Saul and Chloe Numen of the New Men, in town to assist with disaster relief. They calmed her and helped her find her way back to her family, all thankfully still alive, and she found herself accepted by the resilient Escobars with little reservation. With her hotel destroyed, she was out of a job, but the Numens noted the tenderness with which the giant cockroach treated their youngest child. And certainly here was someone who could protect the child and remain relatively safe herself. They offered her a job as their nanny. She gratefully accepted. Studying English and learning to use her new abilities, she became La Cucaracha of the New Men.

After the New Men broke up, La Cucaracha wandered the world for a time, trying to find a place for herself and trying to find some hint of what might have become of the missing Dr. Saul Numen. She enjoyed her adventures on her own and experienced some success, even earning the enmity of CLAW, but she was hugely relieved when Dr. Numen was found and when he asked her to join him in his project in Argus City.

Created by Rob Rogers

Dr. Saul Numen was of two minds about Inez’s transformation. At times, he thought that her change, triggered by the activation of her metagene under stress, was permanent. But part of him suspected that she is a true metamorph, and could shift back to human form if she only knew how. He swore to find a “cure” for her. For her part, she humored him in his attempts, but in truth she is unconcerned and has no particular desire to change back.

Like many insects, Inez can lift much more than her own weight. She’s not as strong as some superheroes, but her strength is impressive, and she’s learned a number of different attack techniques that take advantage of her toughened cockroach form, from slicing through armor to bashing opponents and even cutting them with her chitin spines. Like a cockroach, she can easily walk on walls and ceilings, and she is extraordinarily resilient.

An unattractive Hispanic woman with pinched, sallow features in her previous life, Inez has transformed into a shiny brown cockroach that walks upright. She possesses few human features. Although she can walk on her hind legs and has some ability to manipulate objects with her hands, she is not a true human/roach hybrid; she appears much more like a giant roach. She keeps herself very clean and polishes her shiny shell. She is just over 7 feet tall.

Art by Zen Fairborn