Elizabeth Sherman

Full name: Elizabeth Sherman. Alias: Liz. Race: Human. Age: 32 Years. Birthday: April 15th. Height: 5'6 / 168 cm. Gender: Female. Eye color: Brown. Hair color: Black and short. Nationality: American. Occupation: Paranormal investigator. Weapons: He doesn't use them. (Although he has no problem using a semi-automatic pistol properly and effectively, whether it's a 9mm, Glock, or Colt.)

Elizabeth Sherman is an American woman with creamy white skin, short, straight black hair which she always wears loose, beautiful brown eyes, and a very attractive curvy figure. As for clothing, he usually wears light black clothing, but when it comes to going on missions he always wears a tailored tactical uniform from the BPRD.

Liz Sherman as portrayed in Hellboy: In the film continuity, Elizabeth Sherman is a quiet, shy, and introverted person who suffers from deep guilt and low self-esteem due to her unchecked powers. She finds solace in her childhood friend Hellboy, who has a strong romantic interest in her. In the films, she has much less confidence in her powers and retreats to an asylum before Rasputin manipulates her into destroying him.

•Early Years: Born in Kansas City, Kansas, on April 15, 1962, Liz had a normal childhood until her pyrokinetic abilities began to manifest when she was ten years old. Raised Catholic, Liz felt the fires were a result of her sins and, for a brief period, managed to keep them under control through a combination of prayer and sheer willpower. Her parents occasionally found evidence of the fires, but they seemed unsure how to address them or didn't believe it was pyrokinesis.

In July 1973, Liz thought the problem was over. But at a neighborhood birthday party, a boy yanked her ponytail hard, startling the young woman. In the ensuing fire, an entire city block was destroyed. Thirty-two people died in the flames, including Liz's entire family and their home. Firefighters found Liz, miraculously unharmed, standing amidst the smoldering rubble among the bodies.

The BPRD was called to the scene and wanted to take Liz into custody immediately, but Liz's family refused, denying that she was the cause. They soon learned otherwise, as small fires began to break out uncontrollably. Over the next ten months, Liz became increasingly depressed as she was passed from one relative to another; her extended family, understandably, grew fearful of her destructive powers and finally relinquished custody in favor of the FBI in May 1974.

At BPRD headquarters, Liz was confined to a fireproof room while the Bureau's scientists studied her powers. Without any real comfort or physical contact (only doctors and scientists in bulky fireproof suits were allowed in the room), Liz sank deeper into depression, believing herself a danger even to those wearing suits.

Her isolation was broken by Hellboy, who entered the room with a lollipop as a way to break the ice. The big red demon eventually became her best friend and older brother figure for most of her life. Hellboy helped Liz come out of her shell and adjust to life in the Department. For the next six years, Liz and Hellboy remained extremely close; he frequently traveled on missions, but made sure to check on her regularly while he trained with the BPRD and slowly developed a tenuous control over his abilities.

During this time, his Catholic beliefs were tested and for a time he no longer considered himself part of the faith.

In 1976, Hellboy encouraged his own mentor, Trevor Bruttenholm, to let Liz leave the Bureau more often. Although he wasn't sure, Bruttenholm took her with him to investigate a minor ghost in Massachusetts—that of a woman who had been executed on charges of witchcraft. Liz didn't believe the woman had been a witch and tried to appease her with the help of a local boy, Teddy. But it was revealed that the woman had, in fact, been a witch who tried to possess Liz for revenge. Bruttenholm and a local priest were able to exorcise the spirit and rescue Liz and Teddy. Through this event, Liz had her first experience of the supernatural and what it meant to be part of the Bureau. She put her cross back on, seemingly regaining some of her faith in the experience, and left Teddy with a kiss before returning to the Bureau.

In 1978, Abe Sapien was brought to the Department. Like Liz, Abe was kept in isolation for study until Hellboy convinced them he wasn't a threat. Abe and Liz quickly became friends, bonding over their shared status as "freaks" and their roles as wards of the Department.

While Liz still had nightmares about the fire that killed her family, she slowly began to put her past behind her. And although she was still far from having complete control over her powers, the number of accidental attacks began to decrease.

In 1980, when Liz came of age, she decided to stay with the Bureau and became a field agent. But in the field, Liz struggled with her pyrokinetic abilities and sometimes lost control in stressful situations. As a result, she was often assigned to quieter cases. Frustrated by her lack of control and believing the Bureau didn't trust her enough, Liz began a long tradition of quitting and returning to the Bureau; between 1980 and 1994, Liz quit twelve times. But she always came back; no matter how much she wanted to leave, she didn't trust herself in normal society.

