Franklin 'Frank' Farmer was a veteran US Marine Corps of the 1990 Persian Gulf War. His unit stormed into Kuwait and chased the Iraqi Republican Guard all the way back to Baghdad.  In that chase, Frank exceeded his orders and entered an enemy zone that was overflowing with stacks of chemical weapons, all being trucked out to Syria to be hidden.  Minutes before Frank's unit was about to take down the chemical weapon transport site, the Pentagon ordered Frank and his unit to retreat to friendly lines and under no circumstances, engage the enemy, nor for that matter "mention what he saw". Sadly, one of Frank's team was discovered before Frank could start pulling them back.  The soldier was captured and hauled to an underground bunker.  Frank, being a great Marine, followed the creed, "No one left behind" and went in like a professional military unit on a rescue mission. Sadly, the captured soldier was killed before Frank got to him, however, Frank's team was able to retrieve the body and extract themselves without killing more than ten enemy combatants during the retreating firefight.  Thanks to the Gray Wolves US Navy attack helicopter assault squadron, Frank's team was able to get out with no further loss of soldiers in his unit.

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As expected, the Pentagon and its generals took issue with Frank's 'actions' and performed a "quiet" Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP) on him.  Busted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant and with an 'asterisks' in his service record (meaning he was NOT worth promoting), Frank wanted to find a way out of the Marine Corps.  After discussions with several "government' personnel one night at a military compound's booze party, Frank signed up with the CIA.

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Once in the CIA, Frank quickly showed his skills in getting into tough places and keeping a level head regardless of the situation presented to him and his teams.  As such, Frank became one of the best "Black Ops" and "Black Bag" agents the CIA had ever hired.  For the next several years, Frank earned accolades, awards, citations and promotions for his harrowing yet highly successful operations. Frank also got married. That all came to an end in 2000 when the alien Soltan Star Empire invaded Earth.

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When the Soltans invaded, Frank's wife, Sarah, died in the first attack wave. She was 3 months pregnant.  As such, Frank threw himself into his world to take on and take-out the Soltans no matter the cost. To top that off, Frank was reunited with his CIA partner, Commander John Aramas, both of whom worked side-by-side for a decade before the invasion and whom Frank considered to practically be a brother to him. Frank figured with the two of them working their team, they were unstoppable.

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Frank's and Aramas' team instead met with failure after failure.

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Frank's perfectly created scenarios, plans, tactics and psi-warfare operations had no effect on the Soltans.  The Soltans were well trained and able to not only identify all of Frank's actions, but were able to counter them with double the damage and destruction to Frank's team and the region Frank was sent to defend and fight in.  Battle after battle, failure after failure, Frank lost several teams, hundreds of soldiers and only survived due to the Soltans ensuring Frank stayed alive so that they could watch him psychologically implode from the Soltan's countering methods.

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Frank lost his mind on the 4th of July in 2000 when boatloads of refugees and survivors that Frank was getting to safety was instead intercepted by a Soltan squad.  The Soltans took their time, shooting innocent men, women and children for 'target practice' and then torpedoing the boats and letting the bodies go down with the ship.  The Soltans captured Frank and forced him to watch every terrifying action the Soltan Commander ordered.  As the last refugee ship slid under the waves, Frank was shown the reason why he consistently had failed: his second in command, Commander John Aramas, was a biologically-altered Soltan who'd been disguising himself as human the whole time.  He was a spy placed in the CIA 20-years before the invasion.  Aramas had been telling the Soltans every single secret the CIA had, including all of Frank's battle plans against the Soltans. Aramas personally threw Frank off of the edge of Aramas' Soltan drop ship, laughing maniacally the whole time, as Frank fell nearly a half a mile and impacted on the surface of Pacific Ocean water. Anyone experiencing this would, without question, be dead.

 

Frank survived.

 

Using a seldom-used belt flotation device that inflates, Frank activated it before hitting the water dropping his landing speed to a survivable impact. Regardless, Frank was still hurt bad...physically...and mentally. His friend and confidante for a decade was a Soltan spy the whole time. Every person who died on his team was because of Aramas' betrayal...and as far as Frank was concerned, their deaths were also due to his blind spot of friendship to Aramas; a friendship that Aramas used to get everything from Frank.

 

A day later, Frank washed up on the shore of a remote island instead.  After weeks of surviving on meager insects and shallow water sea crustaceans, dealing with his mental anguish and starvation, Frank finally made a raft and made it back to civilization mere days after the Soltans had been finally routed from Earth by superheroes and the combined world's military forces.

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Still wearing his torn and threadbare clothes from his at-sea ordeal, a few people handed Frank money thinking he was a homeless vet or a victim of the Soltans.  Frank used the money to get back to what was left of Alexandria, Virginia, only to stand in front of the temporary CIA HQ created from its bombed out building there...debating on whether or not to go back to work...or disappear.

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Frank chose to disappear.

 

Frank never returned to the CIA, or for the matter, the real world.

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Frank instead made his way back to San Francisco (walking most of the way) and became a homeless vagrant who wandered the streets in a daze, eating only when he had little choice to.  The next nearly dozen years, Frank instead continued to live as a homeless man in San Francisco, never re-engaging with the civilized world...that is, until he met the vagrant hero, the Homeless Archer, and his band of other homeless heroes that would eventually become the team known as "The Trodden".

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During their encounter, Frank and the Homeless Archer were able to save several homeless families from a devious corporate group. As such, Frank, for nearly the first time since the Soltan Invasion, felt useful in helping save lives.  As such, Frank has slowly started opening up about who and what he was, as well as slowly showing some of his incredible skills, tactics and knowledge of warfare.  The sad part is that Frank is old and in poor health.  He is also still a bit mentally unbalanced and will tend to shutdown mentally when things don't go the way he thinks it should go, such to the point that he'll retreat to any dark corner, tent, or hole to hide from others, sometimes for days.  He's learning to deal with it, but wants no help from the "Veterans Administration" or any other 'government doctors'.  He still wishes to remain anonymous and to this day hasn't told anyone his name, but only instead his self-imposed title of 'Expat', short for 'Expatriate'.

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Frank has recently started trying to teach Homeless Archer and his team physical combat tactics and techniques, but with his poor health, its been a slow process, yet when done, has achieved great results for the team. Frank still has serious trust issues; ever since Aramas' betrayal, Frank has remained guarded and kept a lot of information, especially about himself, 'close to the chest'.

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Today, Frank does the best that he can helping to spy, get information, disguise himself to 'blend in' to get closer to his and the team's opponents, as well as slowly starting to work his way back to health all the while training the team in hand-to-hand military and CIA techniques.  He is crafty and sly and has been known on occasion to simply 'disappear like a ninja' and return with valuable information for the team or his homeless community. His eyesight is starting to fail. He is highly sensitive to light and wears heavy dark glasses to try and correct these two issues.

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