IMPOSSIBLE MAN & WOMAN

 

IMPOSSIBLE MAN & WOMAN

Real Names: N/A (Poppupians have no names)

First Appearances: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #11, February 1963 (Impossible Man); Marvel Two-In-One (Vol. 1) #60, February 1980 (Impossible Woman)

Powers: The Impossible Man was born on the planet Poppup, and is a member of a race of beings who reproduce asexually and could alter their molecularly malleable bodies at will to temporarily assume any shape imaginable. Poppup was a particularly harsh and dangerous world, and the Poppupians' shape-changing abilities enabled them to survive its many perils. By the time of the Impossible Man's birth, the Poppupians had evolved a collective consciousness, linking the minds of the entire race in a group mind. Hence, Poppupians have no names because they were, in effect, all the same being.

Endowed with a slight mental variation that permitted him a degree of individual thought, the Impossible Man acted upon the boredom that his entire race experienced. He did so by transforming himself into a space vessel and leaving Poppup. Spending an extended period on Earth gave him encyclopedic knowledge of the planet's pop culture. Lonely for someone else like him to share love with, the Impossible Man cloned himself a mate, the Impossible Woman, from his own body.

The Impossible Man and Impossible Woman, like all Poppupians, have the ability to rearrange the molecules of their bodies at will into any form they choose. They can simulate some of the abilities and functions of the object or living being they imitate, depending on what that object or being is. For example, they can become a working electric fan, water hose, or jet-propelled engine (although they empower these objects by their own molecular energies rather than by electricity, water, or jet fuel). However, if they imitate such objects as Thor's enchanted uru hammer, Captain America's Vibranium-Adamantium shield, or the Silver Surfer's cosmic surfboard, they can only take on the appearance of said objects, and not their special properties. The degree to which they can imitate the superhuman powers of other beings is unknown.

The Impossible Man and Impossible Woman can even separate themselves into various parts in changing form, such as when they became a large number of flowers, or when they became a bag of water, which then spilled its contents. They retain their full consciousness in whatever form they take, and can control all the parts into which they divide, and reassemble them into their own single, natural forms.

The Impossible Man and Impossible Woman can temporarily discard unnecessary molecules of their bodies when imitating objects or beings of considerably less mass than they: a fountain pen or a hat, for example. (They customarily disperse their spare molecules over a large enough area that they cannot be discerned, and regain them on returning to their original form.) They can also draw additional molecules from an undisclosed, perhaps extra-dimensional, source to increase their size. In order to clone the Impossible Woman from his own body, for example, the Impossible Man had to draw enough additional molecules to create a being from himself who had the same amount of mass as he did. There are apparently limits to the amount of mass that they can temporarily add to their own at any one time. It has been theorized that the Impossible Man employed technology to help him impersonate the gigantic Galactus on one occasion. (It is also theorized that he employed technology to teleport many of the items,' some of them enormous, that he gathered in his "scavenger hunt" to different locations.)

The Impossible Man's and Impossible Woman's transformations occur within a fraction of a second, and are accompanied by a "pop" sound. They can psionically levitate themselves in any of their forms. They can travel through hyperspace by transforming themselves into an imitation of a starship. They can survive in the vacuum of space for months without food, water, or oxygen by inducing in themselves a low metabolic state similar to hibernation. During that time, if they are in starship form, their subconscious will guide them to their destination. Like all Poppupians, the Impossible Man reproduces by dividing himself into two identical beings. This is a form of cloning, involving a mitosis-like process undergone by all the cells of his body.