Abe Sapien
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Template:Superherobox Image:Abe Sapien.jpg Abraham "Abe" Sapien is a fictional character in the comic book series Hellboy, created by Mike Mignola. He is an "icthyo sapien", something of a merman, although at first glance, one might mistake him for an aquatic "gray" alien.
Abe was found in a water-filled casket in a Washington, D.C. hospital. He got his name from a piece of paper in the casket dated the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination (April 14, 1865). Whether Abe was captured or created by those who placed him in the casket was unknown at the time.
Abe entered the ranks of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.), joining the demon hero Hellboy and the pyrokinetic Liz Sherman as a field agent. Abe is amphibious, making most descriptions of him as "that fish guy" inaccurate.
Abe first appeared in the Hellboy series Seeds of Destruction. As well as regular appearances in Hellboy and BPRD, Abe has also starred in his own one-shot comic, Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead by Brian McDonald and Derek Thompson.
Character history
In Seed of Destruction, Abe was possessed by the spirit of a long-dead fisherman, Elihu Cavendish, and speared Rasputin, foiling the madman's plans to ressurect Odgru Jahad and destroy the world. Later on, in Wake the Devil, Rasputin's spirit comes back to punish those who killed him, saying "Surely you remember me, the great man whose life you took. See the wound. So horrible an injury that I wear its mark even now. Any wonder that I should want revenge? ...Of my murderers only you are left unpunished. You will not live much longer. You will die as I died... and the hands on the spear shaft will belong to another... but the heart that drives them will be mine". The decapitated head of a priest also tells him an omen that will later ring out greatly in his history: "Abraham Sapien. Do you hear... sunken bells are tolling for thee... Out of the caverns of Num-Yabisc, dark and terrible and deep. The ocean is calling her children home".
In the miniseries BPRD: The Dead, part of his origin was revealed. As Rasputin predicted, Abe was stabbed by a spear and even killed by another follower of the Jahad. However, instead of dying, Abe had a vision of his former self. Abe was once Caul Langdon, a scientist from Virginia who made a fortune in sea travel. He visited Africa and the Far East under the captain Elihu Cavendish before eventually settling in New England. He married a local woman of Littleport by the name of Edith Howard and becoming famous in the local newspapers for "conducting experiments of a scientific nature and meeting foreign gentlemen". At least one of these experiments involved a submarine (implying, perhaps, Jules Verne's fictional character Capt. Nemo). Caul disappeared a few months before the date on the canister. His transformation occurred after he retrieved a strange jellyfish-like deity from an underwater structure with the help of his submarine and air suit. At a secret meeting, witnessed by Abe in spirit form, Caul and other gentlemen observe the deity and he performs a ritual to it, releasing whatever it was. Spirit Abe merges with his former self and transforms into the fish-man he is today. His associates put him into the water casket and seal him up until it is safe to bring him out again.
The Dead also revealed that Caul's wife, Edith Howard, was a local girl with an unstable nature. After his disapperance, she went mad and drowned herself. However, her spirit and skeleton remained, haunting the house until Abe returned. She tricked him into believing he was Caul once more, begging him to stay with her forever. However, Abe broke through the illusion, forcing her to see the real world. She gave in and her spirit was freed, leaving Abe with only the memory of a wife he'd never known.
In the movie adaptation, Abe is played by Doug Jones and voiced by David Hyde Pierce. In the movie, Abe is psychic, and is able to touch an object to see the past or the future that the item may hold (psychometry). Unlike the comics version of Abe, this one is unable to survive out of the water for long without mechanical aid; in the comic, Abe seems to be able to survive for very long periods of time without water. He is also seen to ingest rotten eggs as a primary food source.it:Abraham Sapien