Unstable Molecules
and the Fantasticar, the Awesome Android, the Negative Zone, etc.:
Reed Richards' greatest inventions
Reed Richards, leader of the Fantastic Four, is the world's greatest inventor. Like all comic book inventore, he gets his best technology from aliens. Here are some examples:
Unstable molecules: but before we begin...
Reed's most famous invention is fabric made of unstable molecules, that adapts to a wearer's super powers. But did he really invent it? We need to do some detective work, and see where the costumes first appeared. Like all good detectives we need to ignore red herrings: in this case, the costumes' coloring. The colors of the early costumes do not matter. They are added later and they change in different printings. The only evidence that matters is the words and (uncolored) pictures, as created by Stan (The man) Lee and Jack (King) Kirby:
The breakthrough: the Awesome Android
After seeing what Diablo achieved, Reed tried to duplicate the process, and was able to create a single celled artificial life form. But like most of Diablo's miracles it was too unstable to last long. At this point enter The Mad Thinker.
The FF see their ideal costumes
So we have a situation where three of the Fantastic Four need special costumes, because their existing clothes are very limited. As luck would have it, in issue two the Fantastic Four met the shape changing skrulls, and they had perfect costumes: the costumes can shrink, stretch, disappear, and do pretty much anything the skrulls do. The Fantastc Four would love costumes like that!
Reed only had one costume that stretched!
Let's focus in Reed's costume, as it's the easiest one to see. When we examine the first two issues of the Fantastic Four, before they gained their regular costumes, it's clear that Reed only had one costume that really stretched: the one that was transformed in the spacecraft! Every other costume was some kind of compromise:
The FF gain possession of three perfect costumes
At the end of the battle, the Fantastic Four have three prisoners, with three skrull costumes. It's normal practice for prisoners to lose their outside clothes and be given prison costumes. In the case of the three skrulls, they were hypnotized to spend the rest of their lives as cows, so they would never need clothes again. So the Fantastic Four became the proud owners of three unstable molecule costumes!
Next issue: what a surprise!
The very next issue (Fantastic Four issue 3), Sue appears with three unstable molecule costumes, plus one normal fabric costume for Ben (a costume that he soon rips up). Note that Reed is not surprised in the slightest that Sue suddenly has access to three suits made of unstable molecules, he's only impressed by how she managed to tailor them.
Another surprise: the Fantasticar
The costumes were not the only thing the team inherited from the skrulls: they also gained possession of a space craft disguised as a water tower: they used it to return to Earth once the skrull mother ship had left. This craft has three notable features.
First, it doesn't look much like a rocket. Clearly its propulsion system can be placed in any non-aerodynamic object.
Second, it can land itself with very little effort. It lands without most of the team even noticing.
Third, it must be nearly silent, because nobody noticed it arrive. Although the colorist has added red and yellow, as if it uses rockets, this is clearly impossible or somebody would have heard. The skrull invasion was secret, intended to discredit the Fantastic Four, and it is made clear at the end that the public are still completely ignorant. When the Fantastic Four landed in it they didn't even notice until the "split second" when they came to rest.
After the skrulls leave, what do we see? Mr Fantastic has suddenly invented a new car. it has three notable features:
First, it doesn't look much like a vehicle. It looks like a bathtub with ugly controls, yet is capable of amazing speed, range and maneuverability.
Second, it can land itself with very little effort. It lands without most of the team even noticing.
Second, it's nearly silent. Reed calls it "air powered" and it clearly causes no problems for people below.
Whatever happened to the Torch suit?
Besides the costumes and spacecraft, the Skrulls left behind one other piece of technology: a fake Human torch suit, powered by an antigravity pack. A Torch suit is far more impressive than it sounds - such a thin costume, with that much heat, over that much time would kill anyone inside, yet the suit handles it easily. The flame effect is achieved through a "low velocity thermal bomb." It somehow ejects flame from all around the body, so it probably ignites inside the suit and and is then released from small holes. The "bomb" is probably reusable, in case the first fake Torch stunt didn't have the desired effect.
What happened to that suit? Three years later Reed has to make a fake Torch suit at short notice. Every minute counts (real FF 39 to see how urgent this was), and Reed is suddenly able to come up with a working suit. Hardly surprisiong since he already had the skrull suit lying around. But it's missing its antigravity pack, so Reed has to rely on the heat from the suit itself to provide lift, and the resulting flight was very imperfect.
Soon after the FF first got hold of the fake Torch costume it was copied (or stolen) by the Wizard. At the time he was a master escapologist and the Baxter building was relatively unguarded, so this would not be difficult. He claims to have invented the suit, but it's clearly the same one: its ability to melt bullets (without roasting the wearer) shows it's far more advanced than any human could create. This is from the Wizard's first appearance in Strange Tales 102:
The other three costumes
What about the others? Ben Grimm doesn't need an exotic costume - only one that's hard wearing and stetches a little in case he ever regains human form. Johnny Storm can cope with ordinary fireproof fabrics, as long as he maintains a low heat. For extreme heat he needs a special costume. Sue Storm: she can creates an invisibility field that can easily cover any clothing, but that requires concentration - if clothing became visible or invisible at the wrong time it could be disastrous. So she needs a special costume that automatically turns invisible when she does.
Back to unstable molecules: what makes them special
Let's get back to the topic of unstable molecules. The real power of unstable molecules is not that they can change their behavior, but they can detect what the wearer is doing. In other words, they have some kind of sense of purpose, and a connection with nearby molecules.
