Invisible Woman

Susan Storm and her younger brother, Johnny, lived uneventfully on Long Island until their mother, Mary Storm, died in an automobile accident. Their father, Franklin Storm, a doctor, failed to save her. Despondent, he began to drink and gambled away the family fortune, eventually winding up in a penitentiary for murder after accidentally killing his loan shark. The children went to live with their Aunt Marygay Jewel Dinkins, who ran a boardinghouse. When Susan was in her late teens, she fell in love with one of her aunt's boarders, Reed Richards, who was working on his third doctorate at Empire State University. Sue later followed Richards to California, where she half-heartedly tried to break into show business. Reed was working on an experimental starship called the Marvel-1 when the project lost its government funding. He decided to launch the prototype, certain that the flight would succeed and attract more funding, and Susan went along for her own reasons. Ben Grimm, a test pilot, took the controls. Johnny filled out the crew. Reed had made one mistake: he failed to shield the cabin from cosmic rays, and a chance solar flare intensified the radiation. The experience gave each of them superhuman abilities, and perhaps more importantly, it forged almost unbreakable bonds between them. They became the Fantastic Four, and Storm took the name Invisible Girl.

In the early years of the Fantastic Four, Sue spent much of her time keeping the team together. Reed spent long hours in his laboratory; Grimm moped over his appearance; Johnny acted out like any teenager. Her power of invisibility had little use in battling super-villains such as Doctor Doom and Galactus, but her empathy and common sense prevented several breakups and defections. Even though she was best suited to act as spokesperson for the Fantastic Four, she would have encountered resistance in the early 1960s, so Richards took on that job as well. Her discontent manifested itself in an attraction to Namor, who returned her affections, but the relationship effectively ended after Namor abducted Sue in an attempt to persuade her to be his queen. She soon discovered new powers: she could turn other objects (besides herself) invisible and project and manipulate powerful force fields. Although unable to perform offensively on a par with the Thing, she could defend against almost any threat. When the Super-Skrull, possessing the combined powers of the Fantastic Four, attacked the team, the Human Torch managed to trap him inside a cave, but the Super-Skrull escaped and impersonated Sue's father, Franklin Storm. The Four exposed the Super-Skrull, but the Skrulls strapped a bomb to the real Franklin's chest, and Franklin sacrificed his own life to save his children. A trip to the Skrull homeworld and the death of Warlord Morrat, the Skrull who authorized Franklin's murder, brought some measure of revenge.

Sue eventually married Reed in a wedding ceremony attended by most of the world's heroes. A difficult pregnancy followed, during which Crystal of the Inhumans took her place on the team. At the last moment, to save the unborn child, the Fantastic Four had to visit the Negative Zone and borrow the Cosmic Control Rod of Annihilus. Her son Franklin, named after her father, manifested strong and unusual powers almost immediately. When Annihilus kidnapped Franklin and triggered those powers, he turned Franklin into a living bomb and caused his powers to increase exponentially and uncontrollably, until Franklin threatened to wipe out all life in the solar system with a psychic blast. Reed was left with no choice but to inhibit Franklin's higher brain functions in order to defuse him. It was the last straw for Sue, who left Mr. Fantastic and took Franklin with her. During Sue Storm's second hiatus, the Inhuman Medusa took her place. The old bonds, though, drew Susan back to the team and led her to rekindle her relationship with Reed. Franklin was restored to normal soon after, and the Richards family was back together once more. During an extended trip to the Negative Zone, a sort of second honeymoon, she conceived another child. Seeking some peace for this pregnancy, Sue convinced Mr. Fantastic to move to the Connecticut suburbs, where they posed as the Benjamins. This unborn daughter began to give off radiation. Despite the efforts of Mr. Fantastic and several other experts, the girl was apparently stillborn. When the symbiote escaped from Baxter Building with the help of Kristoff Vernard, the symbiote tries to possess Franklin, fighting the Fantastic Four while possessing Reed's body and possessing Sue in order to get to Franklin, but Franklin was able to reject the symbiote thanks to his father and Spider-Man's help.took advantage of Sue's fragile self-control at this point and amplified her negative emotions. She became Malice, with all of the Invisible Girl's powers but none of her restraint, and attacked the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic helped her throw off Psycho-Man's influence, but she lost control again when the Fantastic Four confronted Psycho-Man; she turned his own Control Box on him, which shorted out his nervous system and nearly killed him. The episode would have lasting effects: the Invisible Girl changed her name to Invisible Woman; she discovered how to use Force Objects (see Powers below); and in the long term, she lost a measure of self-confidence, knowing that Malice still lurked inside her.

