BLOB

 

BLOB

Real Name: Frederick J. Dukes

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #3, January 1964

Powers: The Blob’s mutant powers lie in the mass, strength, and durability of his body. Originally, the Blob was a roughly normal sized man with a good deal of extra fat on his body. As the years have passed, his powers have evolved to make him abnormally tall, obscenely fat, and superhumanly strong, reaching nearly a Class 75 strength level. His body fat has a number of abnormal elastic properties which make it heavily resistant to injury, including blunt force trauma, penetration, laceration, intense cold, and radiation. He used to be somewhat susceptible to burning, but has proven to be resilient even to that in recent years. His eyes, ears, nose and mouth are not as resilient as the rest of his body, however. Bullets, missiles, knives or lasers can't harm him, they simply become stuck in his blubbery mass, which is flexible enough for him to hold objects within the folds of his flesh and pop them back out at lower velocities when he flexes his muscles. If someone were to punch him in his stomach, the Blob can trap their hand inside the rolls of his fat. Even individuals with nearly incalculable strength levels such as the Hulk and Hercules have had difficulty pulling their fists back out again.

He possesses the ability to generate a mono-directional gravity field beneath him that renders him completely immovable as long as he is in contact in the ground. If there is sufficient force to move him, then it would also uproot the ground he is standing upon. With intense concentration, he can extend his gravity field over ten feet, such as one instance when he extended his gravity field in his jail cell, causing it to implode and allowing him to escape.

In later years, his powers were increased by Onslaught. This allowed the Blob to exhibit control over his mass in a variety of ways (an aspect of his power he calls “mass-shifting”). He can shift his mass from one part of his body to any other, extending parts of his body outward (stretching similar to Mr. Fantastic), smothering people in his fat, and using his fat to catch oncoming projectiles and re-direct them.

On a further note, the Blob’s obesity is actually a compensatory portion of his mutant power. His fat and tissue cells are highly resilient and elastic so as to help him withstand the pressures of his power.