# Fantastic four: What is Mr. Fantastic's superpower? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 8, 2005, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657 "2005-07-08T21:01:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/41 "2005-07-10T03:18:38Z")
Didn’t Doom Patrol baddie Madame Rogue end up with stretching powers? I have this memory of her battling Changeling in the comics and doing the stretchy thing. And while it’s not exactly the same thing, Marvel’s Machine Man could extend his arms, legs and neck in a manner that approximated stretching. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/42 "2005-07-10T11:00:03Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > Didn’t Doom Patrol baddie Madame Rogue end up with stretching powers? I have this memory of her battling Changeling in the comics and doing the stretchy thing… “End up with”? Didn’t she have them all along? Or am I misremembering? She certainly had the powers in New Teen Titans ~14 or so, when Changeling and Robotman hunted her (and the Brain and Mssr. Mallah) down. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/43 "2005-07-10T11:16:03Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > “End up with”? > > Didn’t she have them all along? Or am I misremembering? I don’t know, I haven’t read her earliest appearances and I can’t locate a completed bio for her online. Although now that I think about it, I have this memory of a scene where she molded her face by hand to impersonate someone, but I have no real idea if that scene actually happened and if it did whether it was really Madame Rogue. It was the Changeling and Robotman huntdown that I was recalling in my earlier post. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/44 "2005-07-10T13:41:21Z")
Great, great story–one of the best Titans stories of all time, IMO. I checked out the Doom Patrol archive and a quick skim doesn’t show her having any powers at all, other than the ability to look stern, in a Hellfire Club domanatrix sort of way ( 😉 ) and my Doom Patrols are buried at the moment, so I can’t check the originals. I do recall the “face molding” bit that you’re describing. What’s _weird_ is that, remember Mr. Morden? From the early Grant Morrison Doom Patrols? He actually _was_ a member of the Brotherhood of Evil at least for one issue. Heh–and Morrison/Morden was right: no-one _did_ remember him! ('least I didn’t!) ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/45 "2005-07-10T15:28:05Z")
OK, I found a [reference](http://www.titanstower.com/source/libindex/doompatindex.html) to Madame Rogue having “shape-changing” powers, which might well include super-elasticity (DP 104, 1966). ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2005, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/46 "2005-07-10T15:37:20Z")
Obsessive? Me? [Not at all](http://www.titanstower.com/source/libearly/doompatrol.html)! > [@](#): > > Such a fun-loving group could not be complete without a woman, and in Madame Rouge, the Brotherhood [of Evil] could not have asked for a femme more fatale. Her initiation into the group, however, was not by her design. As we discovered in Doom Patrol #112 (June, 1967), Laura DeMille was an actress in the Paris theatre - young, popular, and well on her way to stardom. Yet a car crash changed her future: she survived~ but became prone to uncontrollable swings in her temperament. One minute she would be telling children stories and the next, she would stomp on their toys. She suffered from schizophrenia. Seeking the help of a specialist who claimed that he had successfully experimented with schizoids using a ray treatment to bolster the positive and reduce the negative sides of a patient’s personality, MIle. DeMille submitted to the treatment. But she had been tricked. The specialist was really Mallah in disguise, acting under the guidance of the Brain. The machine did just the opposite of what Laura DeMille expected - her negative side was enhanced and her positive side submerged. As a later issue would reveal, this conflict would sow the seeds for the final battleground of the Doom Patrol. The Brain was not finished with Mile DeMille, though. At first, she had no special powers, but in Doom Patrol #90 (Sept., 1964), he subjected her to a radiation treatment that altered her molecular structure. The treatment made her body rubbery - she could mold her features or elongate any part of her anatomy like Plastic Man. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/47 "2005-07-11T01:22:39Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > Of course, the abilities of Plastic Man, Elongated Man and Jimmy (Elastic Lad) Olsen aren’t due to chemicals at all. Actually, they’ve each been “noticed” by the stretch dimension, which will one day “call them home”. The “Stretch Force”? Don’t say it too loud, someone at DC may hear you and think it’s a good idea… (And Plas is THE most powerful character in the DCU, excepting maybe Ambush Bug. When Plas shapes himself into a streetlight, he LIGHTS UP! When he shapes himself into a car, he can move at hundreds of mile an hour! What if he shaped himself into a Kryptonian, huh? Ambush Bug, on the other hand, knows that he is in a comic book and can baffle an opponent by moving out of the panel or into another page, among other things like calling directly on the writers. That is a power to fear.) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2005, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/48 "2005-07-11T03:30:08Z")
As everyone who’s watched _The Specials_ (all 27 of us) knows, the real secret behind stretching power is something in the water in the American Northwest. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657/49 "2005-07-12T18:35:45Z")
And isn’t stretching considered to be the most common power in the Specials universe? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fantastic-four-what-is-mr-fantastics-superpower/311657.md?page=2)