Susan Storm RichardsInvisible Woman

Sue Storm Richards is a formidable heroine with the ability to render herself and others invisible at will. After her genes are mutated, she co-founds Earth’s first team of super heroes, the Fantastic Four and becomes their unifying maternal figure.
 

Invisible Woman

Born Susan Storm, Sue and her brother Johnny have a happy childhood until their mother Mary dies in a car crash. Their father, celebrated surgeon Dr. Franklin Storm, survives the accident. His spirit broken, Dr. Storm abandons his practice, becoming a gambler and a drunk, and eventually goes to prison after he accidentally kills an underworld loan shark during a struggle.

Sue embodies a motherly role towards Johnny thereafter, though both were soon placed in the custody of their loving aunt, Marygay who ran a boardinghouse. While living there, Sue became smitten with her aunt’s handsome and brilliant tenant, science prodigy Reed Richards, then a university student. Though, does not encounter him again until her college years in California when she pursues an acting career.

When a sudden funding loss threatens to derail Reed’s experimental starship project, Reed urges his pilot, Ben Grimm, to join him in making an unauthorized test flight before the project is shut down. Grimm’s reluctant, but accepts the challenge after Sue questions his courage. Sue and her brother Johnny insist on coming along as well, wishing to share the risk. The quartet successfully launches into space, but intense cosmic rays penetrate the ship’s shielding and irradiates the crew, forcing them back to Earth. Upon landing, they discover they had mutated into super humans, and Sue became the Invisible Girl. Dedicating their new powers to super-heroics and scientific exploration, the quartet became the Fantastic Four (FF). She later takes the name Invisible Woman after an encounter with Psycho-Man that changes her.
 

Invisibility and Force Field Projection

Sue Richards can render herself wholly or partially invisible at will. She can also render other people or objects invisible, affecting up to 40,000 cubic feet of volume. To achieve these feats, she mentally bends all wavelengths of light in the vicinity around herself, or the target in question, without causing any visible distortion effects.

While ordinary retinas register objects using reflected light, Sue’s retinas also interpolate shapes based on reflected cosmic rays, which are always present within the atmosphere in minute concentrations. Her extended vision allows her to see invisible people and objects, though not in technicolor since the cosmic-ray reflections bypass her eyes’ rods and cones; her vision may be similarly monochromatic when she herself is invisible since her eyes do not reflect light in that state, though she otherwise seems to possess a full range of vision while she’s invisible. She can detect anything made invisible by means outside her powers, and can restore those targets to a visible state at will. If she wishes, she can render her targets only partially invisible – enabling her, for instance, to expose the inner workings of machinery or the internal organs of living beings.

Invisible Woman can project and manipulate near-indestructible invisible force fields, making her a more effective combatant. She can generate these force fields physically and psionically around herself and other targets; within an object, which she can expand to cause explosions or within a target’s body to render people unconscious or induce more serious physical distress; and vary the texture and tensile strength, rigid for defense and soft for to cushioning impacts. She is also capable of generating and manipulating multiple psionic force fields simultaneously.

Furthermore, she can shape invisible fields into constructs, turning them into offensive weapons as small as a marble or as large as 100 feet in diameter. Her hollow projections, such as domes, can extend up to several miles in area. She can generate more massive force fields large enough to envelop a 20-story building, including the 10 acres of foundation beneath it, or a network of invisible scaffolding strong enough to hold a building as tall as the Empire State Building.

She is also able to shield her mind from some types of telepathic intrusion or influence, detect and locate nearby people or objects using an invisible force that pulses out from her body as radar, and can track psionic energy sources over great distances or snare and redirect psionic energies active in her general vicinity.

Visible light frequencies mostly pass through her standard force fields unaltered and unimpeded, a condition which sometimes leaves her vulnerable to light-based attacks. She can bend and shape a force field so that it captures ambient light, enabling her to create a makeshift low-intensity torch or flashlight composed of suspended light. This ability extends to bending the sunlight’s invisible ultraviolet rays with a force field an inch before they reach her skin, rendering herself immune to sunburns. Sue once briefly swaps powers with her brother Johnny, and during that time can generate and manipulate flames for various effects.

