—Suzanne CarterHe only wanted to help people... he only wanted to love people. That was his "higher code", you see... Chivalry, his way of telling the world he loved us...
History
Origins[]
Ethan Shields was born with a rare disease that resulted in the complete lack of any form of immune system, leaving every moment exposed to the elements a potentially fatal one. He and his family lived in an ancient 20th century home, until a fire engulfed the building. An unknown Watchdog pulled the young Shields from the flames, but gave his life attempting to rescue others trapped inside- a moment that deeply affected the young Shields. Ethan decided to commit himself to creating new equipment to ensure that no public servant would have to die for their service again.
Ethan was able to gain employment with Stark-Fujikawa, who provided him with a state of the art hermetically sealed laboratory, allowing him to both live and work in safety. Shields developed the high-tech combat armor, Galahad, to the apparent praise of his employers, though they privately criticized the man's hermitage lifestyle and lack of people skills once his presentation was over- criticism that prompted a recent addition to the Stark-Fujikawa team, Suzanne Carter to begin visiting him.
During one of her nightly visits to Shields' lab, Carter was assaulted by one of her own designs; a heavy mech designed for construction and infrastructure, which had been stolen and used to assault Shields' work. Seeing Carter was in danger, Ethan activated the Galahad armor via a subcutaneous chip in his brain, rescuing her and stopping the robot. During the battle, the rampaging robot was knocked out of the window and into the streets below- forcing Ethan to sacrifice the original Galahad suit to stop the fall from killing anyone below and minimizing public damage, while vowing that he would continue to work on new iterations of the suit in order to protect Suzanne and the rest of his fellow man in accordance with his code of chivalry.[1]
2099 A.D. Apocalypse[]
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Ethan Shields' agony
Galahad would rebuild and continue to operate, with at least six more publicly recorded appearances, and over this time, he and Suzanne would begin a romantic relationship. After the downfall of Doom's America, President Rogers assumed strict control over the country, backed by the military force of SHIELD. Rogers made a public declaration to every network connected to the grid that the recently expanded costumed vigilante population were public enemies, and issued a universal kill order for them. Unwilling to risk the wrath of the new administration for harboring one of these heroes, and looking to earn some easy brownie points, Stark-Fujikawa tipped SHIELD off to their connection with Galahad and set Ethan up to die.
Wielding experimental HERF weapon systems, or High Energy Radio Frequency weapons, a SHIELD kill squad cornered Galahad outside of the Stark-Fujikawa offices and quickly overwhelmed him. Due to his neural link to the machinery within the Galahad suit, Ethan was especially vulnerable to the electronic attacks, which caused him a slow and agonizing death as they blew apart the armor, which created a feedback loop that cooked Ethan's brain in its own fluids.
Galahad's final stand was recorded by Mirielle Radley, an intrepid NyFax reporter, who had stumbled into the crossfire of the battle. As she recorded the execution, she found the hiding place of Suzanne Carter, and was able to interview her- allowing Carter the opportunity to publicly eulogize her lover over the network, before the two were able to escape.[2]
Legacy[]
Radley's footage of Shields' public execution caused great debate within NyFax's offices- Ruth Cambridge, the studio's manager, scoured every public record of Galahad's past appearances to find some way to potentially spin the story, but was frustrated to discover that Ethan's few public appearances consistently displayed the classic nobility of the Heroic Age. Regardless, Cambridge ordered the studio continue to cover his death as a state criminal in accordance with Rogers' statements, calling him a "dangerous subversive"; something refused by Jack Whitlow who refused to let his news broadcast turn into a propaganda arm and wanted to record the man's death as the execution of a hero. Whitlow would ultimately go live with his interpretation of the events, showing footage of Galahad's death alongside other heroes until SHIELD officers stormed NyFax and executed its staff as well.
Due to the effects of time travel, Doom's conquest of the Americas and the events that would follow were wiped from the timeline, undoing the deaths of everyone who died in President Rogers' kill orders- including Ethan Shields. Shortly after this event, the Multiverse was destroyed and reborn in Doctor Doom's image, then subsequently undone and rebuilt by Reed Richards and his family, who went about reconstructing the multiverse piece by piece. Due to this long chain of interferences, the newly created 2099 timeline was wildly different and even more dystopic than the original, leaving Ethan's further status unknown.[3]
Regardless, shortly afterwards, the entire timeline was wiped out and replaced with another variation of 2099, resulting in the deaths of anyone still remaining in the original timeline.[4]Attributes
Weaknesses
Paraphernalia
Equipment
See Also
- 2 appearance(s) of Ethan Shields (Earth-928)
- 1 minor appearance(s) of Ethan Shields (Earth-928)
- 1 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Ethan Shields (Earth-928)
- 2 image(s) of Ethan Shields (Earth-928)