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Franklin Richards

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Franklin Richards is a fictional character in Marvel Comics' universe. Born in Fantastic Four Annual #6 (November 1968), Franklin is the young son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four and the older brother of Valeria Richards. He is a mutant with such vast reality-manipulating powers that, for most of the 1990s, he was, along with Nate Grey, considered to be one of the two most powerful mutants ever born. Franklin is also considered an Omega-level mutant.

Contents

Character history

Origin

Franklin (named after his maternal grandfather) was born a mutant, thanks to his parents' radiation-altered genes. Franklin was an atypical mutant, because he began manifesting his powers at an extremely young age. This drew the attention of Annihilus, who used a machine to release Franklin's full potential, before he was mature. Unable at the time to find a solution for his son, Reed Richards placed Franklin into a coma.

During a battle between Ultron-7 and the Fantastic Four, the energy leaking from Ultron awoke Franklin and his powers. The energy release from Franklin was enough to defeat Ultron. Free of the excess energy, Franklin was returned to his normal power level.

Franklin later aged himself into an adult. For a brief time, Franklin became known as the Avatar. In this form, Franklin had vast amounts of power to manipulate energy. Franklin didn't stay in this form long, because he knew it wasn't right for him. Before he regressed himself back to a child, Franklin placed psychic locks on his mind, keeping him from using his abilities until he was mature enough to do so.

Attempt at a Normal Life

Some time afterwards, while the Richards were expecting a second child (who would later become Valeria Richards), they secretly moved to a suburban home in an attempt to give their children a 'normal' childhood, hoping that they could keep them safe from their enemies.

However, their peculiarities drew the attention of a witch hunter, who, thinking they were demonic sorcerers, attacked them, with the result that they and the witch hunter were astrally drawn into Mephisto's Hell. There, Franklin's powers manifested unchecked by the psychic dampers, enabling him to temporarily destroy Mephisto, dispersing his essence into the myriad of other demons and 'sinners' who were trapped in the realm. While at the time it appeared that it had not affected the restraints on his powers when they returned to Earth, it is likely that this incident caused the 'leakage' that began shortly afterwards.

Tattletale

He was briefly affiliated with the child superhero team Power Pack, where he used the codename Tattletale. At this time, enough of Franklin's powers had "leaked" past the blocks that he gained certain psychic abilities, including precognition and astral projection. At some point after his association with Power Pack, these powers disappeared.

Franklin's adventures with Power Pack gained him an enemy in the alien Zn'rx, and allies and surrogate family 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 surrogate family, as his associations with them began at a time when Franklin was often separated from his own parents and living at Avengers Mansion; during this time 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 super-powered (though the Richards discovered this later). Franklin even lived with the Powers for a time, when the Richards decided that a super-hero headquarters was a dangerous place for a child to live, and wanted Franklin to spend time in a "normal" family environment; he eventually 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 adult counterpart, Psi-Lord, who had been raised by Nathaniel in a dimension outside of time. When Franklin returned to the present as Psi-Lord, he helped create the short-lived team known as Fantastic Force.

It was then revealed that in another possible future timeline, Franklin Richards would, with Rachel Summers, father a terrible time- and dimension-traveling supervillain named Hyperstorm. Hyperstorm kidnapped Psi-Lord and replaced him with his child self.

Onslaught

Shortly after these events, the being known as Onslaught kidnapped Franklin in order to use him for his abilities to reshape reality. To defeat Onslaught, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, and several heroes destroyed first his physical form, and then his psychic form. In the process, Franklin's parents seemingly died. It was at this time that Franklin displayed his true power, single-handedly creating the "Heroes Reborn" pocket universe to contain the heroes who had "died" in that adventure. While his parents were away in the Heroes Reborn universe, Franklin lived with Generation X.

During his stay with Generation X, Franklin joined with Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, Artie Maddicks, Leech, and a Rigellian ally of Thor named Tana Nile. All of them traveled to different alternate realities, before realizing that it was Franklin who created those fantastic worlds.

The Celestials recognized that Franklin represented the culmination of their genetic experiments, that he had power to rival even theirs. Franklin, with the assistance of Ashema, one of the Celestials, returned the "reborn" heroes to their home world and was reunited with his family.

Ordinary human

In the wake of Mr. Fantastic's activation of the Ultimate Nullifier to destroy Abraxas, Franklin lost all his powers in the process of re-forming Galactus and thus became a normal child.

Shortly afterwards, Doctor Doom made a pact with the Haazareth, to gain vast magical power. During Doom's attacks upon the Fantastic Four, Franklin was sucked into Hell, by the Haazareth. After the defeat of Doom, his parents rescued him. Franklin had a hard time coping with the traumatic experience. With help from the Thing and his mother, Franklin has made a complete mental recovery.

Because of the danger of their adventures, Child Welfare questioned the safety of the Baxter Building, due to the numerous super villain attacks on it. After much reluctance, Reed and Sue agreed that if necessary, their children could be taken away. However, an initial condition was that a "dummy" safe-house was to be set up, and a press release to be announced that the children had already been moved. The decision to actually move Franklin and Valeria was rescinded after the safehouse that they were to be placed in was reduced to a crater (along with everything within a half-mile radius). It is uncertain exactly which of the FF's enemies carried out the attack, or why (there is speculation that Reed carried out the attack himself to allow him and Sue to keep the kids), but it was enough to convince Child Welfare.