Sue has some experience and ability in the fields of acting and teaching. A capable unarmed combatant and an excellent swimmer, she is fluent in both English and Latverian. Like the rest of the FF, she wears a highly durable costume composed of unstable molecules that shift to accommodate the wearer’s physical form.
 

Adversaries

Psycho-Man and his Hate-Monger android use his emotion-manipulation powers and technology to morph Sue, aka Invisible Girl, into Malice Mistress of Hate, though she is able to overcome the transformation with Reed’s help and uses Psycho-Man’s technology against him. The experience inspires Sue to take the name Invisible Woman.

Victor von Doom, aka Dr. Doom, is the Fantastic Four’s foremost foe. He time and time again goes up against the FF for his own villainous ends, even so far as to use their daughter Valeria as a familiar and attack them. He even disrupts Sue and Reed’s wedding with a major onslaught by manipulating a host of super-criminals, but they always seem to overcome his persistent attacks.
 

Earth’s First Family and Friends

As a co-founding member of the Fantastic Four, Sue supports the team in protecting Earth and the universe from super villainous threats. Sue often takes an active role in managing the FF’s financial assets through their Fantastic Four, Inc. support company, and even serves as chief creative officer of its Enterprises division, managing the team’s licensing, trademarks and the assorted merchandise and media properties based on the group. Outside of her business-related duties, Sue marries FF co-founding member Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, is sister to Johnny Storm, aka Human Torch, and friend to Ben Grimm, aka The Thing.

Other affiliations that Sue has includes Friends of Miss America; formerly “Secret Avengers,” Initiative, Avengers, Brides of Set, and Captain of the Girls’ Varsity Swim Team.

The FF remain staunch allies to the Avengers, even worked as members until they resigned from the group. Regardless of the departure from the team, Sue is friendly with various Avengers members, notably the size-changing socialite Wasp and the super-strong She-Hulk, who had served a lengthy stint with the FF during a period when Ben was estranged from the team.

Like the other FF founders, Sue has participated in many mass superhero gatherings over the years—notably the original Contest of Champions, during which she teamed with Iron Fist and Sunfire as pawns of an unknown entity to battle the Grandmaster’s pawns Daredevil, Darkstar and Australian hero Talisman.

Super-genius Alyssa Moy is a source of occasional discomfort for Sue. While Moy is a valued ally to the FF over the years, Sue suspects Alyssa retains a lingering romantic interest in Reed, having spurned a proposal of marriage from him during their youth, and is proven correct when a jealous Alyssa makes a play for him but he gently but firmly rejected her as he remains deeply in love with Sue. In the end, Sue makes made peace with Alyssa.
 

The Whole Visible Picture

The FF set up their headquarters in the Baxter Building in Manhattan and battle many foes and one battle is that for Sue’s affection. The misguided Atlantean warrior Namor the Sub-Mariner tries to win Sue over but her heart belongs to Reed. As they defend Earth from super villains, Sue and Reed become closer and eventually got married.

The wedding attracted tremendous attention. On the day of the ceremony, thousands of curiosity-seekers and well-wishers filled the streets around the FF’s Baxter Building headquarters in Manhattan. Nearly every super team attended, including members from the Avengers and the X-Men, along with Daredevil, Doctor Strange and Spider-Man. Even agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. policed the event, acting as security. It also attracted super villains Dr. Doom, who mentally-manipulated a host of super-criminals, monsters and other threats into attacking the ceremony.

While a lot of fighting happened outside, in the Baxter Building, Invisible Girl protected gossip columnist Miriam Birchwood and other guests from an attack by one of Doom’s flying spy drones. After Sue wrecked the drone, a holographic projector released from inside it generated an interactive image of Doom himself, gloating over the FF’s supposedly imminent destruction as he projected footage of the battle recorded by other drones. The latest footage, however, featured the male FF defeating a host of Hydra agents with the aid of Alicia Masters, so Sue and Miriam scornfully dismissed Doom’s threats. Sue smashed Doom’s hologram projector, then donned her FF costume to join the battle outside where she defended her fiancé Mr. Fantastic from the Beetle, who was blasted into submission by Iron Man.

Reed Richards and Sue Storm were finally married shortly after the battle in a quiet church wedding, followed by a gala reception in a grand ballroom. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, creators of the Marvel comic based on the Fantastic Four’s adventures, tried to attend the reception but weren’t on the guest list, so they were turned away by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Fury, Dugan and Jones. Lee and Kirby departed, warning they had ways of getting even and were already planning the next issue of the FF comic.

