Mister Fantastic

• 1. Introduction

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  Mister Fantastic, the comic book hero whose real name is Dr. Reed Richards, owes his stretching power to a borrowed idea. Stan Lee, who created him with Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics, once explained the choice in an interview. His words were: "I liked Plastic Man. That's a great power, and nobody is using it so I gave Reed Richards Plastic Man's power."

  Yet the stretching is the least remarkable thing about him. Within the Marvel Universe he is officially recognized as its greatest mind, and he leads the Fantastic Four. To the team, he is something close to a father. What can a body that bends into almost any shape actually do? Why does the cleverest man in the room keep making choices that wound the people he loves? And how many other Reed Richards exist, in universes where the cosmic rays never touched him?

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• 2. Elastic Anatomy

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  Cosmic rays gave Reed Richards the ability to turn his entire body malleable at will. He can stretch, deform, and reform himself into nearly any shape. In a fight he has curled into a ball and ricocheted off enemies. He has flattened himself into a trampoline or a parachute to catch a falling teammate, and inflated himself into a life raft for a water rescue. He can loosen his body's cohesion until he turns fluid, pouring through tiny openings or into narrow pipes. He can also shape his hands into hammers and maces, and pack extra mass into his fists.

  His elastic texture protects him as well. He can be punched with incredible force, flattened, or squished, and still re-form without significant injury. Over the years his control has grown so fine that he can change his face and entire form to pass unnoticed among humans and non-humans. He has even molded himself into a mailbox. He rarely uses the power in such undignified ways. Still, he has no qualms about stretching his ears, turning into a dinosaur, becoming a human trampoline, or inflating his hands into pool toys to entertain his children.

  At one point Reed pushed his gift to its limit and grew to match the Thing in size and mass, which also raised his strength. Holding such shapes once demanded extreme effort, but years of mental and physical training now let him do it at will. A second dose of cosmic rays boosted his powers, and those of the Red Ghost too. Even his ordinary human shape takes steady concentration. When he relaxes and loses focus, Susan Storm says his body seems to "melt in slow motion."

  Being forcibly stretched to extremes in a short span, by a taffy-puller-type machine or a very strong opponent, brings Reed intense pain. It also temporarily robs him of his resilience. A great shock, such as Doctor Doom constricting around him, can leave his body so rubbery that he loses motor control. Enough energy can reduce him to a liquid that cannot move. Reed is also among the best judo experts on Earth. Even so, he once told Spider-Man that he considers his stretching expendable compared to his intellect.

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• 3. Brain Over Body

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  BusinessWeek listed Mister Fantastic among the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics. For nearly his whole publication history, writers have treated him as one of the sharpest minds in the Marvel Universe. His breakthroughs range from space travel and time travel to robotics, holography, and energy generation. He holds PhDs in Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering. The patents and royalties on his inventions are valuable enough to bankroll the Fantastic Four, Inc., without any undue financial stress.

  Doctor Octopus, Reed admits, knows more about radiation than he does. Hank Pym is the better biochemist. Spider-Man can look at a problem from a biological angle that Reed, whose expertise lies in physics, would never think to try. Reed never hesitates to say so when someone else knows more.

  Mind control rarely works on him, and when it does, it fades faster than it would on an ordinary person. Reed credits what he calls an "elastic consciousness." Some stories hint that the cosmic rays sharpened his intellect. In one, he visits an alternate universe where his counterpart never took the radiation and is noticeably less intelligent. Purely human versions of Reed who are just as bright, or brighter, have also appeared. Tony Stark once joked that Reed can enlarge his own brain through his elastic powers. In the same issue, Reed does inflate his skull while calculating the power output of Tony's Repulsor-battery heart implant.

  Doctor Strange taught Reed a hard lesson about magic. For Reed, intellect was a handicap there. It took an intense lesson, and the threat of his son being trapped in Hell, before he accepted that the key to magic is admitting he will never understand it.

  A few tools go everywhere with him. The Fantastiflare launches a fiery "4" into the sky so teammates can find his position during a fight. His costume, like those of the whole team, is woven from "unstable molecules." That is why Johnny's suit does not burn when he flames on, Sue's turns invisible with her, and Reed's stretches along with him. The fabric also carries a data and telemetry system built in at the molecular level. It links the team in a network that reports each member's physical condition and location. Its scanners can tell Reed how many people are in the next room, or what dimension or planet he is standing on. He can even stretch his fingertips to filament size, plug them into a data port, and map a computer's protocols and encryption.

