Franklin Richards (character)
Franklin Benjamin Richards is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is a supporting character in Fantastic Four. He has been portrayed as a child and as a novice superhero.
Franklin is an immensely powerful being with vast reality-manipulating and psionic powers beyond most Omega level mutants. He is the son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four, the older brother of Valeria Richards, and the nephew of Invisible Woman's younger brother, the Human Torch. His parents named him Franklin Benjamin Richards; his middle name is taken from his godfather Ben Grimm, the Thing. Franklin's first name comes from Franklin Storm, his maternal grandfather. He has started using the code name Powerhouse. Franklin restricts the use of his powers to once a year in order to give himself a normal, healthy childhood.
Publication history
Franklin first appears in Fantastic Four Annual #6, and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, although he didn't receive his name until two years later in Fantastic Four #94. Lee recounted:Appearing sporadically in the pages of Fantastic Four over the following fifteen years, Franklin became a member of the pre-teen superhero team Power Pack as of issue #17 of that title until its cancellation with issue #62. From November 1994 an older version of the same character appeared in the pages of Marvel's Fantastic Force until publication ceased as of April 1996. Between appearances in these other titles, Franklin has remained a recurring cast member of the Fantastic Four comic book. From July 2007 until the series' cancellation in February 2009, an alternate version of Franklin appeared as a cast member in the Marvel Adventures all-ages Power Pack series of titles.
Fictional character biography
Origin
Richards was born in New York City to Reed and Susan Richards. He began manifesting his powers while still a toddler due to his parents' radiation-altered genes, which drew the attention of Annihilus, who sought to use Franklin as a source for his own resurgence, transferring some measure of the child's latent power to himself with a gene-based machine, and releasing Franklin's full potential in the process. Fearing the immediate threat of his son's powers to the entire populace of Earth and unable to find another solution in time, Reed Richards shut down Franklin's mind.During a battle between Ultron-7 and the Fantastic Four, Ultron's energy output awoke Franklin and again released his powers, resulting in the sentient robot's defeat. Free of the energies expended in the confrontation with Ultron, Franklin was seemingly returned to his normal power level.
Needing someone to watch over Franklin in their absence, Reed and Susan Richards came to rely on the services of an elderly woman known as Agatha Harkness, who is also a benevolent witch. Franklin and Agatha soon developed a familial-like bond, even residing together for a time at Whisper Hill. Eventually, Agatha returned to live in the secret witch community of New Salem, Colorado, and Franklin moved back in permanently with his parents and the rest of the Fantastic Four. His powers, no longer dormant, continued to manifest themselves.
Under the care of yet another guardian, a robot nicknamed H.E.R.B.I.E., Franklin unintentionally used his reality warping abilities to age himself into adulthood. In this form, he was an adept at molecular manipulation and psionics. On realizing his mistake, he restored himself to childhood.
Despite his youth and inexperience, Franklin, a victim of many threats and abductions, has exhibited great courage in the face of overwhelming peril. Time and again, he has unknowingly saved innocent lives, including that of his famous family, from the likes of villainous perpetrators, such as Blastaar, Norman Osborn, Onslaught, Nicholas Scratch, and even the all-powerful Mephisto, whom he temporarily destroyed and later defeated on two separate occasions.
Attempt at a normal life
To try to give his son a "normal" life, Reed Richards devised psychic inhibitors to prevent his powers from being used, but Franklin, whether by fault or by intent, could still at times bypass the inhibitors and use his powers, such as projecting an image of himself at a long distance. At this point he secretly joined a team of pre-teen superheroes called Power Pack, in which he was code-named "Tattletale". Katie Power of the group is sometimes resentful of the attention Franklin gets, and Power Pack writer Louise Simonson commented that they "kind of become friends, but there will always be a little bit of rivalry between the two of them."Image:Mutant Reg Ad.JPG|250px|left|thumb|A promotional advertisement for the "Fall of the Mutants" storyline which ran in various Marvel Comics cover dated November 1987. Franklin Richards is pictured at the far right in his "Tattletale" costume. Art by Jon Bogdanove.
