Origin
Franklin Hall was born far North in Alberta, Canada. He excelled at school his entire life, especially showing promise in the sciences. He eventually became a lead scientist, considered by many to be the most brilliant, at a small private physics research institute in the Canadian Rockies.
During an experiment on particle acceleration, Hall attempted to align a particular set of graviton matrices and induce a teleportation effect. All he succeeded in doing however was overloading the power thresholds on his equipment. The resulting explosion destroyed Hall’s equipment along with two neighboring particle accelerators. The mixture of these explosions resulted in an atomic flurry that intermingled Hall’s molecules with sub-nuclear graviton particles eventually granting him the power to mentally manipulate gravity.
Franklin, at first, hid this power from the world. Thinking that outsiders would view him as a freak, he attempted his best to mask his immense superhuman ability. However, it wasn’t long at all before his will broke and Hall was using his gravitational abilities to gain whatever he wanted. Much to his joy, people began to fear him, and being a man of drive and resource he quickly fashioned himself an elaborate costume and took on the name Graviton.
Creation
Graviton was created by Jim Shooter and Sal Buscema in 1977 and first appeared in The Avengers # 158.
Mayor Story Arcs
Versus the Avengers
Taking complete control of the research lab he once worked for, Graviton began working to develop new ways to improve his vast power. Nothing went wrong until a former colleague of Hall’s, a young man by the name of Joe, sent an emergency distress call to The Avengers. They quickly arrived on the scene, but by the time they had Graviton had lifted the entire facility several thousand feet from the ground and threatened to make an example of Joe by crushing his skeleton under his own body mass. The Avengers quickly fell to Graviton’s immense abilities leaving only Iron Man and Thor to do battle with him.
They tricked Graviton into believing that his love interest had killed herself after discovering Hall’s evil ways and the resulting rage from Graviton forced the building in on itself. The entirety of the complex collapsed inward into a giant ball that Thor quickly hurled into the Hudson river. Graviton survived the ordeal but was temporarily turned into a giant with black-hole powers who battled the Thing and Black Bolt. After dispersing his excess mass, it took him quite sometime to rebuild the city he now calls sky island.
Graviton returned and held a department store full of people hostage by levitating it above a skyscraper, but he was again defeated by the Avengers and was exiled in space by Thor. Hall returned once again and tried to assemble all the criminals under his leadership, but his plot failed when he was stopped by the Avengers West Coast.
Acts of Vengeance
During the Acts of Vengeance, the Kingpin hired Graviton to defeat Spider-Man,and they confronted each other for the first time during Amazing Spiderman # 326. Graviton is first confronted by a government watch crew with a helicopter, but Graviton casually defeats them by multiplying their weight by a factor of thousands. Graviton then moves to the Daily Bugle building, having been informed by the King Pin that a new reported there seem to have a connection with Spiderman. Holding the new crew hostage Graviton lifts the very Daily Bugle building, with all 24 floors intact right off the ground in hopes that Spiderman would eventually arrive, which he does.
Spiderman is momentarily able to get the upper hand on Graviton after he is distracted by the flash of a camera but he hesitates after being informed that should Graviton be knocked unconscious the entire building would drop on the ground killing everyone.
In the momentary hesitation Graviton regains his composer, and quickly disposes of Spiderman leaving him trapped under a pile of rubble. Thinking Spiderman dead Graviton leaves, but Spiderman eventually manages to regain consciousness.
Graviton and Spiderman meet again in Amazing Spiderman # 329. Graviton is now informed that Spiderman is alive, and although the team that actually hired Graviton to take out Spiderman is now disbanded (in West Cost Avengers # 55) Graviton still decides to finish the job. Hiding him in a mist of fog Graviton patiently waits for Spiderman to appear. Upon Spiderman appearing Graviton promptly attacks him not knowing that Spiderman at the time was empowered by the Uni-Power. Spiderman blast Graviton with a cosmic blast, which knocks Graviton into a car. Realizing Spiderman is too formidable at the moment Graviton decides not to continue his endeavors of killing Spiderman.
Graviton appears again in Web of Spiderman # 64 freeing a group of villains, consisting of Titana, Trapster and Brother Grimm, while being transported to the raft. Graviton then joins forces with the team, and an additional member in the form of Goliath (Erik Josten) to attack Spiderman, who eventually gets sends to the skies by Graviton.
Graviton now believing Spiderman is dead goes to King Pin to receive payments who refuses. Angry Graviton and other start to attack King Pin. Meanwhile, Spiderman manages to save himself by webbing himself to an aeroplane and returns seeking a rematch. Spiderman promptly blinds Graviton with his webbing and before Graviton could use his power punch him unconcious and goes on to take care of the remaining villains as well.
