Elijah Snow
| Elijah Snow | |
|---|---|
| File:ElijahSnow.jpg Elijah Snow from Planetary #16, art by John Cassaday. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Wildstorm |
| First appearance | Planetary #1 |
| Created by | Warren Ellis |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Elijah Snow |
| Team affiliations | Planetary |
| Abilities | Cryokinesis Ageless |
Elijah Snow is a fictional character from the comic book Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday.
His super-human abilities have been described by teammate Jakita Wagner as "heat subtraction". What this means is that he can affect the temperature around him, producing immense cold. The limits of his powers have not been explored, but it has been implied that he is incredibly powerful.
Fictional character biography
Template:Spoiler Little is known about Snow's life and even what is known is fairly patchy. Born at midnight on New Year's Day 1900, Snow was one of the Century Babies, humans born at this exact moment who were all extraordinary in some way. It has been theorised that these people are analogous to an immune system for the planet Earth. Other notables include Axel Brass, Lord Blackstock and Jenny Sparks. As Jenny Sparks has been called "The Spirit of the 20th century", Snow has been called "The Ghost of the 20th century".
Almost nothing is known about Snow's childhood, but he grew up somewhere in North America and was neither well-educated, nor wealthy.
By 1919, Snow had become something of a wanderer, encountering various paranormal beings and events. In 1919, he travelled to a castle in Europe, where an unnamed doctor (presumably Frankenstein) had been resurrecting the dead. There, he discovered a map of the world that featured those things kept from public knowledge. He then travelled to London, where he met Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula. After Snow used his powers to kill Dracula, Holmes admitted to him that they were part of a conspiracy of various extraordinary people who had attempted to reshape the world. Holmes passed this mantle on to Snow, who studied with him for some time.
After this, Snow again began to wander, aware by this stage that he had ceased to age. His adventures included encounters with the Nautilus from Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, discovering the Lost City of Opak-Re and using Uluru (Ayers Rock) to gate into another dimension of reality. All of these adventures were recorded and catalogued in "The Planetary Guide."
Eventually, Snow formed The Planetary Organization to further his explorations. By the early 1990s, this Organization came into contact with The Four, who wished to keep as much hidden information and technology for themselves as possible. Snow came close to successfully defeating The Four, but was eventually captured and forced to submit to various memory blocks that would prevent him from remembering key aspects of his life, including Planetary and his mission in life.
Approximately 10 years later, he was "recruited" by the Planetary field team in an attempt to gently restore his memory. This was successful, though the trauma of this experience has made Snow a far more single-minded and dark individual.