198

After events of Decimation, Franklin has been revealed still to be a mutant. The effects of this remain to be seen.

Other versions

Earth X

In Earth X, Franklin Richards sets half of Namor ablaze after Namor kills the Human Torch. Afterwards, Franklin takes Galactus' armor and, entering the third stage of his evolution, becomes Galactus himself. As stated in the story, he is Galactus as long as no one tells him he isn't. As Galactus, Franklin Richards saves the Earth by consuming the Celestial growing inside. He reveals himself to his father, Reed, before leaving the Earth, stating he will never return. At the end of the story, Reed, after gaining the cosmic consciousness, states his first task will be to save his son.

Days of the Future Past

In the X-Men storyline Days of Future Past, it was shown that in one possible future timeline, he would be the lover of Rachel Summers, but that he would be prematurely killed by Omega Sentinels.

MC2

In the MC2 universe, Franklin is in the Fantastic Five under the name of Psi-Lord. He's also that universe's Nexus Being. He has a friendly relationship with Spider-Girl. They are mutually attracted to each other until her father, Spider-Man, points out that she is only 15, several years younger than Franklin. After that, their relationship becomes platonic.

The Exiles, a group of superheroes taken from several different realities, traveled to a future earth where their mission was to stop Franklin Richard's son from conquering that world. Franklin himself is not shown in this episode.

Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius

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In the out-of-continuity humor series Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius, Franklin is portrayed as a Calvin-esque troublemaker who can't resist "playing" with his father's inventions, with disastrous results. Franklin must then scramble to reverse the effects/clean up after the results of his "play", with the help of his long-suffering robot nanny H.E.R.B.I.E., or face punishment from his parents. In the Son of a Genius one-shot Everybody Loves Franklin, Franklin encountered a non-superpowered version of Katie Power (the "real" Franklin's former Power Pack teammate); while Franklin at first disliked Katie in stereotypical young boy fashion, he seemed to develop a crush on her (reciprocated by Katie) when he discovered that she had a talent for mayhem similar to his own.

Frranklin Richards: Son of a Genius began as a series of back-up strips, each one appearing in all Marvel books released in a certain publishing week. The strips were well-received by Marvel readership and the concept was granted a self-titled one-shot, which primarily reprinted the published strips to date. A second one-shot followed, subtitled Everybody Loves Franklin, with new material. A third one-shot, a Summer Special of new stories, is slated for release on July 5, 2006. All of the Son of a Genius stories to date have been drawn by Chris Eliopoulos and co-written by Eliopoulis and Mark Sumerak.

Powers and abilities

Franklin is an Omega-level mutant with the potential to possess reality manipulation powers. However, being a child, his powers are also restricted by his limited control -- at any given moment his powers might shut off and never fully return. When Franklin reaches adulthood he will have unlimited telepathic and telekinetic powers, and to some extent the ability to fire powerful energy blasts from his arms that are powerful enough to destroy a planet. He also has the ability to rearrange the structure of any non-living matter. He also has many skills such as expertise in motor vehicles acquired from his uncle. He may also have the ability to control the fundamental forces.

In other media

Jessica Alba, who plays the Invisible Woman in the film version of Fantastic Four, has stated that she hopes the Fantastic Four sequel will feature the birth of Franklin Richards.

In the film X-Men 2, Franklin Richards' name briefly appears on a computer monitor among government files relating to mutants.

Age

Franklin's exact age is a point of dispute among fandom.

Although the issue in which he was born was published in 1968, the character is plainly no older than ten years old even in currently published stories, and some stories suggest that he is much younger. For most comic book characters, with a few exceptions such as The Punisher who has aged normally since his debut, exact dates of birth and ages are usually left vague.

Some argue that all Marvel Universe stories take place on a sliding time scale, so that the 1961 origin of the Fantastic Four occurred a perpetual "ten years ago." However, Marvel Editor Joe Quesada put the number at "maybe 7 years" ago into the 1980's. "Eventually, this increased to 10 years in the 90s, and then about 12 or 13 years, which is what we kind of go by today." [link]

Others contend that time does progress forward but at a slower pace than reality. Franklin's most recently stated age was 9 years in 2004 (in Marvel Knights 4 #1); if he was born in 1968 then he aged at a rate of one year for every four real years. This is fairly consistent with other characters who have been clearly shown to age, such as Cassie Lang (Stature) (who was 9 in 1978 and is now about 15), Spider-Man (who has aged from 15 in 1962 to his late twenties in the present), and the original X-Men (who were teenaged students in the 1960s and are now teachers themselves).

Franklin's reality manipulation powers are often used in theories among fandom to explain both his slow aging and inconsistencies in portraying Franklin's age. More likely it is merely artistic licence.

Trivia

While he was born in Fantastic Four Annual #6 he didn't receive his name until two years later in Fantastic Four #94 where his parents decide on Franklin Benjamin Richards, his middle name is taken from his Godfather Benjamin J. Grimm, the Thing. Franklin shares the same middle name as Peter Benjamin Parker, Spider-Man. Franklin's first name comes from Franklin Storm, his maternal grandfather.

Bibliography

List of titles

Significant stories

External links

 

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