Remember that unstable molecules are just a variety of smart atom, the building block for all super powers. This sense of purpose and ability to work together is what sets smart atoms apart from normal atoms. It's most clearly seen with the Human Torch: he can let some of his molecules separate and maintain whatever shape he wills. With concentration he can even make them follow another person (leaving behind a trail of molecules that can then be followed.)
Johnny doesn't do that so often now, as his enemies probably realise that these flame models don't really do much - water or asbestos can defeat them. But Reed understood the implications: unstable molecules can maintain a will of their own and communicate with each other. In short, they can be the building blocks of life.
Unstable molecules are usually rejected by their host after a while, so Diablo's miracles seldom last.
Skrull "milk" does the Diablo trick
A similar process takes place when skrull molecules become part of other living things: those living things take on unstable molecule like properties, but the change is fragile. It cannot stay there if even a drop of antidote comes in contact with the skin - the opposite effect to one of Diablo's potions. Reed Richards explains in FF annual 17. Note that unstable molecules include a sense of purpose - in the skrull case, warlike.
The Mad Thinker is not much good at creativity, but give him a problem that requires massive processing power - like scaling up and stabilizing an existing technology and he's in his element! He was able to create his own version of the Dragon Man - a slow witted but powerful android. Reed immediately saw the implications. Unlike the Dragon Man, this android was built with unstable molecules from the ground up, so just like the FF's costumes he would be able to duplicate any nearby abilities.
Note that these androids have basic abilities but not high intelligence. They simply mimic the abilities or purpose of something else, making them susceptible to outside control
Mind control
Since all atoms can potentially become smart atoms, and smart atoms can be controlled, it's easy to see how mind control works: Professor X, or the Puppet Master with his radiaoctive clay, or the original Miracle Man and his super hypnotism, merely target portions of the human brain and trigger the latent ability to obey.
Of course, I make it sound easy. being able to target the precise parts of the brain and control them in just the right way is extremely complicated, which is why very few people can do it, and then not for very long.
Where Reed Richards leads, others follow
Once the Awesome Android had shown the way, the same technology was adapted by others, hence the Super-Adaptoid, or The Mimic (a young man genetically engineered by his father).
Back to Reed Richards: the Negative Zone
After rockets (based on technology from Gormuu, skrulls and planet X), unstable molecules (based on skrull uniforms) and the android (an extension of the unstabkle molecule idea), Reed's greatest invention is his portal into the Negative Zone. This was intended as merely a way to access subspace, and once again came about from copying alien tech.
It is standard operating procedure from Reed Richards to take high resolution photographs of any advanced etchnology, the study it and try to duplicate it, using whatever alien artifacts he's gathered over the years. The Negative Zone portal was no diferent. He saw the need (Earth was in danger from beings who could access subspace), he had recently gained new insights (the inhumans had a negative zone barrier surrounding the greta refuge, and Johnny Storm crossed hyperspace to obtain the Ultimate Nullifier). So he used his photos of alien circuitry, no doubt along with the faster than light drives from Gormuu's ship and the Planet X saucer, and came up with a prototype hyperspace gateway that seemed to work:
And the rest is history.
Look at anything great that Reed ever invented, and look closely and you'll see evidence that he gets it from the aliens. And why not? Why reinvent the wheel? Or the flying car? Or the spaceship? Or the hyperspace portal? Or...
What happened to the antigravity pack?
The Wizard's suit uses a minature rocket to aid flight (this is only needed for a small boost - the heat from the suit is enough to give some thermal updraft). It appears that he was unable to get the antigravity pack to work. But he didn't give up: soon after this he spent several months in jail and had plenty of time to think about theoretical physics.
Why did the Wizard crack the problem of antigravity while Reed Richards never did? No doubt because the Wizard had the stolen antigravity pack at home to give him ideas. He must have taken it apart and deduced how it worked.
In some rare cases, as with the Dragon Man model, the host is uniquely suitable, and the unstable molecule become a permanent part of the host body.
Diablo's potion only need to be a very small dose: the potion is merely a catalyst that activates properties that are already dormant in all atoms, as Reed explained:
And note what impresses Sue the most: that Reed has invented a roof top hangar. This is far more impressive than inventing the car, which is clearly just an adapted bathtub with a skrull engine and crude controls.
Objection: What about Reed's pants and shoes? When Reed squeezed through that rivet some colorists make it look like he was wearing ordinary shoes and different pants from the space costume. But as noted, the coloring changes between different printings. When we ignore the colors it's clear that the pants are the same as the original costume. And if you look at the three pictures inside the police cell it's very clear that these are the original boots. Apparently these were not confiscated (perhaps the costume top was not confiscated either, and Reed merely rolled up his sleeves so that his skin could probe the walls.)
Objection: Did the skrulls wear clothes, or are their "clothes" just their skin? In FF annual 17 we see humans gain skrull characteristics, including clothes that disappear as needed. Also, the X-Men use unstable molecule uniforms that change to other clothing just as the skrull clothes do. Applying Occam's razor, skrull clothes are just what they look like - skrull clothes.
Diablo switches regular molecules into unstable molecules
Soon after this, Reed came across a man with the ability to inject unstable molecules into anything, to enhance its natural abilities for a time. The man was Diablo, and his alchemy was clearly obtained from someone else, no doubt aliens.
Objection: Why didn't Reed just use their space costumes to make unstable molecule costumes? Reed was very busy setting up the Fantastic Four, buying several hideouts, studying technology, and of course saving the world. He didn't have much equipment at the start, so it would have taken months of study. What's the alternative explanation?. If we assume that Reed can master any science within weeks and then create inventions that are a hundred years ahead of all the world's scientists put together, then the stories become unbelievable. The great power of the early Fantastic Four is it's the only superhero story that's believable - with just a little thought.