•The Cavendish Hall case: In May 1994, Abe, Liz, and Hellboy traveled to Cavendish Hall in upstate New York to investigate the murder of Principal Bruttenholm by frog-like creatures. During the investigation, the mad Russian monk Rasputin seized control of Liz's powers, channeling them through the creature Sadu-Hem and "into the void," where he hoped she would release the Ogdru Jahad from their ancient prison. Rasputin might have succeeded had Abe not killed him by spearing him through the chest. Liz, who snapped out of her trance when Rasputin died, was unable to control the fire the monk had unleashed. In the ensuing explosion, she destroyed both Sadu-Hem and Cavendish Hall.

Liz was devastated both by the rape of being used by Rasputin and by her own loss of control, and left the BPRD for the thirteenth time in June 1994. But finding herself even less safe than ever in the outside world, she returned the following February.

•The Giurescu case: In 1997, Liz joined agents Bud Waller and Sidney Leach in the search for the body of vampire Vladimir Giurescu. During their search, the group discovered the seemingly lifeless body of a man-sized homunculus in a castle in Romania. Liz was drawn to the homunculus and, sensing a way to release her fire, placed her finger in a metal opening in the body's chest. Instantly, her fire was drained into the creature, bringing it to life. Waller shot Liz in the arm in a desperate attempt to sever the connection, causing the homunculus to snap its neck before fleeing.

The price of the exchange was higher than Liz could have anticipated: her fire was an integral part of her life, and without it, she began to waste away despite medical assistance. Abe refused to abandon her, and Hellboy went in search of the homunculus to convince him to return her fire. By the time Hellboy returned, with the newly named "Roger" at his side, Liz had been dead for a few minutes. But when Roger returned the fire to her body, Liz awoke in perfect health. Liz returned to work, but death had taken its toll. Ironically, Liz and Roger would come to share a special bond over the next few years, making him one of her closest friends.

In February 2000, he left the Bureau once again, this time traveling to an Argathan monastery in the Ural Mountains, where he hoped to achieve something resembling balance and make peace with his power. As such, he was not present when Hellboy also left the Bureau, and it is unknown if they ever said their goodbyes.

•Plague of frogs: Although Liz never spoke of the details of her experiences at the monastery, by mid-2002, she had finally achieved the balance she sought and, with it, complete control over her abilities. Unfortunately, in September 2002, the monastery was attacked by descendants of a race of Hyperborean slaves who had been living deep within the Earth. All the monks perished in the attack, and Liz's spirit was stolen from her body and imprisoned within a Hyperborean device to power ancient war machines in order to seize control of the surface. Liz's spirit appeared to Abe Sapien, who mobilized a rescue mission.

Liz was rescued and her spirit returned to her body. Although the experience shook her, Liz maintained her newfound balance and returned to the Department full-time, traveling with Abe, Roger, and the new agent Johann Kraus on other missions.

One of those missions involved a spore that BPRD had recovered from Cavendish Hall. The spore had developed into a terrestrial manifestation of Sadu-Hem and escaped from the lab; from there, Humbert T. Jones had taken it to Crab Point, Michigan, where it had transformed the entire town into frog monsters. During the investigation, Liz was able to control her fire, using it to destroy Sadu-Hem and most of the frog creatures once again. She was briefly panicked by Abe Sapien's apparent death and was relieved when he revived less than an hour later.

The Bureau launched an all-out offensive against the frog creatures, relocating to a larger headquarters in Colorado and enlisting the help of former Marine Captain Benjamin Daimio. Liz's stubborn personality and Ben's military rigidity caused the pair to clash for months; Liz was puzzled as to why they needed him and believed he was a bad influence on the easily impressionable Roger. But they quickly learned to work together, discovering that their new headquarters was the site of a German scientist attempting to summon angels to the mortal realm. Under Ben's leadership, they were able to defeat both the scientist and the strange creature he summoned.

•Memnan Saa: For the next few years, Liz and her teammates traveled across the country trying to eradicate the frog-like creatures, and it seemed they were succeeding. After the BPRD destroyed a nest in Montana, an old woman approached Liz and gave her a lotus flower; the moment she touched it, Liz collapsed into a brief coma. While unconscious, Liz dreamed of a mysterious man who warned her that things were worse than she thought. Liz awoke soon after, coughing up a crumpled piece of paper warning her of a new threat: Katha-Hem.

Feeling a strange sense of danger, Liz demanded to know where Roger was. But it was too late; at the very moment Liz awoke, Roger was killed by the Frogs' new leader, the Black Flame. Liz was devastated and retreated to her room to cope with her grief. In the following weeks, the man from her dreams visited her repeatedly and warned her that even worse events were to come and that she needed to figure out who she could trust. She began to sleep less and less, and the visitor disturbed every slumber she had.

