The Squid

Creation

The Squid was created by Lester English, as part of the Dial H for Hero feature in Adventure Comics, which held contests to design the dialed identities and villains.

Major Story Arcs

The Squid works for the mysterious Ex Nihilo and has some interest in her agenda. She was keeping him contained at her facility but he demonstrated that the binds were easy for him to escape from. However, as he is interested in her work, he did not kill her and instead left to kill Darren Hirsch, the friend of Nelson Jent. He then fought Nelson, who was Iron Snail at the time, until Nelson felt his powers about to vanish. The Squid accompanied X.N. in her attempt to summon the Abyss. While she successfuly managed to do so, she failed to capture it and ended up enraging it. While trying to stop her from angering it further, he was struck by several globules of nothingness. After the Abyss escaped, he convinced X.N. to conserve her shots for it and he blasted some slime into Nelson's Jent's face. As X.N. tortured Manteau for answers, he tried to convince her to heal him from the attack he'd sustained, but she wouldn't listen.

He left for Manteau's apartment, learning the address when she spilled it, and found Nelson there. He showed him his injuries, revealed his and the Abyss's history, and enlisted his help in stopping X.N. from angering the Abyss further, worried that it might remember it can eat suns. They went to retrieve Manteau so she could fix Nelson's Dial, and the Squid was shot by Vernon Boyne in the process. He survived, but as they were making their escape, they were confronted by X.N. who had used the Dial to become some sort of Swiss-Army Knife person.

He remained behind to fight X.N. to give Nelson and Manteau a chance to escape, but she amplified the wounds caused by nothing and left him for dead. He managed to stay alive until Manteau arrived and he devised the planet to defeat the Abyss, but perished at the end of the fight. His body was placed in a body bag by authorities.

Background

The Squid comes from a race of aliens who herd nothingness, taming things from the unplace to use as 'beasts of burden.' One of the voidlings that was brought into being was markedly clever and the Squid pushed it to become reach further. He went exploring but as the Abyss grew hungrier and stronger, it began to decide on their destination. This led them to Earth where they battled where they were confronted by the predecessors of the H Dial after attempting to obtain gems for the Abyss to feed off of. He fell through nothingness until X.N. managed to bring him back to the world. He learned seventeen of Earth's language, but he always had trouble deciding which language and dialect was his favorite and therefore used several.