Mister Fantastic

Reed Richards, also known as Mister Fantastic, is one of the major characters from the Marvel comics.

Reed is the leader of the Fantastic Four. He can stretch his body to great distances due to his exposure to cosmic rays while in space. He is also considered to be one of the smartest men alive.

Personality
Reed is a very scientific man who often prefers to solve any situation or confrontation he finds himself in with logic and nonviolence. He is invested in saving as many lives as he can, with any type of scenario that his brain comes up with. Although even the rest of the FF may be weirded out by his ideas, Reed's plans usually come off with a hitch. Johnny once put it that Reed's type of genius came once every several generations and that it was to be appreciated. This "genius" also propels Reed to make decisions based on data. When the X-Men used the power of the Phoenix Force to make the world better, he saw the X-Men as heroes and disbelieved the Avengers' notions purely based on how much a positive environmental impact they were creating.

As logical as Reed is, his science-based approach to most things in life can come off as disrespectful and cold. He routinely needs to be pulled out of his work and back to earth by the team, and most of the time by Sue. The two have gotten used to their polar personalities, but Reed's attempt to abide by his principles has threatened their marriage on several occasions; the Superhuman Registration Act, the Council of Reeds, the FF's takeover of Latveria, etc. Thankfully, the two believe in each other and Reed's family and humanity (which he cares for much) always do his good. His children's youth often causes Reed to utilize his powers in humorous ways for their entertainment.

Reed is also a man who can be hurt by his own guilt. His inability to repeatedly cure his best friend the Thing, keep the Fantastic Four financially secure, and safely countermeasure his son's godlike powers have put a lot of strain on his personal belief in himself. In time, it seems he has grown past these notions.

Abilities
Reed's defining quality is his vast intellect; the Intelligentsia considered him one among the eight smartest men in the world, and Galactus himself once remarked that Reed possessed a "universally relevant intelligence". The great resources and revenues of the Fantastic Four stem almost entirely from the legion of patents for things Reed has created, and he is a pioneer in a range of fields including physics, chemistry, biology, computing, space travel, medicine and so on. Even so, Reed acknowledges that there are fields where he would defer to the expertise of others. For instance, while Reed is a brilliant inventor, he still considers Iron Man to to be the greatest engineer in the world and has said "There's no one that can do the things Tony can do". Nevertheless, for sheer mastery of a wide range of fields and subjects, Reed is arguably the smartest man on Marvel Earth only ever rivaled by Doctor Doom.

His main superpower however is that his body becomes elastic and he has complete control over it. This allows him to use his body for either offensive or defensive purposes. He can squeeze through openings sometimes even as small as one molecule's breadth. He can twist or reshape his body or stretch roughly three miles (approximately 1500 feet) fully extended before physical pain sets in (though in some cases, he has stretched or been stretched past this limit and still managed to push through the discomfort). He can flatten himself to the thickness of a sheet of vellum. By lowering the cohesion of his body through relaxation, he can enter into a semi-liquid state and bypass sealed openings or enter through pipes. Due to Reed's distaste for violence, he will usually wrap an opponent up in his body to attempt to control and compromise with them. To trap an opponent, he can also flatten his body and smother his opponent until they give in. Reed's body becomes gradually weaker the farther he stretches, but though years of practice and healthy regimen, he has become used to it and retains a greater degree of finesse with his elasticity. This affords him the ability to hold tremendous amounts of weight, usually falling rubble or dozens of people, with ease. Even if Reed is fully stretched out, smaller parts of his body - fingers, eyes, parts of his face - can elongate further.

Other applications of his powers include expanding his lungs allowing him to hold his breath longer, adjusting the distance between his cornea and retina to allow for natural ocular magnification, compacting his skin to repel insects, and in at least one case shortening the distance between the synapses in his brain allowing him to process thought at impossible speeds. He has also shown that he can stretch his brain, cerebellum, as to facilitate operation of Cerebro, the mutant finding computer devised by Professor Charles Xavier. Reed's body can blanket and absorb the brunt force of an explosion, usually several tons, though it might strain him to do so. He can reflect sharp weapons such as bullets, darts, knives, etc as if his body were a trampoline. His body's natural elasticity affords him great resilience in that being flattened, squished, or pummeled will have no lasting effects, and he momentarily reforms. However, despite the fantastic nature of Reed's abilities, he is not invulnerable. Though it is difficult to do, his skin has been cut. Because he is like rubber, he suffers all the drawbacks of it, like melting in heat and freezing in cold conditions. Electricity is generally not a great weakness to Reed, but a quick or sufficient shock can paralyze that part of his body and make his form lose composure. More concentrated energy, like that of Doctor Doom, can be detrimental enough to reduce him to his liquid state. This can be achieved in a similar fashion if his body is exposed to tremendous amounts of the aptly-named "Heat" drug, which, when force-fed down his throat by Daken, made him slowly melt while being unable to control his body. Other drawbacks include taffy-puller machines that can pull him beyond his tensile strength. This causes great pain and he cannot snap back to his original human form as quickly. The same is also applied to strong opponents, who can easily hurt him by stretching him with their immense strength (such as when Gladiator mistook his for a Skull and left him stretched out all over New York City) or opponents who use machines to pull his body in different directions (The Wizard, Quiet Man).

Reed can also change his appearance by force of will, like "aging" himself, altering his hair color and body composition, inflating his body like a balloon, stretching to become vastly taller, and once even took on the appearance of a bloodthirsty alien (though the sheer concentration and effort it took to maintain the form caused him to drop it soon after). His body's elasticity enables him to shift into inanimate objects, ala a parachute, cube, wheel, trampoline, spring, or container. Some enable him to hide while other serve either the purpose of getting somewhere or aiding someone. He can concentrate his elasticity into one area of his body. For example, it can all go to his fist, making it an effective offensive weapon. This can increase his strength and size considerably, as he did in the instance where he went up against Onslaught. Though he has many great physical feats, his intellect is also considered a power of his. He is one of the smartest in the Marvel Universe, showing himself to be even as smart as alien civilizations. Because of this, mind control is useless, though when it does affect him, it wears off more quickly than on an average human. He is not flawless however, as he has tried many times to revert the Thing back to his normal human form. He also indicates that he can not understand magic, which usually stunts him when dealing with Doctor Doom or Diablo. Later in life, he also earned a Black Belt in Judo.

Reed, at one time, was the possessor of the Power Gem.

Trivia

 * The powers of all of the Fantastic Four are based on one of the four elements; in Neil Gaiman's Marvel 1602, his power is associated with the classical element of water. The association to the element of water was also brought up in Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four, X4: X-Men and Fantastic Four, Ultimate Fantastic Four and in the Marvel Boy mini-series by Grant Morrison.
 * Reed failed his driving test four times.