Naturally, Liz didn't believe the stranger and ignored his warnings. But she did, in fact, seem to have reason to worry about her teammates. Johann had become distant after acquiring a new body and generally neglected his duties. Daimio grew increasingly irritable and had to deal with his own internal issues. Liz was also concerned about the growing distance between her and Abe; he had only told Kate about his past life as Langdon Caul, and his behavior had become erratic without much explanation to Liz. However, he connected well with the Bureau's newest ward, the former mummy Panya, who seemed to have knowledge of Liz's visions.

Furthermore, her distrust of Daimio proved justified when he transformed into a jaguar-like monster, killing several people and attempting to kill her as well. Liz went into shock during the monster's rampage; it seemed all of the mysterious man's warnings about trust had been right. When Daimio withdrew from headquarters, Johann was possessed by the specter of Lobster Johnson, who shot Liz's body, somehow reversing the visitor's hold on her psyche. Almost immediately, Liz was healthy and functional again, expressing her desire to hunt down her tormentor "and kick his ass."

After a séance with Panya and investigating Lobster Johnson's history with the man now identified as Memnan Saa, Liz led a team to a remote jungle temple. But the moment Liz entered, time seemed to freeze. Memnan Saa confronted her and vanished before the team's eyes.

The Bureau was able to track Memnan Saa to an ancient Hyperborean city of Thadrethes, where an unconscious Liz floated in the air in a trance-like state. Memnan Saa used his flames to summon fire dragons to fight a coalition of frogs and the subterranean race that had once kidnapped Liz's soul. Abe tried to force Memnan Saa to release her; Memnan Saa violently refused. His actions toward his friends seemed to snap Liz out of her trance, and she began speaking in a strange language as she burned Memnan Saa alive from the inside out. Moments later, Liz awoke from the trance, with no memory of what had happened since her abduction.

•Visions of the future: Emboldened by Memnan Saa's defeat, but concerned about the growing power of the frogs under the leadership of the Black Flame who had now allied themselves with the underground people, Liz led a task force to confront them directly.

But when they descended beneath the monastery where she had once studied to control her powers, Liz seemed to emerge from the caverns and enter an entirely different realm—one in which the BPRD had failed. The ghost of Memnan Saa appeared to her and told her she was seeing the world he had helped create. Liz dismissed him, believing it was just another trick, and shooed him away before exploring the wreckage of a crashed Bureau plane.

Inside, she found several old photographs depicting what appeared to be a possible future: earlier versions of Kate and Devon, a mobile Panya, a more monstrous Abe, and even a returned Hellboy. She had a vision of Hellboy and Hecate, the two figures imploring, "Do it." An unnamed shaman implored Liz to unleash her flame, and Liz did, engulfing miles and miles in fire.

Back in the caverns, the team confronted the Black Flame and were rescued by the shaman moments before Liz's flame reached them as well, killing the Black Flame and the last of its army. Although Abe and his team were later recovered, Liz disappeared from the BPRD once again. Unbeknownst to the Department, she reappeared in Bangkok. She asked a pair of Frenchmen for a light, implying that she no longer possessed her power.

Liz returned to the United States some time later and went into hiding after discovering that her fire had not only burned the frog army but had also unleashed destruction across the planet, including the complete annihilation of the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi. She settled in a trailer park, trying to stay off the Bureau's radar. But her dreams remained restless as she was plagued by visions of Professor Bruttenholm and her father, telling her she was finished because of her belief that Hellboy would return. She soon discovered that a cult had been forming among the residents, who tried to kill Liz before she escaped once again.

•Return to the BPRD: After the events with the cult, Liz regained some of her self-confidence. She eventually rejoined the BPRD and began accompanying teams in the field. During a mission in New York, she faced Black Flame once again and used her powers against him, displaying a level of mastery and power never before seen. Following these events, she continued to undertake missions for the BPRD, using her newfound abilities to fight and eliminate all kinds of monsters; her powers were seemingly the only effective weapon against the Odgru Hem.

•Live Action Movies: Liz Sherman as portrayed in Hellboy: In the film continuity, Elizabeth Sherman is a quiet, shy, and introverted person who suffers from deep guilt and low self-esteem due to her unchecked powers. She finds solace in her childhood friend Hellboy, who has a strong romantic interest in her. In the films, she has much less confidence in her powers and retreats to an asylum before Rasputin manipulates her into destroying him. Later, the monk kidnaps her, attempting to use her to blackmail Hellboy, before she is rescued.

In the sequel, Liz and Hellboy began experiencing relationship problems, primarily due to her fiery abilities and his tendency to be careless and rude. Abe Sapien discovers that she is pregnant during the course of the film. When Hellboy is wounded by a spear fragment in the chest, the team travels to Bethmora in Northern Ireland to stop the Golden Army from awakening, as well as to seek help from the Angel of Death. The Angel warns Liz that if Hellboy lives, he will doom humanity and she will suffer greatly. Accepting the consequences, the Angel removes the fragment and tells Liz to give Hellboy a reason to live. She does so by revealing to Hellboy the news that he is going to be a father.

