Powers and Abilities
Reed Richards gained the power of elasticity from irradiation by cosmic rays. He has the ability to convert his entire body into a highly malleable state at will, allowing him to stretch, deform, and reform himself into virtually any shape. Reed Richards 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. Reed is also able to shape his hands into hammer and mace style weapons, and concentrate his mass into his fist. All of these feats used to require extreme concentration; however, due to mental and physical training, he can now perform these feats at will. The most extreme demonstration of Reed's powers is when at one point he was able to increase his size and mass to Thing-like proportions which also increased his physical strength.
Despite this, Reed Richards' strength comes more from the powers of his mind than the powers of his body; indeed, he once told Spider-Man that he considers his stretching powers to be expendable compared to his intellect. Some stories have implied that Reed's intellect may have been boosted by his powers, as he once visited an alternate universe where his other self had never been exposed to cosmic rays and was notably less intelligent than him, though purely human versions of Reed that are as or even more intelligent than himself have been shown, particularly among the Council of Reeds. Tony Stark has commented that Reed's ability to make his brain physically larger (via his elastic powers) gives him an advantage, though this seems to be meant more as a joke. That said, scenes from the same issue show Reed "inflating" his skull as he calculates the power output of Tony's Repulsor-battery heart implant.
For virtually his entire publication history, Richards has been depicted as the most intelligent human in the Marvel Universe. A visionary theoretician and an inspired machine smith, he has made breakthroughs in such varied fields as space travel, time travel, extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, energy generation, spectral analysis and more. However, he is never afraid to admit when others have greater expertise in certain fields than him (such as recognizing that Doctor Octopus possesses greater knowledge of radiation, that Hank Pym is a superior biochemist, or that Spider-Man can think of a problem from a biology perspective where he would be unable to do so, since his expertise is in physics.). Richards has earned Ph.D.s in mathematics, physics, and engineering. His patents are so valuable that he is able to bankroll the Fantastic Four, Inc., without any undue financial stress. Mind control is rarely effective on him and when it does work, it wears off sooner than it would a normal person, due to what he describes as an "elastic consciousness".
Richards is also an accomplished fighter due to his years of combat experience with the Fantastic Four, and has earned a black belt in judo.
Read more about this topic: Mister Fantastic
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