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• 4. Flight Into Radiation

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  Central City, California, is where Reed Richards was born, the son of Evelyn and Nathaniel Richards. Nathaniel was a scientific genius, and Reed inherited both his intellect and his interests. A child prodigy in mathematics, physics, and mechanics, Reed was already taking college-level courses at 14. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Harvard, Columbia, and the fictional Empire State University. By 20 he held several science degrees.

  At Empire State University he met his new roommate, Benjamin J. Grimm. Reed was already designing a starship meant to travel through hyperspace. When he shared the plans, Grimm jokingly offered to pilot it. Another student there, Victor Von Doom, finally found someone who could match him intellectually. Doom came to see Reed as his ultimate rival and grew jealous. Determined to prove himself better, he ran reckless experiments that scarred his face and set him on the road to becoming Doctor Doom.

  In the summer months, Reed rented a room in a boarding house owned by the aunt of Susan Storm, then an undergraduate. He fell in love with her instantly. The courtship pulled him away from his dissertation, so he moved out of Marygay's home. At Harvard he earned PhDs in Physics and Electrical Engineering by the age of 22, while working as a military scientist. He also served the Army in communications and took part in the Sin-Cong Conflict. In his mid-20s he combined his inheritance with government funding and based his project in Central City. Sue moved nearby and soon became engaged to him. Ben, by then a successful test pilot and astronaut, was slated to fly the craft.

  Then the government threatened to cut the money and cancel the project. Reed, Ben, Sue, and her younger brother Johnny agreed to sneak aboard the starship and launch at once. Testing was unfinished. Ben worried about the unknown effects of radiation, while Reed theorized that the shielding would hold. It did not. Passing through the Van Allen belt, the crew found the cockpit bombarded with nearly lethal doses of cosmic radiation. Reed had failed to account for the abnormal levels there. The ship limped home and crash-landed, and all four found their bodies dramatically changed. At Reed's suggestion they chose to serve humankind as the Fantastic Four, with Reed as leader under the name "Mr. Fantastic." He later told his daughter, in a bedtime story, why he pushed for outlandish names and costumes. He knew the team would probably be hated and feared for their powers without an over-the-top public image.

  The original comics told this story very differently. Richards was a veteran of World War II who had served behind enemy lines in occupied France. The goal of the mission was a crewed flight to the Moon before the Communists got there, and later versions changed the rival to the Chinese Communists. Reed and Sue were said to have been kids together, and Sue was the girl next door he left behind to fight. A later revision made Sue thirteen when she met Reed, who was in his early twenties. In 2013, editors decided that a romance beginning with a girl that young was inappropriate. Under current canon, Reed and Sue do not meet until their late teens at Aunt Marygay's boardinghouse.

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• 5. Family Strains

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  Ben Grimm remains the sorest wound in Reed's life. Reed feels personally responsible for the change that left his best friend a large, rocky figure known as the Thing. He has labored off and on to reverse it permanently. Ben typically stays rocky, and the failure is a running point of tragedy for the team's leader.

  Reed is the husband of Susan Storm, the father of Franklin and Valeria, and mentor to his brother-in-law Johnny. Franklin's powers appeared unusually early. The cosmic ray alteration to his parents' DNA brought them out while he was still very young, whereas most Marvel mutants, like the X-Men, develop powers as teenagers. His strength appears to rival a Celestial, the power of a god in the body of a small child. To prevent a global catastrophe, Reed shut down Franklin's mind. Sue was furious and began divorce proceedings, though the couple reconciled soon after.

  Doctor Doom has never forgiven Reed, because he believes Reed caused the accident that ruined his face. He has sworn revenge. He has turned Reed into a monstrous freak, attacked his children, and tried to seduce Sue.

  The Onslaught crisis cost the family its home. Onslaught wanted to add Franklin's godlike abilities to his own and invaded New York with an army of Sentinels. The Fantastic Four apparently gave their lives to stop him. Franklin saved them by creating an alternate reality, where Reed and his teammates relived most of their lives without knowing what had happened. Meanwhile, the Masters of Evil, posing as the Thunderbolts, destroyed the team's headquarters, Four Freedoms Plaza. A year later, Franklin brought everyone back. The family moved into Reed's storage warehouse on Pier 4, overlooking the East River, before eventually returning to the Baxter Building.