Sue later becomes pregnant with their first child, Franklin Benjamin named after her late father and Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm. During her pregnancy, she steps down from her duties with the FF and is replaced by Inhuman elemental Crystal, then Johnnie’s girlfriend. Sue and the others soon found that her cosmic-irradiated physiology complicated the pregnancy. Though Franklin is born safely thanks to a Cosmic Control Rod taken from Annihilus, and inherits his parents’ mutated genes and powers of his own.

The baby proved to be a vastly powerful mutant whose fluctuating abilities have alternately saved or menaced both the FF and the world over the years. Sue and Reed spend a lot of time trying to understand his powers and attempt to give him a normal childhood, despite their chosen roles as super heroes and the demands that come with the responsibility. During a period where Franklin’s powers were raging out of control, Reed was forced to shut down his son’s mind for a time. Appalled by this, and frustrated by her growing belief that Reed did not regard her as an equal, Sue separated from Reed and quit the FF, taking Franklin with her. Medusa of the Inhumans took Sue’s place in the FF for an extended period, but Sue reclaimed her spot on the roster after she and Reed finally reconciled—with the aid of Namor, ironically enough.

Sue later becomes pregnant with her second child, Valeria Meghan Richards, but having conceived her in the Negative Zone, it exposed her to radiation that made the pregnancy even more complicated and dangerous than the first. The danger passes when the pregnancy results in a stillbirth. The young Franklin, saddened at the loss of his sister, and not in complete control of his powers, uses them to reach back in time to save her. But unbeknownst to anyone at the time he sends her from their native reality (Earth-616) to an alternate future (Reality-99315).

During the aftermath, Sue is vulnerable to an attack by Psycho-Man and his Hate-Monger android, who use their emotion-manipulating powers to amplify Susan’s darker impulses, transform her into the mad villainess Malice Mistress of Hate, and turn her against the FF. Freed from their influence by Reed, Sue exacts a chilling revenge on Psycho-Man by subjecting him to his own emotion-warping technology. Sobered by these events, Sue changes her costumed alias to the more mature Invisible Woman, the code-name she uses to this day.

Seeking a more normal family life again, Reed and Sue retired from the FF altogether to concentrate on raising Franklin, leaving Ben in charge of regrouping; however, Reed and Sue’s retirement was short-lived. After teaming with several Avengers to rescue Franklin during the demonic Inferno invasion, Reed and Sue reluctantly agreed to join the Avengers, who were short-handed at the time. Though they amicably stepped down from active Avengers membership before long so they could rejoin the Fantastic Four.

Later, during the cosmic conflict known as the Infinity War, Sue absorbed her own evil doppelgänger Malice from the Dimension of Manifestations thanks to Adam Warlock’s dark self, the Magus. It was a gradual revival of Sue’s Malice persona, but Franklin, temporarily transformed into the teen hero Psi-Lord, forced Malice out of his mother and absorbed the entity, apparently destroying the dark counterpart. Sue struggled to acknowledge Psi-Lord as Franklin, but gradually came to accept him in this form.

When Reed was seemingly killed in action, Sue took over leadership of the FF and served capably in the role, recruiting Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, as the team’s new scientist; however, she refused to believe Reed was truly dead, leading an ongoing search for her husband.  Once the FF finally rescued Reed from the villain Hyperstorm, it took him some time to regain his confidence since Sue had become such an effective team leader in his absence. Shortly thereafter, the entire FF seemingly died in battle with the psychic monster Onslaught, though they secretly survived in a new “Counter-Earth” parallel world created instinctively by Franklin, and they eventually returned to their own world after a series of adventures in this alternate reality.

Soon after their return, the FF befriended Valeria von Doom, aka Marvel Girl, of Earth-9903, an alternate future where Valeria believed herself to be the offspring of Sue and a benevolent incarnation of Dr. Doom. Reluctant to trust or believe the girl at first, Sue gradually came to regard Valeria as a friend, even forming a familial bond with her. Later, during the team’s reality-warping conflict with the cosmic being Abraxas, Franklin revealed he had used his powers to rescue Sue’s seemingly stillborn second child years earlier, and that this child had been raised in an alternate future to become the Marvel Girl they now knew. As a side-effect of Abraxas’ s defeat, Marvel Girl was restored to her original state, as an unborn child in Sue’s womb. Yet again, it was a risky and complicated pregnancy; but Sue finally gave birth to a healthy baby girl, thanks largely to the assistance of Dr. Doom, who was allowed to name the infant after his childhood sweetheart Valeria in exchange for his services.

