INVISIBLE WOMAN

 

INVISIBLE WOMAN

Real Name: Susan Storm Richards

First Appearance: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #1, November 1961

Powers: Susan Storm Richards was accidentally bombarded with mutagenic, specific-frequency cosmic rays that caused her body cells to generate a form of energy native to hyperspace that refracts light. As the Invisible Woman, she can psionically manipulate this energy to bend wavelengths of light at her command, without causing any visible distortion effects.

Originally, her only power was to produce a tight-fitting projection of these hyperspace waves around her body, rendering her and anything she was wearing invisible to the naked eye. As her powers developed, she learned how to project her power outwards, making other objects become invisible as well, and how to forge her invisible energy into solid forms, force fields, for various effects of up to 40,000 cubic feet of volume.

Her own vision extends partially into the cosmic spectrum, allowing her to still perceive herself and other objects while they are invisible. While ordinary retinas register objects using reflected light, the retinas in Sue’s eyes also interpolate shapes based on reflected cosmic rays, which are always present to some degree in the atmosphere, albeit in minute concentrations. While this allow her to visually perceive invisible matter, she does not perceive it in color as 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. Besides turning things invisible, she can also use her power to turn transparent matter visible again, by using her hyperspace energy to interfere with other effects that cause invisibility. She can probe her environment with this "de-invisibility" effect, causing anything within her range that is invisible to become visible. She can also render an object only partially invisible- enabling her, for instance, to expose the inner workings of machinery of the internal structure of living beings.

She can also generate a psionic field of invisible force drawn from hyperspace, which she can manipulate in a variety of ways. The Invisible Woman's force fields are extremely durable and nigh-impossible to break. After her first few years of developing her powers, it has become impossible for anything beyond certain cosmic forces to penetrate her force fields. She can mentally control the texture and tensile strength of her fields, ranging from steel-hard or as pillow-soft to the touch. The Invisible Woman can forge her psionic force fields into any shape she can visualize, from simple cubes and cones to more elaborate shapes. Sue can rise into the air by creating columns to elevate herself, or form extending slides and platforms to carry herself forwards at a good pace. She can form disks or bubbles of force around herself for protection, create ramps and ladders, rolling cylinders to bowl over opponents, or a barrage of force daggers or balls to assail her opponents.

By generating additional force behind her psionic constructs, she can turn them into offensive weapons. She can generate solid force constructs as small as a marble or as large as 100 feet in diameter, and her hollow projections such as domes can extend to several miles in area. With effort, she’s generated more massive large-scale constructs such as a force field large enough to envelop a 20-story building and the 10 acres of foundation beneath it, or a network of invisible scaffolding tall and strong enough to reinforce a damaged Empire State Building. The Invisible Woman can even destroy an object from the inside out by projecting her invisible force inside the target's molecules, causing it to expand at a rapid pace to make the object explode outwards from the pressure. This power is strong enough to sunder a Celestial's armor, something even Thor's Mjolnir could not accomplish. Her powers were enhanced over the years, first by linking her force fields to the extra-dimensional Thunder Horn, and later through the same Skrull aging and rejuvenation her husband went through. For a brief period, her force fields were incredibly limited. A cosmic-powered Dr. Doom shattered one of her invisible barriers, causing a psychic backlash which gave her intense headaches whenever she tried to create force fields. She restricted herself to invisibility and projecting small force daggers for months while healing.

Initially, she was incapable of multi-tasking and could either create a force field or render something invisible, but not both. Her powers have grown since then so that she can generate and manipulate multiple psionic force fields simultaneously. She can turn herself invisible, turn other objects invisible, as well as project multiple force fields all at one time. She can even render people unconscious or cause more serious physical distress by forming small force fields within their bodies, for instance, blocking off someone’s windpipe until they pass out. By emitting low-level waves of invisible force from her body, she can detect and locate nearby people or objects in radar-like fashion even if her vision has been compromised. Her power is guided by visualization, not vision. The Invisible Woman can make an entire building invisible except for the plumbing pipes simply by focusing on the idea, without any foreknowledge of exactly where the pipes are.

Under certain conditions, Sue’s psionic energy can counteract or interact with other forms of energy, especially psionic energy- for instance, a micro-thin force field generated around her head can shield her mind from some types of telepathic intrusion or influence. By allowing her own psionic energy to interact with other psionic energy fields, she can sometimes track psionic energy sources over great distances or snare and redirect active sources in her general vicinity. Visible light frequencies pass mostly undetected through her standard force fields unaltered and unimpeded, a condition which sometimes leaves her vulnerable to light-based attacks. With concentration, 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. Sue can bend sunlight’s invisible ultraviolet rays with a force field an inch before they reach her skin, rendering her immune to sunburns. She once briefly exchanged powers with her brother, Johnny, and could generate and manipulate flames for various effects during that time.

Sue Richards 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 Fantastic Four, she wears a highly durable costume comprised of unstable molecules that shift to accommodate the wearer’s physical form.