Franklin Richards (character)

• 1. Introduction

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  Franklin Richards, son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, debuted in Marvel Comics as a baby with a mystery attached. Stan Lee, who helped create him, wanted readers to wonder what a child of two superpowered parents could do. His plan was to "keep the readers guessing for years until the baby grew up." The answer turned out to be enormous. Franklin is written with reality-warping and mind powers that exceed those of most Omega level mutants. Yet he is usually shown as a child, a supporting player in his family's adventures, and a boy who deliberately holds that power back. Why would a child who can reshape matter choose restraint? How does a toddler become the target of villains and cosmic schemes? And what does a universe look like when a child can make one?

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• 2. A Baby Without a Name

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  Fantastic Four Annual #6, published in November 1968, carried the first appearance of Franklin Richards, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The baby then went unnamed for two years. Fantastic Four #94, in January 1970, finally gave him his name.

  Lee later explained his thinking. Sue Storm and Reed Richards had been married for quite a while, so a baby seemed the most natural development. Lee reasoned that two parents with powers might have a child with a power of his own. The open question was which power it would be.

  Sue's pregnancy ran about a year and a half or two years, because comic book time moves differently from real time. Lee said the writers stretched it out while they debated whether to have a boy or a girl, and what to call the child. They settled on a boy.

  Franklin Benjamin Richards carries two relatives in his name. Franklin honors Franklin Storm, Sue's father. Benjamin comes from Ben Grimm, the Thing, who is the boy's godfather. His sister is Valeria Richards, and his uncle is the Human Torch, the younger brother of the Invisible Woman.

  The first to put the boy's power to use would be a villain named Annihilus.

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• 3. A Guarded Childhood

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  Franklin was born in New York City, and when he was a toddler his powers surfaced and caught the eye of Annihilus. Annihilus built a gene-based machine to draw some of the child's latent power into himself. In doing so, the machine released Franklin's full potential. Reed Richards saw an immediate danger to everyone on Earth. With no other solution available in time, he shut down his son's mind.

  A battle with Ultron changed that. Ultron's energy output woke Franklin's powers again, and the robot was defeated. Afterward the boy seemed to return to his normal power level.

  Agatha Harkness became Franklin's nanny when Reed and Susan needed someone to watch him. The two grew close, like family, and lived for a time at Whisper Hill, her old home. Eventually Agatha went back to New Salem, Colorado, a secret community of witches. Franklin moved back in with his parents and the rest of the team, and his powers, no longer dormant, kept showing up.

  Another guardian, H.E.R.B.I.E., was minding him when Franklin accidentally used his powers to age himself into adulthood. In that form he was skilled at molecular manipulation and psionics. Once he understood his mistake, he turned himself back into a child.

  Reed then tried a technological answer. He built psychic inhibitors meant to stop the powers from working. Franklin could still slip past them at times, whether by fault or by intent, and once projected an image of himself across a long distance. Around then he secretly joined a team of pre-teen heroes called Power Pack, under the code name "Tattletale." He was a member from issue #17 in December 1985 until the series was cancelled with issue #62 in February 1991.

  Katie Power sometimes resented the attention Franklin received. Writer Louise Simonson said the two "kind of become friends, but there will always be a little bit of rivalry between the two of them." His parents later decided a superhero headquarters was a dangerous place for a child, so Franklin lived with the Power family for a time. He rejoined his own family when Power Pack temporarily left Earth for the Kymellian homeworld.

  Soon a relative from another time would take him away.

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• 4. Psi-Lord

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  Nathaniel Richards, Franklin's time-traveling grandfather, kidnapped the boy and left a teenage counterpart in his place. That counterpart was Psi-Lord, whom Nathaniel had raised in a dimension outside of time. As Psi-Lord, Franklin founded the team Fantastic Force. An older version of the character appeared in Marvel's Fantastic Force series from November 1994 until publication ended in April 1996.

  A stud hidden in the glove of his costume summoned battle armor from a pocket dimension. The armor was designed to siphon off the full measure of his powers. As a result, Psi-Lord was limited to telepathy, precognition and psionic energy blasts.

  Nathaniel eventually revealed that in another possible timeline, Franklin and Rachel Summers would father a villain named Hyperstorm. To divert the attention of the Fantastic Four, Nathaniel then traveled back to the exact moment of the abduction. He returned the child to his parents only seconds after taking him. That made the Psi-Lord version of Franklin obsolete in the Earth-616 timeline.

  Franklin's parents had little time to enjoy having him home, because Onslaught was already after the boy.

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• 5. Onslaught and Heroes Reborn

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  Onslaught kidnapped Franklin shortly after these events, hoping to use the boy's abilities to reshape reality. To stop him, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men and several other heroes destroyed Onslaught's physical form first, then his psychic form. In the process, Franklin's parents seemingly died.

  Franklin answered by singlehandedly creating a pocket universe called Heroes Reborn, to hold the heroes who had apparently died. Some of them were rebuilt from his memories of them. The teenage Tony Stark, displaced in time, became an adult once more. The mutated Wasp was restored to human form.

  While his parents were away in Heroes Reborn, Generation X and Alicia Masters looked after Franklin. The universe came to be represented by a small bluish ball that he carried with him. In the end he was persuaded to let the heroes return, and both universes kept functioning.

  Mister Fantastic's use of the Ultimate Nullifier against Abraxas would soon strip Franklin of his powers entirely.

