Created by: Warren Ellis and John Cassady
1st appearance: Planetary #9 (April 2000)
Team Affiliations: Planetary
Legal Status: Unknown
Height: 6’1 Weight: 190 lbs
Eyes: Brown Hair: Black
Relatives: Wife (Status Unknown), Daughter
Skills and Abilities: Highly trained armed combatant.
Powers: Ambrose is a meta-human with the power to generate a Selective physics distortion field. This field enabled Ambrose to bend the laws of physics within limits. Ambrose could use the field on himself, project it over a large area of unspecified dimensions, or concentrate it onto a smaller area or object, such as another person.
Biography
Ambrose Chase is the son of a survivor of Science City Zero, a genetic experimentation facility. Because of his relationship to that facility, Ambrose (and his abilities) came to the attention of the Planetary organization very early on. He knew Elijah Snow virtually his entire life and the two became good friends.
Ambrose joined the Planetary field team alongside Elijah and Jakita Wagner. He was present during the mission that resulted in the rescue and recruitment of The Little Drummer Boy.
In 1994, Elijah revealed to Ambrose that he was Planetary’s mysterious Fourth Man. He warned him of a coming change, which turned out to be Elijah’s departure from Planetary, due to The Four’s mental blocks. Ambrose took up the leadership of the field team in Elijah’s absence.
Planet Fiction
In 1997, Ambrose Chase led the field team on a raid of a heavily fortified research facility sponsored by The Four in England. The aim of the facility was to retrieve a being from a fictional reality dubbed “Planet Fiction”.
Ambrose, Jakita, and The Drummer made their way through the facility. While The Drummer retrieved information and Jakita occupied the ground troops, Ambrose ran up a wall to the main control room. His goal was to stop the facility’s operations. When he reached the window of the control room, however, the facility’s lead scientist pulled a gun and shot him six times.
As Ambrose’s field failed and he fell back to the facility’s ground floor, the scientist declared that they were in a science fiction movie. And as he added, “the Black guy always dies in science fiction movies.”
The Drummer and Jakita comforted Ambrose until he apparently vanished into his field; Jakita then killed Ambrose’s murderer for revenge.
There is a strong implication that, despite his wounds, Ambrose somehow survived. The Drummer has hypothesized that Elijah’s function as a century baby is to save things. And the current arc sees Elijah setting his sights on Ambrose Chase’s salvation, among other things.
Ambrose is survived by his widow, Larissa and his daughter, Angela. The Planetary foundation had been paying Larissa compensation for Ambrose’s service since his death. After Elijah regained his memories, he and Jakita visited Larissa to inform her that Elijah would personally see to her finances from then on, out of respect for Ambrose.