LOUIS
LOUIS
Real Name: Louis (surname unrevealed)
Identity/Class: Human
Occupation: Possible intern or assistant
Group Membership: Formerly the staff of the California Oceanographic Institute
Affiliations: Dr. Barnes, Meg Clark, Cloyce Witticker, Stacy
Enemies: Unidentified
deep aquatic species
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
formerly the California Oceanographic Institute on
the coast of California
First Appearance: Prey: Origin of the
Species (March, 2007)
Powers/Abilities: Louis did not possess any superhuman abilities.
He was experienced enough to assist a paraplegic diver getting into and out of a water tank and to clean up a laboratory.
He enjoyed surfing and being in the
ocean.
However, he enjoyed recreational drugs, apparently even while working, and he made bad choices in terms of messing with unidentified species
History:
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two (fb) - BTS)
- Louis told his girlfriend, Stacy, that she was his muse.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part One) - Employed at the California Oceanographic Institute, Louis was supervising the paraplegic Dr. Barnes on a dive within a large water tank when Meg arrived. When Meg asked if Dr. Barnes was giving him trouble, Louis admitted that Dr. Barnes wouldn't come up from his dive. When Dr. Barnes surfaced, Meg told him that Louis said that he was being a pain that morning, and Louis said that he didn't say that exactly.
(Prey: Origin of the Species - BTS: Part One) - Former COI marine biologist Cloyce Witticker arrived and asked them to look after a species he had discovered while on a dive to the lip of the Solanca Trench for the Prometheus City project.
(Prey: Origin of the Species (fb) - BTS: Part One) - Per Witticker's notation that the creature was photosensitive, it was kept in a dark room, and Louis was instructed to keep the lights off.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part One) -
Complaining about having to clean the lab with the lights off, Louis
brought janitorial equipment into the lap while barefoot and smoking a
(presumably marijuana) cigarette. While either trying to use a laser
pointer to play with the creature Witticker had brought in, Louis was
surprised by something sudden (it looked like the creature flipped up out
of the water), and he dropped his keys and the laser pointer into the
tank.
Louis tried to use a net to recover the keys and laser point but, presumably stimulated by the laser, the creature apparently burrowed into (or perhaps just bit) Louis' right forearm. Crying out in pain and flipping the tank on its side as he yanked his arm out, Louis collapsed to the ground, his right hand and forearm massively inflamed, swollen and blistered.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two (fb) - BTS)
- The organism apparently escaped down the drain. Dr. Barnes ran a
toxicology report and found that Louis was full of a narcotic cocktail far
more powerful than other opioids.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two) - Louis was
taken away in an ambulance, with the EMTs believing he had done some
low-grade weed and fell on the slippery floor.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two - BTS) -
Noting that he believed that Louis would be released that afternoon, Dr.
Barnes was extremely interested in the analgesic potential in the
organism, as he suffered severe pain from his own neurologic condition. 
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two) - Having
recovered and been released from the hospital, Louis and Stacy did some
drugs in his van.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two) - Louis and Stacy went out on on the ocean in surfboards. She asked if he was sure he was OK, and he told her that he was positive and that the ocean was his muse. She reminded him that he had told her that she was his muse.
When she asked him what happened, he told her that he could not remember much and that it must have been some bad stuff. As his watch started beeping (apparently his physician or Dr. Barnes trying to reach him), he pulled her closer, and she told him to shut off his watch and she would give him great pleasure. When the water started moving around them, Louis initially thought that whatever they had done in the van was kicking in, but then they were attacked by the sea creature, which had apparently rapidly grown and was drawn by the electromagnetic signal from Louis' watch. They both cried out...
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two (fb) - BTS) - ... and then their bodies and boards were torn up by the creature.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two - BTS) - Hearing the screams, a police officer found a fragment of the board, blew her whistle and called the coast guard.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two) - Having
been on the beach, Cloyce and Meg rushed to the scene. Seeing Louis' body
floating nearby, Cloyce and Meg rushed out to help him and found his
thoracic cavity devoured. They narrowly avoided being devoured themselves
where the creature came back and devoured the rest of Louis, leaving just
his wrist and hand.
(Prey: Origin of the Species: Part Two - BTS) - Via
a tissue sample Cloyce and Meg brought back, Dr. Barnes determined that
creatures had been dormant since T. rex roamed the Earth (circa 65 million
B.C.). Meg further noted that the attacks indicated the creature wasn't
trying to feed but rather to protect its territory.
Comments: Created
by Michael Lent.
adapted by Mike Raicht (comic adaptation, managing
editor) and Alex Sanchez under the Dabel Brothers imprint.
Courtesy of Loki, who gave me an overview of the series and recommended Louis to represent the series for the event:
Prey is a brand new story, an original GN. It does have an "adapted by" in the credits, but it's not based on any existing property. Looking up the writer, Michael Lent, it seems he's a screenwriter and occasionally novelist, and prior to Prey hadn't written any comics, plus the one comic he's written since - or more accurately and probably tellingly, CO-written, was also being developed into a movie, so I suspect he had a concept for the story, maybe a script, hoped to make it into a movie and did the comic as a way of selling the concept (as has been done by other scriptwriters) and so needed a comic writer to do the actual graphic novel. Anyway, speculation aside, new story. From a quick glance, it's got a cliched tale - something bad happens at a remote location, so a reluctant and burned-out expert who has left that life is pulled back in to investigate; he wins the day and gets the girl. In this instance the location is a massive platform in the Pacific Ocean that is drilling near a deep water trench and disturbs something monstrous in the depths.
While this series was creator-owned
and presumably not intended to be Earth-616, I don't see any reason that
it couldn't fit into the date of its publication, which is -- due to the
sliding timescale -- prior to the Fantastic Four's spaceflight and the
modern age of heroes. So, I'm not designating it as an alternate reality
at this time.
Why not give Louis a last name in
the story? I appreciate that he was largely just a plot device, but it
makes characters so much more memorable and identifiable to have a last
name.
This profile was
completed 03/08/2026, but
its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25th
anniversary 's celebratory event.
Profile by Snood.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Louis should be distinguished from:
First posted: 09/18/2026
Last updated: 03/08/2026
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
Non-Marvel
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