Elasti-Girl

Origin

Rita Farr was a Hollywood actress, until she exposed to unusual volcanic gases while shooting a film in Africa. When Farr recovered, she discovered that she could grow or shrink her body at will from microscopic to hundreds of feet tall. She later gained greater control of her powers, enabling her to return to normal size. Considered a freak and a menace, her Hollywood career was over. Rita is then approached by the Chief, who made her member of Doom Patrol and given her the codename Elasti-Girl.

Creation

Elasti-Girl was created by writers Arnold Drake, Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani. In John Byrne's interpretation of Elasti-Girl, she could also shrink to microscopic proportions and alter the size of other people or objects by mere touch them. However, those abilities have been recently dismissed by later writers. In the 2004 film the Incredibles, Helen Parr's hero name is "Elastigirl" (voiced by Holly Hunter). Pixar received permission from DC Comics to use the name in the film as long as it wasn't used in the merchandising. In the merchandising (and almost twice in the film) she's referred to as "Mrs. Incredible".

Character Evolution

Silver Age: Earth-One

Rita was the founding member of Doom Patrol. Rita was in a love triangle between with Negative Man and Mento. But, ultimately, she chose Mento and married him. They both adopted Beast Boy, and made him a member of the team. Rita powers allowed her to stretch any part of her body to incredible lengths. She could grow to gigantic size, with an accompanying increase in mass and strength, and could also shrink to tiny, but not microscopic, proportions. She did not maintain her normal mass and strength when she shrank.

Modern Age: New Earth

Reboot

After the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Rita's history is rebooted. In this new reality Rita is a former professional actress and a professional swimmer. She has a gold medal for swimming in the Olympics. Her shape-changing allows her to grow to the size of a skyscraper or shrink to microscopic size. Rita can selectively shrink or grow parts of her body while the rest of it remains in normal size.

Retroboot

During the Infinite Crisis, Rita met Beast Boy, but she had no memories of him. That is until, Superboy-Prime broke out of the Phantom Zone. Which caused Rita to regain all her old memories of her family and her own death. Sometime later, Rita had changed her codename to "Elasti-Woman". She is tougher and colder, that was shown when she didn't care that she lost two of her teammates on her last mission.

Major Story Arcs

Silver Age: Earth-One

The Death of Elasti-Girl

Then tragedy struck when the Doom Patrol's enemies, the Madame Rouge and General Zahl, threatened a small New England fishing village. The Patrol members elected to sacrifice themselves to save innocents and Elasti-Girl dies in the explosion.

Modern Age: New Earth

Retroboot

Rita's Past is Revealed

One Year Later after Infinite Crisis, it is then revealed how Rita been resurrected. The Chief had salvaged the original Elasti-Girl's skull and used it to clone her a new body from a malleable form. This Rita is quiet and reluctant to question the Chief's treatment of her. She is very dependent upon the Chief, there are hints that he is controlling her due to her malleable form which hampers her thinking abilities.

I Married My Stalker

On a mission to a small town, Elasti-Woman's mind is taken over by Mento. In hopes of saving her team from been possessed by the town people. It discovered that Mento has being lurking around in Rita's head like a stalker. Rita already knows about this, as found in her personal journal "...in my head! He's been in my head all along! Perfect husband, perfect father, perfect pervert! He didn't even try deny it! Make all of my dreams come true? The way he looked at me. I've seen that look before: Gina's stalker. I married my stalker! The bastard's been in my head all along!!!" Rita confronts Mento over what he has done to her. He tries to use mind control, to make her love him, but she realizes this, grabs Mento, and almost kills him. Rita lets him go, and their marriage comes to an end.

Who is Rita?

Later the team finds out Rita is a shape shifting clone. It found that Rita must look at photos of the original Rita so she keep the appears of her. Rita also fought a savage clone version of herself, who ate people. Rita and her team are then kicked off Oolong Island and she met with her son Beast Boy, to see if she and her team could live with the Teen Titans.

Powers & Abilities

Elasticity

Elasti-Girl can stretch any parts of her body to incredible lengths.

Size Manipulation

Rita can grow to gigantic size with an accompanying increase in mass and strength. She could also shrink down to be very tiny. On a couple of occasions Rita has surpassed 1000 feet in height.

Duplication

Elasti-Woman has powers of shape-shifting and can regrow missing limbs.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'6"(variable)

Weight: 126 lbs.(variable)

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Brown

Other Versions

Earth-9602 (Amalgam Comic)

Elastigirl (Janet van Dyne) is amalgamation of Domino and Wasp from Marvel Comics and Elasti-Girl from the Doom Patrol of DC Comics. She is a member of X-Patrol and possesses the power to shrink or expand into any size she wishes.

Justice

Elasti-Girl makes several cameos in the Justice books.

JLA: The Nail

Elasti-Girl appeared in Justice League of America: The Nail books.

Teen Titans Go!

Elasti-Girl appeared in several issues of Teen Titans Go! as a member of the Doom Patrol.

Batman: The Brave And The Bold

Elasti-Girl and her teammate team-up with Batman.

Other Media

Film

Justice League: The New Frontier

Elasti-Girl appeared in Justice League: The New Frontier

Television

Teen Titans

Elasti-Girl appeared in two-parter episodes of "Homecoming", where she and the two teams joined together to battle against the Brotherhood of Evil.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

Rita appeared in episode of "The Last Patrol!". Rita had left the team and lived her life as an overweight actress. Until Brotherhood of Evil force her to rejoin the Doom Patrol for one last fight.

Young Justice

A young Rita Farr (presumably years before gaining her powers) appears in the Young Justice episode "Image." She is one of the stars of "Hello Megan," a fictional 80's sitcom.