During the summer months, Reed rented a room in a boarding house owned by the aunt of a young woman named Susan Storm, who was an undergraduate student at the time.

[10] He later told his daughter, by way of a bedtime story, that the reason he suggested they become adventurers and gave them such outlandish costumes and names as "Mister Fantastic" and "The Thing" was that he knew they would likely be hated and feared for their powers without such an over-the-top public image.

[13] Current official Marvel canon has since altered this origin story by combining elements of both—it eliminated the large age gap but maintained that Reed and Sue did not meet until their late teens at Aunt Marygay's boardinghouse.

[volume & issue needed] In Marvel's Civil War miniseries and crossover event, Reed Richards is one of the leading figures, along with Iron Man, on the side which is in favor of the Superhuman Registration Act.

[volume & issue needed] In The Amazing Spider-Man #535, which takes place shortly before the events of Civil War #5, Peter Parker demands to see the conditions inside the detention facility designed by Reed to hold unregistered superhumans.

[volume & issue needed] However Fantastic Four #542 reveals that the real reason for supporting the registration act is due to his development of a working version of Isaac Asimov's fictional psychohistory concept.

[volume & issue needed] Within the midst of Civil War, Reed Richards learned from a brief conversation with Mastermind Excello that the Hulk is not on the planet where the Illuminati attempted to exile him.

[40] In World War Hulk #2, with the aid of the rest of the Fantastic Four, Storm, and the Black Panther, Reed is able to create a machine that projects an image of the Sentry and recreates the hero's aura of calm.

The Illuminati are partially cleared from the responsibility of Sakaar's destruction when Miek, one of the Hulk's alien allies, admits he saw the Red King forces breach the ship's warp core.

Mister Fantastic and Hank Pym autopsy the body of the Skrull who impersonated Elektra (with Reed pretending to be seeing the corpse for the first time, thus keeping the secret of the Illuminati).

Before he can elaborate, "Hank Pym" reveals himself to be a Skrull and shoots Richards with a weapon that violently leaves his elastic body in a state of chaotic disarray similar to Silly String.

Reed searches for answers which can only be found in alternate timelines as the three find themselves in a super hero Hyborian-age civil war; Franklin and Valeria are the only ones available to confront the agents Osborn sent.

Ultimately, after seeing about a million alternate Earths, he had concluded that there was no way for the Civil War to be resolved but that he, as the cleverest man in the Marvel Universe, had a responsibility to put things right.

[volume & issue needed] During the Secret Wars storyline, Reed is one of the few survivors of Earth-616 to come through with his memories intact, hiding in a 'life raft' with various other heroes and eventually released by Doctor Strange.

[59] Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, and the Future Foundation were later confronted by the Griever at the End of All Things after Reed had expended most of his Beyonder-based energies while Franklin was left with only limited reality-warping abilities.

Richards has been observed as being able to use his stretching form in a variety of offensive and defensive manners, such as compressing himself into a ball and ricocheting into enemies, flattening himself into a trampoline or a parachute to catch a falling teammate, or inflating himself into a life raft to aid in a water rescue.

Reed's control over his shape has been developed to such a point that he has been able to radically alter his facial features and his entire physical form to pass among human and non-humans unnoticed and unrecognized.

[64] Being forcefully stretched to extremes during a short span of time (by a taffy-puller-type machine or a strong character, for example) causes Reed to suffer intense pain and the temporary loss of his natural elastic resiliency.

[67] Tony Stark has commented that Reed's ability to make his brain physically larger (via his elastic powers) gives him an advantage, though this seems to be meant more as a joke.

[74] Following the rise of Weapon Omega, it is revealed that when Apocalypse came into power, Reed became the world's foremost authority on the Celestials and had collected all the information he could gather about these cosmic beings in several journals.

During a trip to Atlantis, Richard Reed had trouble accepting the idea that the Atlanteans had a connection to Poseidon or their brief encounter with the Watcher, until Susan helped him realise that just because such things could not be understood by their present standards did not mean that humanity could not come to understand them later.

[95] In the Marvel Mangaverse comics, Reed Richards leads the Megascale Metatalent Response Team Fantastic Four as a commander, not a field operative like Jonatha, Sioux, and Benjamin.

His team used power packs to manifest their talents on mecha-sized levels so that they may fight the Godzilla-sized monsters from alien cultures that attack Earth for performing experiments which endanger all of reality.

[96] This version of Reed Richards deliberately infects his team and himself with the zombie virus after suffering a mental breakdown due to the murder of his children at the hands of a zombified She-Hulk.

When the Zombie FF try to escape after a brief period of imprisonment, Ultimate Reed Richards (in Doctor Doom's body) destroys them by covering him with maggots, and their corpses returned to their universe.

When Reed solves the problem keeping Susan in stasis in the Negative Zone, the mental block preventing his scars from healing dissolves, and his appearance returns to normal.

[volume & issue needed] When Dr. Doom returns, Reed is forced into a mental duel with the villain, which ends in a tie that banishes both their minds to the "Crossroads of Infinity".

[105] When Maker brings Howard Stark into the depths of The City in Latveria to work on the Immortus Engine, he is paired up with Reed who is wearing a Doctor Doom-like mask and suit.

After they thawed out Captain America, Doom, Iron Lad, and Sif had to restrain him while informing him of what happened while he was frozen in ice, as he learns of the dissolving of the United States into the North American Union.

[110] Although Reed was briefly driven insane and declared war on Atlantis, he eventually recovered[111] and the two apparently reconciled, resulting in the 'Fantastic Five' reforming once again in time to confront Annihilus in the Negative Zone to help Susan give birth.