After Valeria’s birth, Doom used her as his unwilling mystical familiar in a series of traumatic sorcerous attacks on the FF, he was defeated and cast into Hell. Reed led the FF in dismantling Doom’s Lateverian regime but the international community condemned it, hurting the team’s public image, so the FF broke up and Reed signed over patents to the government to escape prosecution. The FF worked to rebuild their reputations and fortune, leading them into more conventional fields of employment; Sue, for instance, became a substitute teacher at the Pembrooke Academy, where she taught English to students with disciplinary problems. After realizing that Reed’s genius could restore the FF’s finances but was choosing not to, she encouraged him to rebuild their fortune and restore the team’s conventional operations with her blessing. Though she planned to continue teaching on a part-time basis.

Sue’s invisibility power drew her into a unique conflict sparked by the planet-consuming entity Galactus. Since her power could overcome a device designed by enemies of Galactus led by Zius, they abducted her. To save Sue, Reed used a device to swap Johnny’s and Sue’s powers which succeeded, and they teamed up with the cosmic hero Wendell Vaughn, aka Quasar, to defeat Galactus. In the end, Johnny and Sue regained their original powers—though Sue also gained new respect for Johnny’s control over his dangerous flame powers.

When the federal government introduced its new Superhuman Registration Act (SHRA), Reed became one of the SHRA’s earliest and most prominent supporters, his own psychohistory research having convinced him the legislation was a necessary evil. Reed’s pro-SHRA agenda alienated many of his super-heroic peers and forced him into a series of dubious moral compromises leading Sue and the rest of the FF to abandon him. Sue and Johnny joined the “Secret Avengers,” an underground army of anti-SHRA rebels led by Steve Rogers, aka Captain America; however, the affiliation did not last long.

Johnny and Sue both avoided active Initiative service since ending their outlaw phase. Sue, Ben and Johnny all rejoined the FF, and Reed was largely redeemed in their eyes after they learned how his “psychohistory” research had motivated his SHRA agenda; however, given the SHRA conflict’s lingering tensions, Reed and Sue embarked on an extended vacation to revitalize their marriage.

While the Black Panther and Storm filled in for them with the FF, Sue and Reed enjoyed a second honeymoon on Saturn’s moon Titan. Their vacation was cut short when old foes the Frightful Four and Klaw attacked, but the villains were defeated with the aid of the heroic FF. Sue and Reed soon returned to active FF duty, with Reed promising his partners he would involve them more fully in his future plans and decision-making.

More recently, Sue has led fellow super heroines such as Wasp and She-Hulk in organizing the Friends of Miss America charity to benefit the victims of superhuman-related incidents. The charity, named in memory of the 1940s super heroine Madeline Joyce Frank, aka Miss America, has raised over 55 million dollars to help people left homeless by the monstrous Hulk’s latest rampages.

Sue and Reed were surprised when little Valeria proved to be a super-intelligent mutant. The girl tried to hide her genius at first since she feared it might alienate her family, but the proud parents quickly accepted their brilliant toddler’s new abilities. The team’s latest nanny, Tabitha Deneuve, was the first to recognize Val’s newly emerging intelligence, largely because she had seen it before; Deneuve was actually a 500-year-old Sue Richards from an alternate-future timeline (Earth-807128), infiltrating the present-day FF’s home as part of a time-travel mission to seek a safe haven for her dying world’s population in the past.

In the end, the present-day Sue made peace with her ex-rival Alyssa, and the two women joined forces to transport Deneuve’s refugees to the artificial Earth known as Nu-World. Deneuve, meanwhile, was slain by a vengeful Dr. Doom after Deneuve had used him as an unwilling pawn in her schemes. Still very much alive, the present-day Sue Storm Richards continues to juggle her varied roles as wife, mother, philanthropist and celebrity adventurer.