3-D MAN

 

3-D MAN

Real Name: Charles Chandler and Harold Chandler

First Appearance: Marvel Premiere (Vol. 1) #35, April 1977

Powers: The 3-D Man is a combination of two originally baseline human brothers, Charles “Chuck” and Harold “Hal” Chandler. While testing an experimental rocket in 1958, Chuck was kidnapped by a passing Skrull stealth ship. He fought his way out and ultimately crashed the ship in a field near where his brother Hal was. The ship's crash caused an explosion, causing energies from the Skrull's experimental power source (a Trion shard of extra-dimensional energy) to burst outwards and irradiate Chuck, splitting him into two identical beings: One completely green, one completely red. He crashed in a field in the Mojave Desert where Hal was, and as the two Chucks ran towards Hal, they converted into energy and ended up super-imposed on Hal's glasses, creating a very special set of red and green 3-D glasses with Chuck's twin images imprinted on them. Hal came to discover that by focusing on the images of his brother in the glasses into merging on a flat surface, he would slip into a trance-like state as he initiated a dimensional transfer, so that Chuck's energy body would be reconstructed into material form in three-dimensional reality, a blending of his red and green halves.

Calling himself the 3-D Man, he possessed three times his previous athlete levels of strength, speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, vision, hearing, durability, recuperative powers, etc. His strength and speed were around lifting 600 lbs and running 60 mph, respectively. The glasses upon which his images were imprinted were an artificial portal to a two-dimensional reality where Chuck Chandler resided when not manifested in the three-dimensional plane. The 3-D Man’s form could only exist in the material world for three hours before he would disintegrate into his two-dimensional component images and return through the portal. By concentrating on the images on his glasses, Hal Chandler mentally initiated the dimensional transfer that brought the 3-D Man into reality, Chuck Chandler himself couldn’t initiate the process. It’s also unknown what Chuck’s subjective experience was of the two-dimensional reality where spent most of his time.

Originally, the 3-D Man was animated by Chuck Chandler's mind, but later on Hal would also operate in control of the 3-D Man as well. Whenever Chuck was active, he was fully aware of what Hal had been experiencing while Chuck was "dormant", and likewise Hal remembered whatever Chuck did as the 3-D Man. As the years passed, Hal became an old man, even though he and his wife aged more slowly thanks to long-term exposure to Trion shard’s energies. The 3-D Man was still young and vital when called upon, but the effort was more and more draining on Hal's elderly body, and so he did so quite rarely. An encounter with the Trion shard's power-source and merging with the similarly-powered Triathlon led to a significant power increase. They eventually split, with Triathlon retaining his regular power levels, Hal Chandler returning to normal, and Chuck Chandler becoming human again for the first time in over 50 years, not having aged a day.

Chuck Chandler was a talented football player and an expert pilot; Hal Chandler was an experienced scientific researcher who requires eyeglasses and crutches to walk due to being astigmatic and suffering from poliomyelitis during his childhood.

As the 3-D Man, Chuck wore a specially-designed temperature-regulating NASA flight suit that took on a red/green color scheme and bonded to his skin when he was exposed to the Trion shard’s energies. Being transformed back into human form by Triathlon also transformed the suit to its original state and allowed him to remove it.