The Romanticism of Abe Sapien

With his mysterious origin & capacity for violence, Abe Sapien has lots in common with his best buddy Hellboy & fellow BPRD agents. Yet Abe is distinguished by his romanticism, which has its roots in the character’s influences & inspires an interesting legacy. 1/13 #BPRD #Hellboy

Abe is inspired by the titular Creature of a film trilogy that begins with 1954’s “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.” This late entry in Universal’s horror cycle offers a particularly sympathetic monster. M. Keith Booker argues that in the monster movies of the 50s… 2/13

“…the anxiety over the opposition between Self and Other… was so radical that even the opposition between humans & monsters was difficult to maintain, resulting in… sympathetic monsters (such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon) who seemed more human than the humans.” 3/13

The Creature from the Black Lagoon films also tease romance and/or sexual attraction or at least shared fascination between the Creature and various female scientists. Other monsters had menaced women but the Creature stands apart as seemingly capable of falling in love. 4/13

There’s little romance in Abe’s early appearances alongside Hellboy. But in one of the first BPRD solo stories, “Hollow Earth,” artist Ryan Sook does reference the iconic, oft-repeated image of the Creature carrying a woman into the sea, as Abe rescues teammate Liz Sherman. 5/13

Abe Sapien’s romantic aspect is developed as the character’s mysterious origin gets revealed. This begins in the BPRD storyline “Plague of Frogs” and continues in “The Dead,” where Abe discovers that the man he once was, Langdon Everett Caul, had a wife, Edith Howard. 6/13

The revelation of Edith adds romantic tragedy to Abe’s backstory. After Langdon disappeared (because he was transformed, via mystic ritual, into Abe then put in stasis for 100 years), Edith “went mad” & threw herself into the sea by the coastal home she’d built with Langdon. 7/13

Abe immediately fixates on Edith, asking to keep her photograph then traveling, in secret, to the ruins of Langdon & Edith’s former home. When Abe encounters the house, artist Guy Davis renders Abe’s confrontation with his forgotten past in the spirit of gothic romanticism. 8/13

Abe is subsequently seduced by the ghost of his past in the form of a (seemingly) resurrected Edith. This evokes a Freudian “return of the repressed.” In Freudian psychoanalysis, this is an intrinsically sexual concept, related to the particular power of sexual drives. 9/13

This isn’t a happy reunion. Edith tries to convince Abe to abandon the world, which would presumably lead to his death. Abe eventually forces them both to confront the truth: that she is dead & he is no longer Langdon. Though he never regains his memories, Abe mourns Edith. 10/13

But given the cultural inspiration for Abe, it remains notable that he is the only core member of the BPRD whose origin story features this element of romantic tragedy. The character’s further evolutions and inspirations are also worth mentioning. 11/13

Abe has a romance in Guillermo del Toro’s “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” (2008) & del Toro’s Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water” (2017) features an underwater kiss that strongly recalls “Hellboy: Sword of Storms” (2006). Doug Jones portrays the character in all 3 examples. 12/13

So why does this matter? It matters because showing that monsters can have desires and become objects of desire helps humanize them, chipping away as the self/Other dichotomy that informs so many monster stories and the cultural prejudices underpinning them. 13/13