  An earlier ordeal had separated Reed from everyone. After a battle against an alien called Hunger, Doom asked his old enemy to take his hand, and both vanished in a flash, leaving only ashes. In truth, Hyperstorm had thrown them far into the past, onto an alien world. Hyperstorm was Reed's grandchild from an alternate future, the child of Franklin and Rachel Summers. Doom was held prisoner, and Reed wandered aimlessly for about a year. When his friends finally found him, he had resigned himself to the idea that no rescue was possible, and he attacked them before realizing they were real. Only Galactus could defeat Hyperstorm.

  Later, Johnny was apparently killed in the Negative Zone. Reed grew disillusioned with the way scientists viewed their own work. In response, he assembled a new team, the Future Foundation, to help build a better future for humankind.

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• 6. Civil War Choices

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  In the Civil War miniseries, Reed Richards stands beside Iron Man in favor of the Superhuman Registration Act. He predicted the cause would collide with his marriage, and issue #4 proved him right. Ragnarok, a clone of Thor built by Reed and Tony Stark, went out of control and killed Goliath. It nearly killed the rest of the Secret Avengers before Sue Storm stepped in to save them. Soon after, Sue left Reed with Johnny and joined the Secret Avengers, hoping to push her husband into ending the conflict quickly.

  In The Amazing Spider-Man #535, Peter Parker toured the detention facility Reed designed for unregistered superhumans and came back with deeper doubts. He asked Reed why he supported the act. Reed answered with the story of his paternal uncle, Ted, a professional writer he remembered as "funny," "colorful," and "accepting." Because Ted worked in the arts and stood out, he was called before HUAC. He served six months in prison on contempt of Congress charges and then could not find work. Even Reed's father shunned him. Ted lost everything, which Reed says finally killed him. Reed concluded that his uncle was wrong to pick a fight he could not win and to fail to respect the law.

  Fantastic Four #542 reveals a second reason. Reed had developed a working version of psychohistory, the fictional science invented by Isaac Asimov. By his calculations, billions would die in escalating conflicts without the act. In the final battle, Taskmaster shot Reed while Reed was saving Sue's life. A furious Sue crushed Taskmaster with a telekinetic field. Reed survived, and Sue returned to him after being granted amnesty. The pair stepped away from the team to repair their marriage and asked Storm and the Black Panther to fill their places.

  Reed was also one of the Illuminati, a secret group his wife did not know about. Its members had tried to exile the Hulk from Earth, and when the Hulk came back, Reed built a machine that projected the Sentry's image and calming aura. The Hulk saw through it and smashed the device. Sue tried to hold the Hulk in an energy field while pleading for her husband. He broke through easily, and she collapsed with a nosebleed. Later, in the Hulk's Gladiator arena at Madison Square Garden, obedience disks suppressed the heroes' powers. The Hulk ordered Reed and Iron Man to fight. Reed gained the upper hand, and the Hulk signaled him to kill Stark. Instead, the Hulk spared them both, and the Sentry arrived in time.

  A Skrull infiltrator caught Reed next. During Secret Invasion, Reed and Hank Pym autopsied a Skrull that had impersonated Elektra. Just as Reed announced he had found how the Skrulls hid, "Hank Pym" revealed himself as a Skrull and shot him. The weapon left his elastic body in disarray, like Silly String. Reed was then stretched across the floor of an arena on a Skrull ship, watched by Skrull spectators, until Abigail Brand freed him. Together they traveled to the Savage Land, where a device exposed the invaders.

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• 7. Many Reeds

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  In the Age of Apocalypse reality, Reed Richards never received superpowers because the cosmic radiation never struck him. While helping with an evacuation, he and Johnny Storm sacrificed themselves to keep their sabotaged rocket safe. Other worlds bend him in odd directions. In the Amalgam Comics imprint he is merged with DC's Prof Haley, and a second composite character blends him with Elastic Lad. In Bullet Points, he is the lone survivor of the fatal rocket flight and becomes director of S.H.I.E.L.D. In Marvel 1602, he is tied to the classical element of water. In the Mangaverse he commands the Megascale Metatalent Response Team Fantastic Four, and in Marvel Zombies he is a zombie who thinks his kind is superior to humans. In the Mutant X universe he has no powers and wears a battle suit with two extra arms.

