Abe Sapien
| Abraham "Abe" Sapien | |
|---|---|
Abe Sapien by Mike Mignola
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Dark Horse Comics |
| First appearance | Hellboy: Seed of Destruction (1994) |
| Created by | Mike Mignola |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Langdon Everett Caul |
| Team affiliations | B.P.R.D. |
| Partnerships |
Hellboy Liz Sherman |
| Notable aliases | Brother Blue, Fishstick, Waterfisher, King Ocean |
| Abilities | Underwater breathing Genius-level intelligence Excellent marksman Formidable hand-to-hand combatant Psychometry Telepathy |
Abraham "Abe" Sapien is a fictional character introduced in the comic book series Hellboy, created by Mike Mignola. He takes his name from "Ichthyo sapien", the fanciful species designation chosen for him by his colleagues in the 19th-century Oannes Club, and from Abraham Lincoln, on whose assassination date the Oannes Club abandoned Abe's body, leaving only a cryptic note as explanation, in a suspended animation tank beneath a Washington D.C. hospital. He is occasionally referred to as a fishman, or merman.
As well as regular appearances in Hellboy and B.P.R.D., Sapien has also starred in his own one-shot comic, Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead by Brian McDonald and Derek Thompson, and the mini-series Abe Sapien: The Drowning by Mike Mignola.
Sapien began his life as Langdon Everett Caul, a Victorian scientist and businessman who became involved with the Oannes Society, an occult organization who believed in life and all knowledge having come from the sea. After retrieving a strange jellyfish-like deity from an underwater ruin, Caul and the other members performed an arcane ritual that inadvertently ended with the creature's release and Caul being turned into an ichthyo sapien. Believing him to be Oannes reborn, the society sealed the developing icthyo sapien's body in a tube of water in the hidden laboratory beneath a Washington, D.C.. hospital until such time as he was fully formed. Forced to abandon the site by the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Society never found occasion to return for Caul, and there he stayed until he was found by workmen in November 1978.
With no memory of his life before, the icthyo sapien received a new name from a piece of paper attached to the tube, dated the day of Abraham Lincoln's assassination (April 14, 1865). Abe Sapien was taken to the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) for a gruelling round of research by curious BPRD scientists, and was saved from vivisection by an empathetic Hellboy. Thereafter, Abe entered the ranks of the BPRD as a valued field agent, embarking on his first mission with Hellboy in 1979.
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