Johann Kraus
Johann Kraus is a male comic character who features in Hellboy.
Contents |
Biography
Johann Kraus was a male human born in Stuttgart, Germany in the year 1946. He began to be aware of his psychic abilities when he was 10 years old, when he started to see people that others could not and slowly realized that these were ghosts. Johann was frustrated that he could not communicate with the ghosts and this frustration eventually led to him studying spiritualism under an elderly German woman named Anneliese Stiener. Through Stiener, Kraus met many other spiritualists and was exposed to a variety of occult studies. Ultimately he did not like the direction of the group and severed his ties with his mentor. He then taught himself to communicate with the dead, and eventually mastered the ability to send his own ectoplasmic form out of his body and into the etheric plane. In 1971, Kraus opened a small office in Munich, where he established himself as a well-respected medium before relocating to the town of Heidelberg.
In February 2002, in Chengdou, China, a warehouse containing occult artifacts seized by the Chinese government was broken into. The thief unwittingly opened a small Jade figurine, releasing a massive burst of psychic energy, killing everyone within a hundred miles, and sending a shockwave across the etheric plane. At that time Kraus was hosting a séance in Heidelberg for the family of the late Heinrich Wagner. The spirit of a recently deceased Chinese boy reached through the etheric plane, asking Johann for help from the Chengdou disaster. The shockwave conducted through the boy, then through Krauss, killing the entire Wagner family and destroying Johann Kraus's body.
He was outside his body during a séance when the Chengdou Disaster struck where he returned to find his physical form destroyed. Somehow, he managed to hold himself together long enough until he met the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense whose tech's designed a containment suit for him. (B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1 #1)
Overview
Personality and attributes
Powers and abilities
As a physical medium, originally he was a human who could project himself outside his body. (B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1 #1)
Even before the destruction of his body, Johann Kraus was a gifted and experienced medium, possessing the ability to both communicate with spirits, and project his own ectoplasmic form out from the confines of his flesh.
However, once his ectoplasmic projection was outside his body when it was destroyed preventing him from having a physical form again. Since then, he had to rely on having his essence being contained within a containment suit. He was described as not being dead anymore but that he no longer had a body. According to himself, Johann was once a medium but since losing his body he had become something else. Previously, he could speak to the dead but as an ectoplasmic being he could and read them in a way though it was described as being unpleasant. (B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1 #1)
It was noted that he had a good degree of general knowledge on the paranormal. (B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1 #1)
Notes
- Johann Kraus was created by Mike Mignola where he made his first appearance in B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1 #1 (January, 2002).
In other media
Films
- In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Johann Krauss appeared in the setting of the live-action film where his movements were supplied by British actors John Alexander and James Dodd whilst he was voiced by actor Seth MacFarlane. As a result of Hellboy's public exposure to the world, Washington sent Krauss to take over management of field operations. Following the information obtained from a dead tooth fairy Krauss had reanimated, he located the Troll Market. Stalking a troll to gain entrance, Krauss and Hellboy had a disagreement over how to convince the troll to reveal the Troll Market's entrance. When Hellboy's violent methods failed to extract the way to open the entrance, Krauss used his ectoplasmic form to possess the locking mechanism and unlocked the door. Once inside, Krauss tried in vain to question two trolls and their tumor, but Hellboy punched the information out of them.
Appearances
- B.P.R.D.: Hollow Earth v1: (2002)
External Links
This article is a stub. You can help Multiversal Omnipedia by expanding it.