  Marvel Premiere #2, from May 1972, introduced the Brute, created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane. He is the Reed Richards of Counter-Earth, a world built by the High Evolutionary. His cosmic rays at first did nothing, Johnny and Ben were unaffected, and Susan fell into a coma. Later the rays let him change into a savage, purple-skinned behemoth. He joined the Frightful Four on True Earth, trapped the original Reed in the Negative Zone, and took his place. The concussion that had made him evil wore off after he saw Reed's selfless devotion to his wife. He then sacrificed himself to keep the original Reed's promise to return the Cosmic Control Rod to Annihilus.

  Fantastic Four #570, from October 2009, introduced the Council of Reeds. Each member is a Reed from a different universe, and one joins by inventing a device called the Bridge. The Bridge crosses the nothingness between realities. The leaders are the three Reeds who hold their own reality's Infinity Gauntlet. The Reed of the main universe, called 616, notices one shared fact. Every other Reed grew up without his father, Nathaniel, whose influence made the 616 Reed a more compassionate man. He declined to join, because membership would cost him his family ties. Nearly all the members died when the mad Celestials of Universe-4280 broke into the council's headquarters.

  The Ultimate Marvel universe gave Reed a darker twin called the Maker. His powers came from a malfunctioning teleporter experiment, and he founded an Ultimate Fantastic Four that explored the N-Zone. After the damage caused by "Ultimatum", he changed his worldview and became a nemesis of the Ultimates. During Secret Wars, the two Reeds work together while Doctor Doom rules Battleworld. They clash over methods. Reed wants to save the world, and the Maker wants to kill their enemy. When the Maker calls him weak, Reed replies that he simply has things to care for outside himself. The pair discover that Doom's power comes from the Molecule Man, Owen Reece. The Maker tries to betray Reed by devolving him into an ape, but Reece reverses the attack and turns the Maker into pepperoni pizza. Reed then calls Doom a coward for seizing what was left of existence instead of reshaping it. Inspired, Reece hands Doom's power to Reed, who recreates the former Earth-616.

  In the What If? series, one world, designated Earth-772, has Spider-Man join the team. Sue feels sidelined and leaves to marry the Sub-Mariner. Reed is briefly driven insane and declares war on Atlantis. In What If? #6, from December 1977, Reed becomes a giant floating brain called "Big Brain." His brain is destroyed in a fight with Doom, but only after he transfers his mind into Doom's body. In What If? #11, from May 1978, the roles reverse. Stan Lee himself gains the powers and intelligence of Mister Fantastic and forms a Fantastic Four with fellow Marvel employees Jack Kirby, Sol Brodsky, and Flo Steinberg.

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• 8. On Screen

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  Alex Hyde-White played Reed in the 1994 film The Fantastic Four. Ioan Gruffudd took the role in Fantastic Four in 2005 and in its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. His version begins as a nearly bankrupt inventor who must seek investment from Victor von Doom. By the sequel he is engaged to Sue Storm. Miles Teller played him in the 2015 Fantastic Four, where the team gains powers from a botched expedition to a parallel dimension called Planet Zero.

  In 2022, John Krasinski played a variant of Reed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. That version belongs to the Illuminati and the Baxter Foundation of Earth-838, and the Scarlet Witch kills him. Pedro Pascal plays the primary Reed in the 2025 film The Fantastic Four: First Steps. He will reprise the role in Avengers: Doomsday in 2026 and Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027.

  On television, Gerald Mohr voiced Mister Fantastic in the 1967 series Fantastic Four, and Mike Road voiced him in The New Fantastic Four. Beau Weaver gave him a voice in the 1994 series, where Reed and Sue are already married before they gain their powers. In Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, voiced by Hiro Kanagawa, he is not married to Sue. In video games, he is playable in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and in Marvel Rivals, where Ian James Corlett voices him. He was removed from Marvel Heroes on the 1st of July 2017 for legal reasons. He also appears in Fortnite as part of a bundle promoting The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

  Parodies followed him too. The Adult Swim cartoon The Venture Bros. features Professor Richard Impossible, who has the same powers. Stephen Colbert voiced him in the early seasons, and Bill Hader took over in season 4. On Stargate Atlantis, Lt. Col. John Sheppard uses the alias Reed Richards when he is kidnapped. In a Treehouse of Horror segment of The Simpsons, Bart is turned into Mr. Fantastic. Norm Macdonald, on his comedy album Ridiculous, imagines the team choosing names. After Reed invents "The Thing," "The Invisible Woman," and "The Human Torch" for his teammates, he settles on "Mr. Fantastic" for himself. His teammates are upset, because unlike their names, his does not really describe his powers.

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