Absorbing Man

Absorbing Man - Carl Creel

Carl "Crusher" Creel, alias the Absorbing Man, is an Enhanced villain working for various masterminds in the Kingdom Hearts Unlimited series. A former boxer and petty criminal from Hell's Kitchen, New York City, Creel was hired by David Banner as part of a scheme to steal the powers of Banner's son, the Incredible Hulk. Given the power to absorb the properties of any material, energy, or living creature he touches thanks to experimentation supervised by Wolfgang von Strucker, Absorbing Man is a force to be reckoned with, but his limited intelligence usually leads him to become the pawn of more crafty villains.

Story

Backstory - A Fragmentary Passage

Carl Creel was raised in the Bronx, but his mother encouraged him, telling Carl to always set expectations for himself. Following the death of his mother when he was still young, Carl's father became abusive, but still taught him some things about being an automotive mechanic, and even bought him a pair of boxing gloves. Carl finally found the strength to fight back when he was sixteen, for which his father kicked him out of their home. From then on, Carl lived on the streets and the gym. On the streets he turned to a life of crime, namely breaking into houses and cars, while in the gym he discovered his talent for boxing.

The ring gave Carl an opportunity to let out his anger for the death of his mother and his relationship with his father. His aggressiveness earned him the nickname of "Crusher Creel." While living in New York City, several of Creel's boxing matches were secretly organized by Roscoe Sweeney who would make large profits whenever Creel was victorious. During this time, Creel boxed against Jack Murdock and lost, despite the fact the fight had been fixed by Roscoe Sweeney in Creel's favor. As punishment for failing to throw the fight, Murdock was murdered shortly afterwards. Carl felt remorseful for the innocent people he hurt doing shakedowns, but felt stopping was beyond his control.

Creel was eventually arrested, and served his first time in prison for aggravated assault and extortion. Some time into his sentence, Carl was selected by Wolfgang von Strucker, the head commander of HYDRA's underground remnants, to serve as a test subject in an experiment carried out by Strucker's associate, the mad scientist David Banner, who wished to create a super-soldier that would match the power of Banner's son, Bruce, and perhaps even be the key to HYDRA's eventual conquest of Midgard. Following their successful experiment, Creel attained the ability to absorb any element and turn his skin into that same material, gaining a high victory status by using his talent to hide steel-skinned fists underneath his boxing gloves.

Strucker and Banner's experiment would not be kept secret for long as a remorseful low-level infiltrator within SHIELD leaked information about Creel's dangerous transformation to the higher-ups within the military defense organization, forcing SHIELD to go after Creel to prevent him from being a threat, with Agent John Garrett sent on the case. However, Garrett was also an undercover agent for HYDRA working under Strucker, and simply took the opportunity to warn David Banner about SHIELD getting on his case and to hurry up with the capture of the Hulk lest his life be forfeit for failure. David would go on to set up circumstances that allowed him, Creel, and Bruce to be captured by the U.S. Government's Hulkbuster Squadron in order to take advantage of the technology of their execution chamber to let loose Creel upon the Hulk and take his powers to achieve ultimate evolution. In the resulting battle, David would end up merging with Creel thanks to the powers of Darkness and attempt to drain the Hulk's power all for himself, but this led to his undoing as he was unable to handle so much Gamma Energy within his body and was destroyed in a resulting explosion from a Gamma Charge missile launched by General Thunderbolt Ross.

During the cleanup process at Pear Lake, Garrett discovered that Creel had survived the Charge burst, though unconscious, and, seeing within Creel the potential to prove himself for future use, chose to fake Creel's death and spirit away his body for delivery back to Strucker's secret HYDRA base for mental programming into an Enhanced assassin for the terrorist organization.

The Journey

(Is released by Daniel Whitehall from behind the scenes to aid Jafar in recovering the Red, Orange, and Yellow Nijizuishou; ends up as the third member of the Gamma Corps, and later a member of the Masters of Evil under Zemo's command during the Battle of New York)

An Empire of Dreams

"He must have faked Creel's termination, recruited him."

"Well, now we know he's HYDRA."

Boss Strategy

Boss Music: Sinister Shadows