Sue left the Fantastic Four again, this time with Mr. Fantastic, to spend time with Franklin, who had regained his faculties and needed full-time mentoring. They worked part-time with the Avengers for a while. They also helped the Silver Surfer resuscitate Galactus, during which Sue came in contact with the Infinity Gems. Distrustful of such power, she fell prey to Malice again. The soul gem tried and failed to combine Reed's and Sue's souls, which brought forth the In-Betweener and sent Malice back to Sue's subconscious. The Fantastic Four, as always, pulled them back. During the Infinity War, Sue had to confront her doppelganger and incorporate its evil into herself. That boost allowed Malice to regain control temporarily. Later, claiming that Franklin's presence in this timeline would lead to destruction, Reed Richards' father Nathaniel abducted the child into the future. Nathaniel raised Franklin for years in the future, training him to be a warrior and to master his superhuman powers. The adolescent Franklin journeyed back in time, arriving in the Fantastic Four's headquarters mere moments after Nathaniel had abducted him as a child. The teenage Franklin called himself Psi-Lord, and wielded vast psionic powers, although they remained far short of his full potential. Sue struggled against Malice's influence, inevitably losing ground. When Malice manifested again, Psi-Lord drew Malice's essence into himself. Finally, however, Psi-Lord somehow was removed from the Fantastic Four's time and was replaced by the child Franklin, as he had been at the time that Nathaniel had abducted him.

That was only the beginning of a tumultuous period. Reed disappeared for some time, apparently killed by Victor Von Doom. Sue Storm became leader of the Fantastic Four, recruited Ant-Man to take over Reed's role, and quickly grew into her new responsibilities. Effectively a widow, Sue had to fend off many potentials suitors, especially Namor. She never gave up looking for Richards, though, and after a long search, she found him stranded in the past. Their reunion was bittersweet; Reed felt threatened at first by Sue's newfound competence and confidence, particularly since months trapped in isolation had left him severely traumatized, paranoid, and indecisive, although he soon realized he was foolish for thinking so. After Reed's return, Namor realized he still had feelings for Sue and assaulted her in an attempt to "claim" her for himself. Reed successfully fended him off. The whole team appeared to die next, in the final battle with Onslaught, who had kidnapped Franklin. Instead they (and the Avengers) found themselves on Counter-Earth, in a pocket universe Franklin had created to save them. In a sense, they had been reborn and had to start their lives over. Once the heroes on Counter-Earth realized what had happened, they returned to their original homes.

An even more surprising resurrection unfolded during the team's reality-warping conflict with the cosmic being Abraxas when Franklin revealed he had used his powers to rescue Sue's seemingly stillborn second child years earlier, and that this child had been raised in an alternate future to become the Marvel Girl (Valeria Von Doom) who was now an ally of the present-day Fantastic Four. As a side-effect of Abraxas's defeat, Marvel Girl was restored to her original state, as an unborn child in Sue's womb. This time, Sue's pregnancy resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl, christened Valeria in memory of Doctor Doom's first love. (Doom had insisted on naming the child in exchange for assisting with the difficult birth.) To help Johnny develop responsibility, Sue forced him to become the business manager for Fantastic Four, Inc., a job he gradually grew into. Doom's favors, as always, had strings attached. His main focus had shifted from science to sorcery, and he used his special bond with Valeria as a focus to cast spells against the Fantastic Four. He soon defeated them, captured all four, tossed Franklin into Hell, abducted Valeria, and tortured Ben, Johnny, and Sue while Reed listened helplessly. Doom's own hubris led to his downfall—his infernal patrons dragged him to the underworld of Haazareth. Prior to being dragged to Hell, however, Doom vindictively—and seemingly permanently—scarred Reed's face. The Fantastic Four were left reeling, both mentally and physically, after Doom's vicious attack. Sue struggled to help heal her son, who was so traumatized by his time being tortured in Hell that he shut down emotionally and lost the ability to speak.