Powers and abilities
Reed Richards’ power is elasticity. He has been observed as being able to utilize his stretching form in a variety of offensive and defensive manners, such as compressing himself into a ball and ricocheting into enemies or flattening himself into a trampoline or a parachute to rescue a teammate. He can squeeze through a small opening such as a pin hole (or smaller). He can twist or reshape his body or stretch roughly three miles. He can flatten himself to the thickness of a sheet of vellum. He also can expand his lungs, allowing him to hold his breath longer. Because of his elastic nature, Mr. Fantastic cannot be harmed by bullets or most other projectile weapons, including knives, missiles, darts, etc. He can often cause projectiles rebound to the attacker. Despite this, Reed is not invulnerable to harm. Though it is extremely difficult to do and has rarely been done, Reed's skin has been cut at least once, by an evolved form of a Brood queen (or possibly an as of yet unnamed alien race). He has also shown to have all the weaknesses of rubber; he melts and weakens when exposed to superheat and will freeze and crack when exposed to supercooling. He has also occasionally demonstrated other applications of this molecular control. While imprisoned by Psycho-Man, he willfully reduced his body to a nearly liquid state in order to flow out of a glass encasement specially prepared by the villain to have only the most infinitesimal of openings. It is possible however to injure him: Mephisto once broke his arm (presumably due to his Supernatural orientation more than sheer strength).
Reed's elasticity makes it extremely difficult for attackers to grasp or pin him, as his body can become slippery as an eel. However Reed is vulnerable to types of energy weapons, as well as taffy-puller-style machines that forcibly stretch him to the limits of his tensile durability. These can cause him considerable agony, as well as the temporary loss of his elastic body's natural tendency to snap back to its original shape and proportions.
Reed can alter his physical makeup; he can, for instance, disguise his appearance to mimic another person or even an inanimate object, or extend spikes from his body. He can also concentrate his mass into a single body part, such as when he enlarges a fist into a fifty-pound hammer. All of these feats can be performed within less than a second. On one occasion, he increased his entire body's size and mass, bulking it malleable body to "Thing"-like proportions while increasing his strength to greater than normal human dimensions as well.
KMC Community Forums
Feb 19th, 2007 09:03 PM
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