Storm, Susan

Dr. Susan "Sue" Richards (*née* Storm), a.k.a. the Invisible Woman, is an American superpowered adventurer. She was a college student before she was exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation when boyfriend and scientist, Dr. Reed Richards, took her with her younger brother, Johnny Storm and pilot Ben Grimm, into space in the stolen rocket Marvel-1. The radiation mutated her and her friends, turning her invisible and allowing her to create forcefields. 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.

## Susan Storm

### Aliases

Sue (loved ones), Suzy (Ben Grimm), Invisible Girl (code name, formerly), Invisible Woman (code name)

### Relatives

Franklin Storm I (father), Mary Storm (mother), Johnny Storm (brother), Marygay Jewel Dinkins (paternal aunt), Bones (cousin)

### Affiliation

Storm family, Fantastic 4, Daughters of Liberty

## Biographical information

### Place of birth

Glenville, Road Island, New York City, New York, United States of America

## History

### Early Years

Susan Storm and her younger brother, Johnny, lived uneventfully on Long Island until their mother, Mary Storm, died in an automobile accident. Their father, Franklin Storm, a doctor, failed to save her. Despondent, he began to drink and gambled away the family fortune, eventually winding up in a penitentiary for murder after accidentally killing his loan shark. At some point Sue along with her brother were sent back to the early '70s where they unwittingly foiled a plan of Dracula to revive himself. The Storm children were eventually returned to their own time but soon forgot their adventure. The children went to live with their Aunt Marygay Jewel Dinkins, who ran a boarding house. When Susan was in her late teens, she fell in love with one of her aunt's boarders, Reed Richards, who was working on his third doctorate at Empire State University. Sue later followed Richards to California, where she halfheartedly tried to break into show business.

Reed was working on an experimental faster-than-light rocketship called the *Marvel-1* that he intended to use to explore an Earthlike planet named Spyre located 44 lightyears away. When the project lost its government funding, he decided to launch the prototype, certain that the flight would succeed and attract more funding, and Sue went along for her own reasons. Ben Grimm, a test pilot, took the controls. Johnny filled out the crew. When the rocketship passed through a storm of cosmic rays, it was hit with an unexpected intensity that caused the ship to crash back to Earth. The experience gave each of them superhuman abilities, and perhaps more importantly, it forged almost unbreakable bonds between them. They became the Fantastic Four, and Storm took the name Invisible Girl.

### Birth of the Fantastic 4

In the early years of the Fantastic Four, Sue spent much of her time keeping the team together. Reed spent long hours in his laboratory; Grimm moped over his appearance; Johnny acted out like any teenager. Her power of invisibility had little use in battling super-villains such as Doctor Doom and Galactus, but her empathy and common sense prevented several breakups and defections. Her discontent manifested itself in an attraction to Namor, who returned her affections, but the relationship effectively ended after Namor abducted Sue in an attempt to persuade her to be his queen.

She soon discovered new powers: she could turn other objects (besides herself) invisible and project and manipulate powerful force fields. Although unable to perform offensively on a par with the Thing, she could defend against almost any threat.

When the Super-Skrull, possessing the combined powers of the Fantastic Four, attacked the team, the Human Torch managed to trap him inside a cave, but the Super-Skrull escaped and impersonated Sue's father, Franklin Storm. The Four exposed the Super-Skrull, but the Skrulls strapped a bomb to the real Franklin's chest, and Franklin sacrificed his own life to save his children. A trip to the Skrull homeworld and the death of Warlord Morrat, the Skrull who authorized Franklin's murder, brought some measure of revenge.