After defeating Prince Nuada, Liz melted the crown that controlled the Golden Army. She, along with Hellboy, Abe, and Johann Kraus, left the BPRD. As Hellboy contemplated the American dream regarding his son, Liz corrected him, saying that he was, in fact, going to have twins.

#Allies: •Hellboy: a red-skinned demon with a right hand made of stone. He is Liz's older brother and professional mentor. He was instrumental in helping her accept her paranormal condition and inspired her to become an FBI agent.

•Abraham Sapien: An amphibious humanoid of mysterious origin, this fellow agent can breathe underwater thanks to a set of gills, can swim at high speeds, and is one of Liz's closest and oldest friends in the BPRD.

•Thomas Manning: The head of the BPRD and, therefore, Liz's boss. Tom doesn't always seem to trust Liz's control over her powers, as he had the Bureau keep an eye on her while she was at the monastery. In turn, Liz doesn't seem to like him much either and believes that, with the exception of Kate Corrigan, he's intimidated by or treats female agents condescendingly.

•Roger: A human-sized homunculus. Despite their difficult beginnings, Liz and Roger shared a bond that few could understand. Liz was especially protective of him and was devastated when he died.

•Kate Corrigan: Field Director of the Special Talents Team. Kate and Liz are good friends, and Kate takes on a slightly maternal role with the younger woman.

•Johann Kraus: A German psychic displaced from his body. The two shared a somewhat professional relationship, but didn't seem to have much contact outside of their teammates.

•Panya: an Egyptian mummy rescued from the Oannes Society. A recent friend of Liz's, she helps her deal with Memnan Saa and seems to care for her a lot.

#Enemies: •Grigori Rasputin: Liz first met the sorcerer Grigori Rasputin during the Cavendish Hall case when he tried to use his powers to awaken the Ogdru Jahad.

•Memnan Saa: Formerly known as Gilfryd, he repeatedly attempted to convert Liz to his cause, preventing her from sleeping by invading her dreams to warn her of humanity's impending doom. When she refused to believe him, he kidnapped her and used her fire to fight the frogs without her consent. Ironically, this same fire was ultimately the cause of his death. In BPRD: King of Fear, his shadow reappeared before Liz, claiming that by killing him, she had doomed the human race.

Karl Ruprecht Kroenen: A former Nazi officer, personal assassin of Adolf Hitler himself, is a humanoid being, because he was formerly a human, but now he is more like a living corpse.

•Powers: Pyrokinesis: Sherman is capable of pyrokinesis (mental control over flames). He can generate fire mentally, projecting flames from his hands or causing them to surround his body in a protective cocoon. He has also been able to levitate with his fire on rare occasions, but this is uncommon.

Her powers are extremely volatile and capable of a very wide radius and measure of destruction; when her powers first awakened as a child, she effortlessly killed more than a dozen people.

Sherman's pyrokinesis appears to be more than just "typical" pyrokinesis; it has been hinted more than once that her powers come from some kind of entity or presence that dwells within her, one that is not necessarily based on fire but on energy in general.

In Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, Rasputin referred to Sherman's powers as a living being, implying that it might be separate from her in some way. If this is true, then it would seem that the "entity" that grants Sherman her pyrokinesis shares a symbiotic relationship with her; removing her powers has been shown to be extremely damaging and even lethal to her.

It's also possible that her powers originate from a part of her soul rather than a separate being; in BPRD: Hollow Earth, her energy is stolen, leaving her body an empty shell. Her imprisoned powers are shown to look and act like her, implying that they are, in fact, her.

In any case, it's clear that Sherman's pyrokinesis is a vital part of his being, necessary for him to survive. Several characters have successfully used Sherman's power as fuel or an energy source, notably Rasputin and the King of Fear, who used it to power an Ogdru Hem and reactivate ancient machinery, respectively. This further supports the suggestion that his powers are based on more than just fire.

Memnan Saa believed she fully embodied the power and promise of Vril, the ancient energy that formed the world and was once wielded by the ancient Hyperboreans. After the events of King of Fear, Liz appeared to have lost her fire powers.

Later, she regained control of her powers through meditation techniques honed during her time with the monks. Since then, she has demonstrated immense power, allowing her to transform into flames, fly, and project intense fireballs and flames from her body.

•Talent: She is also an expert in hand-to-hand combat, having been under the tutelage of the BPRD since the age of eleven and likely beginning her physical training as an officer at a young age. She has been shown to be capable of taking down a man with a single kick.