Thursday, January 17, 2008

Reed Richards, Genius Inventor

Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards! One of the most brilliant minds of his universe. Creator of the Negative Zone portal, the Flying Bathtub Fantasticar, and one bajillion ways to turn the Thing back into Ben Grimm. (Uh, forget that last one.) Can turn a paperclip and a rubber band into a time machine faster than you can say "MacGyver." Able to calculate pi to a googol digits in his head. Inventor of the phone without a zero key:
FF #109 panel


"Reed, oh no! Franklin's choking on his Hulk-i-Os cereal! Quickly, dial the operator to get an ambulance!"

"Uhhhhhhhh..."


Oh well, it's just a phone. It's not rocket science, is it?
FF #261 panel


Reed Richards: Loving husband. Faithful friend. Doting father. Heckuva nice guy. Sometimes can't invent his way out of a paper bag.


10 comments:

SallyP said...

Thank you. For once again proving that for all his alleged brilliance, Reed Richards is a bit of a doofus.

Michael said...

For an awfully smart guy, Reed DOES make some real boneheaded calls.

He has, as the kids say, "book sense but no common sense."

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see it wasn't Kirby, but who DID draw that?

Nick Fury

mike abbott said...

This special, Thing friendly, keypad is designed to send 0 when any combination of keys are pressed simultaneously.

The ever thoughtful Mr. Fantastic left out the now redundant zero key to keep Ben from frustrating himself in a pointless attempt to dial 'normally'.

When Reed Richards seems stupid it is always our failing to understand.

Brett said...

One of my favorite Reed Richards moments is in FF20 when he says dehydrated acorn-like thing inside a rock is proof "some form of life must exist in outer space" even though the FF had already met the Skrulls, Kurrgo, the Impossible Man and the Watcher.

I guess there's proof and then there's Reed Richards' proof.

Anonymous said...

No, see, Reed understands that zero is not a number, but in fact the absence of number.

With the Reed Richards Phone, you send a zero by not sending a zero. It's all very Zen, actually.

Anonymous said...

Look, I'm not saying the guy's first spaceship was perfect, but he's invented the radical dodecahedron. We all should respect that.

Evan Waters said...

Reed is like the Professor on Gilligan's Island. An utter genius but simply cannot invent certain things (i.e. a raft).

Anonymous said...

The acorn-like thing is proof. Reed's meeting aliens is only anecdotal evidence. It's a science thing...

billjac said...

Reed may be lousy as an engineer but I've got to defend his science. Reed said that the acorn-thing is the first proof of life in outer space and it is. All of the aliens Reed met weren't in outer space; they were on planets or in space ships. The acorn-thing is the first proof out in the vacuum and hard radiation of actual outer space. And that's worth getting excited about even if you have met more than your share of aliens.

(And with the preciseness of the dialog and the spore-like design of the acorn-thing, I'm not making excuses, I think Stan and Jack meant exactly that.)