Reed Richards (Earth-21399)

Early Life
Reed Richards was born in Queens in 1942, the only child of watchmaker Nathaniel Richards and his wife Evelyn. From an early age, Reed's parents suspected their child was special – the boy was remarkably intelligent, well ahead of his peers. While other children played sports, Reed devoted himself to science. Reed's intelligence naturally made him a target of bullying during his school years. Fortunately, in high school, he befriended the star football player, Benjamin “the Grimm Reaper” Grimm, who protected Reed from the bullies in exchange for help with his math homework.

College
Reed's genius was such that he actually skipped ahead from ninth to twelfth grade, cutting his time with Ben short for a while, but the two crossed paths again at NYU as roommates. Reed had been pursuing a physics doctorate while Ben was enrolled on a football scholarship, and they also shared the company of Viktor Domashev, an imperious foreign exchange student.

Reed and Viktor argued constantly over each others' theses and calculations; Reed initially viewed these as friendly exchanges of ideas between equals, but Viktor saw them as direct attacks on his own intellect by an arrogant American. Eventually, Viktor unceremoniously stormed out of the university in anger after another argument, and Reed never heard back from him since.

NASA Career
After college, Reed' was offered a position in NASA as part of the research team for the Apollo project. Reed happily took the job, and his equations were instrumental in allowing man to fly to the Moon. In his off time, Reed befriended fellow researcher Franklin Storm and began dating his daughter, Susan.

In 1970, using instruments that were left behind on the Moon, Reed somehow discovered an unusual radiation signature emanating from the Fra Mauro Highlands, and requested another mission for the purpose of investigating. This request was granted after some deliberation, and Reed selected Ben Grimm, his old high school friend who had recently been hired as a pilot, to fly the shuttle.

During the maiden flight of Apollo 13, Reed, Ben and fellow crew member Bentley Whitman landed in the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon. With Whitman in the command module, Reed and Ben went out to dig for materials to conduct experiments with, only to dig up a strange, glowing blue cubical artifact. Upon trying to contact the cube, Reed and Ben were suddenly transported into the Negative Zone. Whitman lost contact and returned home, with both men presumed dead.