Reed RichardsMister Fantastic

Reed Richards is the Fantastic Four's scientific genius on whom his teammates depend for leadership and direction. As Mister Fantastic, Reed has the power to stretch his limbs, neck, and torso, and uses his brilliance to make a difference in the world.

A Stretch to Survive

Genius Reed Richards impresses his parents with inventions that make them wealthy, but loses his mother at a very young age. The 14-year-old begins to collect doctorates at multiple colleges and dreams of designing and building a starship, a project pilot and friend Ben Grimm promises to help him fulfill. Richards earns the eternal wrath of fellow student Victor von Doom and the love of his landlady’s niece Sue Storm while at State University and upon graduation, works for the U.S. military overseas, which put him in the perfect position to see his dream come true.

When the government cut Richards’ funding to the starship, the restless genius gathers Grimm, Sue, and her brother Johnny for an illicit test flight of the craft. Unfortunately, he fails to account for proper shielding to repel cosmic rays while in space and the four find themselves bombarded by the unique radiation. The ship crash-lands back on Earth, and Richards and the others discover they’d been mutated by the rays, each of them gaining special abilities. Realizing they could use their powers for the benefit of mankind, Richards co-founds the Fantastic Four with Sue as Invisible Girl (later Invisible Woman), Johnny as Human Torch, and Ben as The Thing.

Fantastic Form

Altered by cosmic rays, Richards’s entire body can stretch and expand in multiple ways, as well as condense and compact. He may form various shapes with it, as well as become ultra-thin and ultra-dense, the latter helping him to use his fists, for example, as battering rams and the like. On some occasions, Richards contains explosive material with his body by stretching himself around it and even alters his features to disguise himself as a different person. All of these features of his abilities create stress on his body and the greater the lengths he stretches to, the more it takes its toll.

Richards also stands as one of the world’s highest intellects, if not the highest. He’s adept in nearly all scientific fields known to mankind, as well as certain extraterrestrial disciplines. His specialties of study and actual work lay in such fields as robotics, aviation, and quantum physics, and he holds thousands of patents for his inventions and discoveries. Perhaps one of his greatest achievements, so-called “unstable molecules,” aids the Fantastic Four in particular through the uniforms that allow each team member to utilize their specialized abilities.

Fantastic Foes

The be-all and end-all of enmity for Reed Richards exists in the form of Victor von Doom, Latverian tyrant and Super Villain. Doom’s hatred of Richards stems from an incident in college, a disastrous experiment of Doom’s to contact the spirit world through technology, which literally blows up in his face, scarring him. The young man blames Richards for his own failure and carries that loathing to this day. Over the years, Mr. Fantastic and Doctor Doom’s battles become legendary, two intellects constantly at war, though most often instigated by Doom and his shattered pride.

Though the Fantastic Four’s fight many a foe as a team, a few individuals hold a special dislike for Reed Richards himself. These include the Wizard, Harvey Rupert Elder, AKA Mole Man, and most especially the Atlantean leader Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner. Namor’s longtime love for Sue Richards exists as a bone of contention between the sea king and the Fantastic Four’s leader, one that appears from time to time as a reminder of their shared history. Sue, never seeing herself as a damsel to be fought over, tries many times to bring the two together to bury the hatchet, but too often to only a temporary truce.

Fantastic Family

Though often seen as cold and aloof, Reed prizes family above all else and forms the Fantastic Four into one of the greatest examples of a working family unit ever.

Sue Storm Richards represents his touchstone, a partner in all things and the love of life. The couple experiences many difficult times throughout their marriage, but they always return to what’s most important: their children, their teammates, and their mission. While deep in a project, Richards sometimes forgets the simple, daily things, but Sue realizes and acknowledges how his mind works and makes concessions to keep their family together and strong.

Ben Grimm stands as Richards’ oldest and best friend, though the genius often reflects upon his responsibility in Grimm’s mutation into the monster known as the Thing. The two possess vastly different personalities and backgrounds, but like Sue, Grimm knows how his friend’s mind works and offsets it with always having his back. Richard’s relationship with his brother-in-law Johnny Storm is sometimes heated, owing to Storm’s fiery disposition, but the bond between the two is strengthened by their connections to Sue and the Richards’ children. All together, the Fantastic Four live and fight as a family, more so than any other heroic team on the planet.

Reed Richards loves his two children Franklin and Valeria without measure, but often stands back in awe and wonder at their own abilities. Par for the course with the Fantastic Four, he doesn’t always conduct himself as a typical father to the two, but they love and respect him all the same.

Respect for Mr. Fantastic throughout the heroic community is strong, particularly among those who’ve worked closely with him. Richards’ intellect makes him a good partner for other inventive geniuses such as Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, Bruce Banner, AKA Hulk, and T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, King and protector of Wakanda.

Stretcho’s Struggles

From the very beginnings of the Fantastic Four as a family and a team, Reed Richards has struggled to keep them together through many storms while facing personal challenges to his intellect and his soul.

