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History
Louis Sendak was a 1940s mystic hero named the Scarab. Louis obtained his powers from a mystical artifact known as the Scarabaeus that was founded in a labyrinth that is connected to his house through a magical portal, the Green Door, that had been previously used by his father, a wizard, who had scavenged artifacts from the rooms beyond the portal. As the Scarab, Louis fought a number of sorcerous threats during World War II, sometimes alongside Dr. Fate and Sargon the Sorcerer.
In 1944, Louis became a member of the short-lived superhero team, the Seven Shadows, and attempted to apprehend the villain Johnny Sorrow. However, the six members of the Seven Shadows died from experiencing Sorrow's fatal gaze upon the removal of his mask, leaving Louis the only survivor of the dreadful ordeal.[1] Traumatized from his encounter with Sorrow, Louis retired his secret identity and as well losing his memories of why he retired.
In 1956, his wife Eleanor founded the green door left open and, tempted by its visions, she entered the Subtle Realms behind it. The door promptly closed and locked her away from our world for 40 years. Louis has spent the intervening years impotently trying to unlock the door, growing old alone.
In 1994, an assassin looking for the Green Door interrupted Louis' hermetic existence. He surprised Louis and used his malleable surgical fingers to eviscerate him. Aroused by Louis' dying breath, the Scarab beckons to him. Louis places the Scarab to his separated breast and is reborn as the Scarab. Louis dealt the assassin by using his magical powers to deposit the assassin inside a jet engine. However, he was too late to save his wife, who finally found a way to escape the Subtle Realms and severely injured by the assassin. Louis tended to Eleanor and, having gain access to the Green Door, placed her to the realms where he searched for her life force. He was then assisted by the Phantom Stranger, who helped him to remember part of his golden age career and the origins of the Scarabaeus to be the sacred form of Khepri, the Egyptian deity of rebirth and creative form of the sun god Ra, and is the very key for unlocking human potential and is an aid to higher consciousness. Louis then accepts the Scarab and undergoes a phoenix-like transformation that returns him to a physical age of 20, and all injuries current and former are healed.[2]
Eleanor later started to produce ethereal tendrils from her body that eventually took physical form as a gigantic chrysalis. As his concern for his wife and what to do about her grew, Louis threw himself into his work as Scarab. Louis was summoned to London after the Russians from the Institute of Brains tested the Scream Over Hiroshima over that city, causing untold physical and psychic destruction. Psychic Hilda Routledge told Louis that his wife was coming back, and explained much that was going on with the Scream and how it could seriously damage the veil between the astral and physical planes.[3] After poltergeists injured Hilda, Scarab went into the schism directly into the heart of the Scream in Russia, where it was created by the young men known as the Gloryboys. A renegade Russian general unleashed the Scream on the entire world before Scarab could stop him, and untold numbers of strange and unreal things began to happen all over the world on both the real and astral planes. This caused Bobby Dazzler and Benedict Creed of the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center to step in to stop prevent the Scream from destroying the world.[4] Scarab, however, was not able to assist them, as he had discovered that his wife's chrysalis had opened and he went to be with the lifeform that emerged from it. The effects of the Scream eventually died out and Creed and Dazzler were able to fix things and seemingly make nearly everyone forget what had happened by imprinting a new reality framework upon the world-mind.[5]
Louis later fell prisoner in his own home, at the hands of Johnny Sorrow, who planned to exact his vengeance on Scarab, the Justice Society of America, and the world by using Sendak as a vessel to release the King of Tears.[6] Sorrow injected Sendak with the tears that the Spectre had cried during their first encounter. Sendak was "overwritten" with the essence of the King of Tears, and according to Johnny Sorrow the old man ceased to exist. His body virtually exploded (as did the labyrinth), releasing essence of the Subtle Realms into our own universe.[7] Louis Sendak was presumably killed during the experience, even after the JSA had again managed to defeat the King of Tears.
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Related
- 16 Appearances of Louis Sendak (New Earth)
- 5 Images featuring Louis Sendak (New Earth)
- Quotations by or about Louis Sendak (New Earth)
- Character Gallery: Louis Sendak (New Earth)
Footnotes