Franklin's adventures with Power Pack gained him an enemy in the alien Zn'rx, and allies and friends in the Kymellian Whitemanes. Franklin was particularly close to the young Kofi Whitemane, who declared Franklin an honorary cousin in much the same way as the children of Power Pack had been adopted as honorary Whitemanes. Franklin also regarded the Power children and their parents as a sort of surrogate family — his association with them beginning at a time when he was feeling particularly distant from his parents at a time when they were living at Avengers Mansion. During this period Franklin also bonded emotionally with Avengers associate and manservant Edwin Jarvis, as Jarvis was his primary caretaker while Franklin stayed at the mansion. His friendship with the Power children also gave Franklin a taste of life among siblings, which the lonely Franklin would not experience until much later when his sister Valeria was born.
The Richards and Power families became fast friends, though neither family's parents realized that any of the children other than Franklin were superpowered. Franklin even kept his membership of Power Pack a secret from his own parents: when he appeared before them in image form he would stick to ordinary clothes, only appearing in his Power Pack outfit before other heroes such as Kitty Pryde.
Franklin even lived with the Power family for a time, when his parents decided that a superhero headquarters was a dangerous place for a child to live, and wanted Franklin to spend time in a "normal" family environment. He returned to his family when Power Pack temporarily left Earth for the Kymellian homeworld.
Psi-Lord
Franklin was later kidnapped by his time-traveling grandfather Nathaniel Richards, and replaced with his teenage counterpart, Psi-Lord, who had been raised by Nathaniel in a dimension outside of time. Franklin, as Psi-Lord, helped create the short-lived team known as Fantastic Force. By tapping a stud hidden within the glove of his costume, Franklin was able to summon battle armor from a pocket dimension; it was designed specifically to siphon off the full measure of his powers. As such, Franklin's abilities at this time were limited to telepathy, precognition, and psionic energy blasts.Nathaniel eventually revealed that in another possible future timeline, Franklin Richards would, with Rachel Summers, father a terrible time-and dimension-traveling supervillain named Hyperstorm. In an effort to divert the attention of the Fantastic Four, Nathaniel traveled back to the precise point in time when Franklin was abducted by Nathaniel Richards and returned the child to his parents mere seconds after he was first kidnapped, thus rendering the Psi-Lord version of Franklin Richards obsolete in the Earth-616 timeline.
Onslaught
Shortly after these events, Onslaught kidnaps Franklin in order to use his abilities to reshape reality. To defeat Onslaught, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, and several other heroes destroy first his physical form, and then his psychic form. In the process, Franklin's parents seemingly die. Franklin displays his true power, singlehandedly creating the "Heroes Reborn" pocket universe to contain the heroes who had "died" in that adventure. Some of them are recreated based on Franklin's memories of them, such as the temporally-displaced teenage Tony Stark becoming an adult once more while the mutated Wasp is restored to human form. While his parents are away in the Heroes Reborn universe, Generation X and Alicia Masters look after Franklin. This universe comes to be represented by a small, bluish ball which Franklin carries with him.Franklin travels with several X-Men to the farm owned by Hank McCoy's parents. He plays with Artie Maddicks and Leech, both mutant children. The Celestials recognize that Franklin represents the culmination of their genetic experiments, that he has power to rival even theirs. Ashema, one of the Celestials, representing herself as a human, visits Franklin. Ultimately, Franklin, Ashema and other forces allow the rightful heroes to return and both universes to remain functioning.
In the wake of Mr. Fantastic's activation of the Ultimate Nullifier to destroy Abraxas, Franklin loses all his powers in the process of reforming Galactus and thus becomes a normal child. Shortly afterwards, Doctor Doom makes a pact with the Haazareth Three to gain vast magical power. During Doom's attacks upon the Fantastic Four, Franklin is sucked into Hell by the Haazareth. After the defeat of Doom, his parents rescue him, but Franklin has a hard time coping with the traumatic experience of being tormented in Hell. The Thing helps Franklin make a complete mental recovery by assuring him that, even if they couldn't always keep him safe, they would never give up on him.
When the Scarlet Witch uses her powers to depower countless mutants, including Magneto and Professor X, the power lost by Magneto and Xavier combines and restores Onslaught, whose consciousness still lingered after his death. Onslaught takes control of both the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic in an attempt to get Franklin but is interrupted by the Thing and Invisible Woman.
When Franklin flees to Counter-Earth, Onslaught follows him. The Avengers assess their new threat which did not exist until Franklin appeared. After a brief skirmish, the heroes and villains decide to work together to defeat Onslaught. Rikki Barnes defeats him using a Fantasticar to send them both through the Negative Zone barrier in the Fantastic Four's lab, trapping them. Franklin returns home, Barnes finds herself on Earth-616, and Onslaught is seen floating outside the Area 42 Prison in the Negative Zone.