After meeting and battling the legendary Namor the Sub-Mariner and a dangerous reunion with his college rival-turned-despot Doctor Doom, Richards married Sue Storm in a splashy ceremony that attracted not only heroic attendants, but also various villains. Following the arrival and subsequent banning of the world-devouring Galactus from Earth, the Richards welcomed their first child, Franklin, into the world.

When little Franklin manifested immense psychic abilities, Richards reluctantly shut down his son’s mind to save him from himself, an act that sent a troubled Sue away from the Fantastic Four for an extended absence. Mr. Fantastic kept the team together with temporary replacements for the Invisible Girl until her eventual return. Richards later lost his stretching powers, was impersonated by his doppelgänger from another reality, and regained his abilities with a new exposure to the rays he originally gained them from. Soon after, Reed and Sue bought a home in a small suburb in Connecticut as a haven away from Super Hero madness.

Several adventures later, a galactic consortium that blamed Richards for Galactus’ atrocities put the genius on trial, but he returned to Earth a free man to then receive the dark news of the still-birth of his and Sue’s second child. A deep rift between him and Grimm formed when the Thing discovered his friend’s knowledge of his ability to change at will from his monstrous personage, a situation that led to Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, temporarily taking the Thing’s place. Following this and a series of troubles, the Richards tried to retire to their little home as the “Benjamins,” but rejoined the Fantastic Four after a brief stint with the Avengers.

Around this time, Mr. Fantastic joined a secret cabal of geniuses known as the Illuminati, a membership he kept from his wife and his teammates. Richards and Doom seemed to die in an explosive endgame battle, but survived due to a being called Hyperstorm whisking them away to different points along the timeline. When Richards finally returned to his family, the Fantastic Four found themselves living an alternate version of their lives on Counter-Earth, a parallel world instinctively created by Franklin, for a year. They eventually returned to Earth.

During the team’s reality-warping conflict with the cosmic being Abraxas, Franklin revealed he had used his powers to rescue Sue’s seemingly stillborn second child years earlier, and that this child had been raised in Earth-9903’s future to become Marvel Girl (Valeria von Doom) who was now an ally of the present-day Fantastic Four. As a side-effect of Abraxas’ defeat, Marvel Girl was restored to her original state, as an unborn child in Sue’s womb. This time, Sue’s pregnancy resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl, christened Valeria in memory of Dr. Doom’s first love; Doom had insisted on naming the child in exchange for assisting with the difficult birth.

Alas, the enmity between Richards and Doom continued when the Latverian monarch horribly disfigured his foe’s face, leading Richards into a strange situation of attempting to lead Latveria himself but becoming yet another tyrant there. The Thing appeared to die following that, and Richards was forced to give up his patents to the government and disband the Fantastic Four, horrible events only rectified when the team visited a place they came to believe as “Heaven.” There, the Thing was returned to them alive and Richards’ face was healed.

A period of low-income existence and super-heroing followed as Richards and the Fantastic Four worked to rebuild their public reputation and fortunes. During the so-called “civil war” that grew out of the controversial Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), Mr. Fantastic sided with the pro-SHRA forces while Sue, Johnny, and Ben worked alongside Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, and his rebels. Though Richards created such dubious successes, such as a Thor Odinson, AKA Thor clone and a Negative Zone prison for superhuman prisoners during those dark days, he and Sue managed to work out their differences in the aftermath and take an extended vacation from the Fantastic Four.

Valeria Richards’ intellect began to rival and even surpass her father’s while Mr. Fantastic and the Illuminati sent the Hulk into exile in space and later paid the price for it when the green behemoth came back to Earth for revenge. Following the alien Skrull’s secret invasion of the planet and former Green Goblin Norman Osborn’s turn as America’s “top cop,” the Illuminati were exposed to the heroic community during a clash with the villainous Parker Robbins, AKA Hood, over the Infinity Stones. The Fantastic Four lost Johnny Storm in a battle in the Negative Zone and Richards became disillusioned over the team’s worth and mission until he formed the Future Foundation in an attempt to get back to what he believed really mattered, the betterment of all mankind.

A collection of alternate reality Mr. Fantastics known as the Council of Reeds made itself known to Richards and he worked with them for a short time before the Human Torch’s triumphant return and the latest restructuring and revival of the Fantastic Four. Richards soon after encountered a strange new foe called the Quiet Man, who he finally stopped with the help of his own old enemy the Psycho-Man.

When Earth’s other intellects discovered “incursions” by alternate universes and the imminent demise of their own, Richards worked with them to build a “life raft” to save as many people as possible from the cataclysm. Awakening on the raft after the violent death of his universe, Mr. Fantastic found himself on a patchwork world created by Doctor Doom with the power of the other-dimensional Beyonders, and Sue Richards as Doom’s bride. Richards teamed with both an alternate Reed Richards, AKA the Maker, and the Fantastic Four’s former enemy Owen Reece, AKA Molecule Man, to clash with Doom’s godlike power and break his hold over all reality.

Possessed of the power to reshape universes, Richards, his wife and his children embarked on a journey to rebuild and reset reality after recreating his own Earth first, complete with a new, heroic-minded Victor von Doom. While Ben and Johnny believed them dead, the Richards’ worked behind the scenes until they recently returned to their family and a new era of the Fantastic Four.