GRAVITON

 

GRAVITON

Real Name: Franklin Hall

First Appearance: Avengers (Vol. 1) #158, April 1977

Powers: Dr. Franklin Hall was a physicist working at a private physics research facility in the Canadian Rockies on a practical teleportation device. In the midst of an experiment, Dr. Hall overloaded the power handling capacity of his equipment, causing an explosion that intermingled his molecules with the sub-nuclear graviton particles that were being generated in a nearby series of companion particle accelerators. He developed the power to increase or decrease the gravity affecting any person or object, and alter the flow of graviton particles. He designed a costume and called himself Graviton.

He can mentally manipulate gravitons (particles that carry the attractive, gravitational force between atomic nuclei), enabling him to control gravity. He can surround any object or person including himself with gravitons and anti-gravitons (particles similar to gravitons, but with opposite charge and spin), thus increasing or decreasing the Earth's pull of gravity upon it. By decreasing the pull of gravity beneath him, he can fly at any speed or height at which he can still breathe. By increasing the pull of gravity beneath his opponents, he can pin them to the ground, having made them too heavy to move, or cause sufficient gravitational stress to impair the normal functioning of the human cardiovascular system. He can also cause an inanimate object (such as a 1-foot diameter rock) to radiate enough gravitons to give it its own gravitational field, able to attract nearby matter and energy.

By rapidly projecting gravitons in a cohesive beam, he can generate a force blast with a maximum concussive force equivalent to the primary shockwave of an explosion of 20,000 pounds of TNT. He can also create a gravitational force field around him capable of protecting him from any concussive force up to and including a small nuclear weapon.

Graviton can exert his gravitational control over a maximum distance of 2.36 miles from his body. Thus, the maximum volume of matter he could influence at once is 6.88 cubic miles. He once exercised this control by lifting into the air an inverted conic frustum-shaped land mass whose uppermost area was 4 miles across, and causing it to fly as though it were a dirigible. He can also erect a gravitational force-field of similar proportions. Graviton can perform as many as four separate tasks simultaneously. He has not only lifted a 4 mile wide land mass as high as cloud level, but he has also surrounded himself with a force-field, maintained a gravitational hold on most of the Avengers against a slab of rock, and projected force-bolts at Thor all at the same time. Graviton can use his power at maximum capacity for up to eight hours before mental fatigue significantly impairs his performance, and considerably longer (up to eighteen hours) if he conserves his energy during that time.

Graviton possesses an extra-sensory connection to the gravity fields affecting the Earth, and has rigorously trained his mind to manipulate gravity with enormous finesse. Once, he lifted a rock in one part of the world and transported it to the other side of the planet, flying at terminal velocity through the skull of a specific woman, all while he himself was physically in a third location. Briefly, Graviton was transformed into a "sentient pocket universe", a living gravitational distortion standing over 50' tall with incalculable strength and invulnerability. In this state, he was capable of summoning "black hole bullets", around the size of tennis or soccer balls, which absorbed matter as they passed through it to tear holes clean through even the strongest substances. He could even fire a beam of graviton force at the sun, constructing a solar flare and then summoning that plasma to Earth like a weapon.

Dr. Franklin Hall holds a Ph.D. in physics. A gifted intellect, he has expertise in advanced physics, including teleportation.