Mister Fantastic

Dr. Reed Richards is a scientist and inventor, better known as Mister Fantastic, who has been considered the smartest man on Earth. He is a Polymath with mastery of all the sciences including, electrical, mechanical, aerospace engineering, electronics, chemistry, physics, biology and beyond. Richards was exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation along with his best friend Ben Grimm, then girlfriend Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny Storm, during a trip to space in the stolen rocket, the Marvel-1. The radiation mutated him and his friends, allowing him to stretch and mold his body at will. Together they became the Fantastic Four, a team of adventurers who explored space, time and alternate dimensions and saved the world along the way from science-based threats.
== History ==
Reed Richards was born in Central City, California the only son of wealthy physicist Nathaniel Richards and his wife Evelyn, was a child prodigy with special aptitude in mathematics, physics, and mechanics. Evelyn died when Reed was seven.
Nathaniel encouraged and guided young Reed in his scientific studies, and Reed was taking college-level courses. Reed entered college at fourteen at CalTech (California Institute of Technology). He also attended Harvard University and M.I.T.. He studied abroad at the University of Vienna in Austria. It was there he met fellow "super-genius" Alyssa Moy. By the time he was eighteen, he had obtained four degrees in fields such as engineering, math, and physics. However, during Reed's teen years, Nathaniel got recruited by the secret Brotherhood of the Shield and had to leave Reed.
It was when he was working on his fifth at State University in Hegeman, New York, that Reed Richards first met two of the most important individuals in his life. He was assigned to room with a foreign student, a scientific genius named Victor von Doom. The imperious Von Doom, taking an immediate dislike to Richards, decided to take other quarters. Instead, Richards gained as his roommate former high school football star Benjamin J. Grimm, who became Richards' closest friend. Richards was already intending to build a starship for interstellar travel. When he told his ambitions to Grimm, Grimm jokingly said that he would pilot the starship for Richards someday.
While attending State University, Richards rented living quarters at the Manhattan boarding house owned by the aunt of a young woman named Susan Storm. Reed instantly fell in love with Sue, although he soon deemed it prudent to move out, because he was too distracted from his work due to his romance with Sue.
While not friends, Richards and Doom saw each other as intellectual peers. Needing a better computer than the university's, they designed a revolutionary new one together. Richards and Doom debated esoteric theories day and night that amazed faculty members, who compared their brilliance to that of Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci. While Richards designed his starship, Doom became obsessed with developing a machine that could project the astral form of a being into other dimensions. Reed pointed out a flaw in Doom's calculations, but Doom arrogantly ignored his warning, feeling that Reed was trying to upstage him. The machine exploded, scarring Doom's face. He was soon expelled for conducting unethical experiments. As Doctor Doom, von Doom would later become Richards' greatest rival and enemy. Doom blamed Richards for his deformities and he continually tried to prove himself superior, especially intellectually. They battled many times, but Richards almost always emerged triumphantly. Reed and Ben later served in the military together. Their time in war increased their trust in each other.
Three years before Richards tested his starship, his father mysteriously disappeared. Nathaniel Richards had devised a time machine which he had used to attempt to journey into the future of his own world. However, the machine actually transported him to an alternate Earth with a history considerably different from their own. Reed Richards would be reunited with him while visiting this alternate Earth years later. Before Nathaniel Richards left his own time, he made arrangements that left two billion dollars to his son. Reed Richards spent most of the money on his project to build and launch his starship. This project, based in Central City, California, received further funding from the federal government.
Richards recruited his old friend Ben Grimm, who had become a successful test pilot and astronaut, to pilot the starship, which was named the Marvel-1. Richards was joined in California by Susan Storm. Richards and Storm were dating at the time. Shortly before the starship was to be launched, Richards used his scientific knowledge to defeat the extraterrestrial being Gormuu, who had intended to conquer Earth. Richards' encounter with Gormuu strengthened his resolve to finish the starship, which he saw as a first step for mankind to defend itself from extraterrestrial threats.
When the federal government then threatened to withdraw its funding from the starship project, Richards decided to take the Marvel-1 on a test flight before the funding was withdrawn. Grimm was opposed to the idea, warning that the starship's shielding might prove inadequate protection from the intense radiation storms. Nevertheless, Grimm was persuaded to serve as pilot, and Susan Storm and her adolescent brother Johnny insisted on accompanying Richards as passengers. The four friends stole onto the launch facility, entered the starship, and blasted off. They intended to travel through hyperspace in the ship to another solar system and back in order to convince the government to reconsider. However, when the ship passed through a cosmic ray storm, it was met with an unexpected level of intensity. Since the ship was designed to shield against ordinary levels of radiation, the cabin volume was subjected to intense cosmic ray bombardment which irradiated the four passengers and wrought havoc on the ship's controls. Pilot Grimm was forced to abort the flight and return to Earth.
Once back on Earth, the four passengers discovered that the cosmic radiation had triggered mutagenic changes in their bodies. Reed Richards discovered that his body had become malleable and that he now had the ability to elongate his body at will. Richards convinced the others that the four of them should use their new-found powers for the good of humanity as members of a team he named the Fantastic Four. Richards, who became the team's leader, named himself Mister Fantastic, while Ben Grimm, Susan Storm, and Johnny Storm named themselves the Thing, the Invisible Girl (later the Invisible Woman), and the Human Torch, respectively.
== Personality ==
Reed is an intellectual who prefers to examine foes and if possible negotiate with them before actually fighting them. He is often intrigued by the scientific implications of a problem, so much so that he almost forgets there is a problem in the first place. As Ben once put it, "...if an alien stubbed his toe, Reed would want to spend ten years studying it." Reed is an extremely likable fellow who keeps a pleasant smile on his face and cares deeply about those he is close to, particularly his extended family. However, he does occasionally lapse into depression and self-hatred over long-standing unsolved problems, most notably Ben's inability to return to human form and Franklin's mysterious potential. Reed is a humanitarian who will try to prevent any intelligent being from suffering. 
== Powers and Abilities ==
Gifted superhuman powers by cosmic rays bombarding his body.
Plasticity: Mister Fantastic possesses the ability to convert the mass of his entire body into a highly malleable state at will. 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. 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. In fact, it was revealed that it was Mr. Fantastic, despite being in a weakened state, who protected all the heroes other than Hulk from the impact of the 150 billion ton mountain falling on them before the Jade Giant caught the mountain, although the strain caused him to pass out. 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.
* Dense Flesh: 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.
** Contain Explosions: Mister Fantastic may use his elastic form to contain explosions by enveloping them and allowing their force to expand him. 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.
** Redirect Projectiles: After his body absorbs the kinetic energy of a ballistic projectile's impact, Mister Fantastic can expel the object back along its trajectory by flexing his body like a trampoline if he is adequately braced.
* Elongation: Mister Fantastic 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.)
** Grappling: Mister Fantastic may restrain opponents very efficiently by using his elastic form to entangle them.
** Movement: Mister Fantastic can move at great speeds by stretching to his destination.
* Shape Changing: Mister Fantastic can stretch, deform, expand, or compress his entire body or parts into any contiguous shape he can imagine for a variety of uses.
== Appearances ==
* Fantastic Four: Transformania
* Illuminati
Category:Characters