REED RICHARDS IS....MISTER FANTASTIC

©Roman Schwachöfer
 

 

Publisher

Marvel Comics

Real name

 Reed Richards

Identity

 Publicly known

Occupation

 Scientist, adventurer
Place of Birth Central City, California
Marital Status Married
Legal Status Citizen of the United States with no criminal record
Known Relatives

Nathaniai (father), Evelyn (mother, deceased), Susan Storm (wife), Franklin (son), Johnny Storm (brother-in-law), Cassandra (stepmother, deceased), Immortus, father's descendant

Base of Operations

 Pier Four, New York City
Group Affiliation Fantastic Four
First Appearance FANTASTIC FOUR #1

 

Reed Richards has always been something of a prodigy, enrolling in college level courses at the age of fourteen. Richards attended numerous colleges including State University in Hegeman, New York. At State University, he met and became the roommate of Benjamin J. Grimm. Reed had already begun designing a starship capable of traveling in hyperspace. Sharing his plans with his new roommate, Grimm jokingly volunteered to pilot the craft. When Reed continued his education by attending Columbia University in Manhattan, he rented a room in a boarding house owned by the aunt of a young girl named Susan Storm. To his embarrassment, the young girl instantly fell in love with him. Years later, Richards began using his inheritance, along with government funding, to finance his research.  Determined to reach the stars, the project began, based in Central City, Susan Storm, now an adult, moved into the area and within a short time found herself engaged to Reed. Likewise, Reed's old college roommate had gone on to become a successful test pilot and astronaut and was indeed slated to pilot the craft. All seemed well; however, when the government threatened to cut funding and cancel the project, Reed, Grimm, Sue an her younger brother Johnny, all decided to sneak aboard the starship and take it up immediately They knew they had not completed all the testing that had been planned but Reed was confident they would be safe. However, when their ship passed through the VAN ALLEN belt they found their cockpit bombarded with nearly lethal doses of cosmic radiation. Reed had somehow neglected to account for the abnormal radiation levels in the atmosphere. The cosmic rays wreaked havoc on the starship's insufficient shielding and they were forced to return to Earth immediately. The crew successfully landed and almost instantly found that they had all been mutated. Reed found that his skin was malleable and that could elongate any portion of his body at will. Each member of the fateful crew in turn discovered how they had been significantly changed. Deciding to us this unexpected turn of events for the benefit of mankind, Richards convinced the others to band together. They soon came to be known as the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic was chosen to lead the group. Under his guidance, the team went on to become Earth's most celebrated band of heroes. Together, they would save the world countless times. Even driven by the quest for knowledge, Richards is believed by most to be the Earth's foremost intelligence. There is little that he cannot create, fix, or understand given time. The patents and royalties on his inventions alone have funded the group over the years. The use of the term "Fantastic" to describe anything about this man would not only be modest, it would indeed be a considerable understatement.

 

 KNOWN SUPERHUMAN POWERS:

 

Mister Fantastic possesses the ability to convert the mass of his entire body into a highly malleable state at will. In such a state, he can stretch, deform, expand, or compress his entire body or parts thereof into any contiguous shape he can imagine. He can extend his limbs, torso, or neck to great distances: the maximum length he can distend before his body segments become painful is about 1,500 feet. (Although he can extend discrete body parts, such as a single finger, an ear, or an eye, he seldom if ever isolates such parts in his elongations.) He can also extend his body in two directions, creating a canopy, parachute, or sheath, its thickness determined by the extent of its distention.He has compressed his body into the shape of a solid sphere, a cylinder, a cube, a toroid, and a rectangular prism: he can assume the shape of any solid that he can envision clearly, of a volume no greater than 1.7 cubic feet (a sphere about 18 inches in diameter). He can generate thin-walled shapes that enclose great volumes of space.

 

 

Mister Fantastic can flatten himself to the thickness of an average sheet of typing paper (.0035 inch) or narrow himself to a diameter small enough to pass through the eye of a #10 beading needle (about .045 x .06 inches). How his body's respiration and circulatory systems function at these distorted extremes is as yet unknown. Mister Fantastic can alter his form in a matter of seconds, often much less (depending on the complexity of the shape), and revert to his normal humanoid shape within a similar time. The greater the distance he stretches or the more extended the size of the object he becomes, the weaker his overall strength becomes.

 STRENGTH LEVEL:

Mister Fantastic possesses the normal human strength and build of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise.

Height: 6 ft. 1 in. Weight: 180 lbs. Eyes: Brown Hair: Brown

Due to the great malleability and elasticity of his molecular structure, Mister Fantastic is able to absorb the impact of any type of man-made ballistic projectile by deforming his body along the path of the projectile's trajectory at the point of initial impact. After his body absorbs the kinetic energy of a ballistic projectile's impact, he can expel the object back along its trajectory by flexing like a trampoline if he is adequately braced. He can enclose and absorb the energy of a large explosive, on the order of 8 to 12 pounds of TNT (excluding exotic, high density explosives). Such shocks to his system are physically exhausting.

Mister Fantastic's transformation to a malleable state is reflexive and nearly instantaneous: if he was at his normal form and taken unaware by machine gun fire, his body would still absorb the bullets' impact through radical deformation. Mister Fantastic's skin is virtually impervious to laceration or punctures unless he willfully relaxes his reflexive control over small areas of his body. In that case, scalpels and ordinary needles can penetrate his skin.

 

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