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• 6. One Day a Year

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  The Ultimate Nullifier, which Mister Fantastic activated to destroy Abraxas, had a cost for his son. In the process of reforming Galactus, Franklin lost all his powers and became a normal child.

  On his birthday, a strange intruder seemed to attack him. The intruder was a future version of Franklin, sent back through time to deliver a warning to Valeria Richards. The visit also revealed a twist. Franklin is not a mutant, but he had subconsciously convinced the wider world that he was.

  A mysterious stranger then approached Franklin and began secretly tutoring him in the use of his powers. This tutor was another future adult Franklin. He insisted that the powers must be harnessed for one purpose, the preservation of life.

  The Future Foundation later faced the Mad Celestials of Earth-4280. One of the Celestials described Franklin as "beyond the Omega classification" applied to mutants, then attacked him with concussion beams. Franklin repelled them. The episode revealed that he is immortal and will survive billions of years, long enough to witness the birth of a new universe alongside Galactus.

  Then came the secret. After resuming everyday family life, Franklin woke one night to find his conscious control over his powers restored. He had reasoned that unchecked powers during adolescence would keep him from growing up normally. He also feared he would never reach the emotional development needed to use them wisely as an adult. So he chose to hide the powers from himself and everyone else, except for one day each year when he wakes and remembers everything. On that day he explores the multiverse for threats and steps in only when absolutely necessary. He has begun using the code name Powerhouse.

  How much power that adds up to is something the comics have never settled.

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• 7. The Scale of Power

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  At its core, Franklin's power is to warp reality, making any thought or desire come true, even on a cosmic scale. He can rearrange the molecular structure of matter and energy at will. He once subconsciously created his own pocket universe, complete with a virtual replica of Earth-616. Comics have described him as equal in power to the Celestials and other cosmic entities.

  His psionic gifts include telepathy, telekinesis, concussive energy blasts, precognition and astral projection. As a child, he is restricted somewhat by his limited control.

  What he becomes as an adult is unclear, because future versions from alternate realities and from the main Marvel universe vary in power. One adult version destroyed two Celestials from Earth-4280 in physical combat, and his immortality was strongly implied afterward. The same man drew on the power of his younger self to resurrect Galactus and transform him into a personal herald. The Devourer of Worlds had been knocked unconscious in battle against the Mad Celestials.

  Other futures show a very different Franklin, with a different fate in each.

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• 8. Other Franklins

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  In Days of Future Past, Franklin is known as Scrapper. He is the lover of Rachel Summers until Sentinels kill him. In a variant of that timeline, he and Rachel have a son, Jonathan Richards, who becomes Hyperstorm, a mutant able to draw virtually limitless energy from Hyperspace.

  Fantastic Four Annual from 1998 shows a possible future in which Franklin is married to a Wakandan woman named Zawadi and has a daughter named N'Yami. He is a member of the Fantastic Four, codenamed Zero Man, with the ability to access the Negative Zone.

  In Earth X, Franklin curses Namor for killing the Human Torch. Half of Namor's body now burns constantly, even underwater. Franklin later takes Galactus' armor, becomes Galactus and leaves Earth.

  In the MC2 universe, Franklin is Psi-Lord again, a member of the Fantastic Five. A battle with Hyperstorm reduced his powers to telekinesis. He deliberately amplified them to fight Doctor Doom, which left him with a fiery skull-like face and a containment helmet he must always wear.

  From July 2007 until February 2009, an alternate Franklin appeared in the all-ages Marvel Adventures Power Pack titles. In the Fantastic Four and Power Pack miniseries, this Franklin is promoted a few grades and placed in the same class as Jack Power. He is persecuted because of the Richards name, so Reed decides to keep him in the Baxter Building for home schooling, possibly as long as college. Franklin runs away with Jack and is captured by Doctor Doom. Doom swaps bodies with him, leaving Franklin trapped in Doom's comatose body. When Jack Power undoes the swap, Franklin leads Power Pack in sending Doom to the Negative Zone.

  New Warriors #11-13 tell the story of Forever Yesterday, a reality where the Richards family joins a resistance movement against Sphinx. They team up with the family of Dwayne Taylor, and Franklin and Dwayne are friends despite their age gap. An attack by agents of Sphinx leaves everyone murdered except Dwayne.

  Power Pack #36, published in April 1987, pits Franklin and his friends against the giant robot Master Mold. The machine's goal is to eliminate the Twelve, the future leaders of mutant-kind. It calls Franklin a mutant of "ultimate" potential, then pictures possible adult versions of him. One is a young man called Ultiman. Another is an older figure, resembling the Silver Surfer, called The Twelfth.

  In Ultimate X-Men/Fantastic Four Annual #1, a young Franklin belongs to a future team of X-Men. In every possible future he is the son of Reed, who appears as Nihil, and Sue. He is also the host of that timeline's Phoenix Force.

  Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius is an out-of-continuity humor series that portrays him as a Calvin-esque troublemaker. He cannot resist "playing" with his father's inventions, with disastrous results. Chris Eliopoulos drew the first twelve one-shots and co-wrote them with Marc Sumerak, then wrote the series alone. In 2008, Eliopoulos was nominated for the Special Award for Humor, a Harvey Award, for his work on Franklin Richards. Two Ultimate Collection volumes gathered the stories, the first on the 13th of October 2010 and the second on the 8th of December 2010.

  On screen, Franklin makes a non-speaking appearance in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "Support Your Local Sky-Father!" With Ada Scott now playing him in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the boy Lee left unnamed in 1968 has reached live action.

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