Against the Thunderbolts
When Hall attacked the Avengers Mansion, Vision merged with him and Graviton was sent into another dimension, where he was revered as a god. He soon grew tired of the inhabitants’ minute intelligence and wanted to leave to his own reality. So he build a beacon that may somehow be detected from the other side. The signal was picked up by Fixer, who was working for Baron Helmut Zemo. Fixer used a robotic version of the Hulk to bring back Graviton to his own reality, at the command of Zemo. When he returned, he battled the Thunderbolts and the Lightning Rods (Great Lakes Initiative), but was convinced by Moonstone that his power is worth nothing if he had no purpose. Graviton returned and battled the Thunderbolts and with the help of Angel, he was defeated and returned back to the alternate dimension. Graviton re-enters Earth’s dimension for one final time, and after battling the Avenger Iron Man, he decides to end his own life.
More recently he was shown to be a member of the Hood’s crime syndicate, although the mysterious circumstances of his reappearance or anything further regarding his current status has yet to be revealed.
Powers & Abilities
Franklin Hall was a normal human until empowered by an explosion that intermingled his molecules with sub-nuclear graviton particles generated by a nearby particle generator, which gave him the ability to manipulate gravitons (the subatomic particles that carry the force of gravitational attraction) and anti-gravitons (similar particles but with opposite force and spin of gravitons). Graviton could surround any person or object, including himself, with gravitons or anti-gravitons, thereby increasing or decreasing the pull of gravity upon it. Hall was able to manipulate gravitons for various uses, including the projection of highly-concussive blasts, formation of gravitational force fields and levitation, and had also been proven capable of generating gravitational fields in various objects, making them attract any nearby matter (or individuals) not heavy enough or physically strong enough to resist. By decreasing the pull of gravity beneath him, he could fly at any speed or height at which he could still breathe. However, by using his force field generation capabilities he could also breathe in space. By increasing the pull of gravity beneath his opponents, he could pin them to the ground, having made them too heavy to move, or cause sufficient gravitational stress to impair the normal functioning of the human cardiovascular system. He could also cause an inanimate object (such as a 1-foot (0.30 m) diameter rock) to radiate enough gravitons to give it its own gravitational field, able to attract nearby matter and energy.
By rapidly projecting gravitons in a cohesive beam, he could generate a force blast with a maximum concussive force equivalent to the primary shockwave of an explosion of 20,000 pounds of TNT. He could also create a gravitational force field around him capable of protecting him from any concussive force up to and including a small nuclear weapon.
On a large scale Graviton could exert his gravitational control over a maximum distance of 2.36 miles (3.80 km) from his body. Thus, the maximum volume of matter he could influence at once is 6.88 cubic miles (28.7 km). He once exercised this control by lifting into the air an inverted conic frustum-shaped land mass whose uppermost area was 4 miles (6.4 km) across, and causing it to fly as though it were a blimp. He could also erect a gravitational force-field of similar proportions. Graviton could formerly perform as many as four separate tasks simultaneously – he had not only lifted a 4-mile (6.4 km) wide land mass as high as cloud level above San Francisco, but at the same time he also surrounded himself with a force-field, ascended on a small rock down and hurled some policemen and helicopter 10,000 miles (16,000 km) up into the Orbit. Graviton could use his power at maximum capacity for up to eight hours before mental fatigue significantly impaired his performance, and considerably longer (up to eighteen hours) if he conserved his energy during that time.
He was somehow also able to bestow the power of self-propelled flight to at least 70 people independent from his location, however he was also able to take this power away with a thought.
With time and training his power further advanced as sustained application of his power, even to the extent of levitating an island miles above ground level, could continue while he sleeps, he was able to somewhat reshape mountains on the Moon and demonstrated the ability to lift a small stone in China while residing in L.A. and deposit it in Australia through a victims head just to see if he could so. By separating himself from Earth’s gravitational field and instead attuning himself to the incredibly stronger gravitational field of the Sun, he was able to cross the distance from Earth to the Sun almost instantaneously, where his individual force field proved strong enough to withstand the forces of the Sun itself, effectively simulating long-range teleportation. To return from the Sun to Earth he utilized the Sun’s gravitational field as a form of slingshot device and was able to cross the distance to Earth within minutes.
Hall’s single most ambitious display of power was when he held almost every Marvel hero in stasis, including the whole Fantastic Four, some of the X-Men and such physical powerhouses as Thor, Hercules, the Hulk and Namor, and began using his powers to try reshaping the Earth in his image.
He also had the ability to detect extra-dimensional-shiftings and phased or invisible objects through his immediate awareness of gravitational shiftings and while he was not able to invoke dimensional portals he was at least able to close them. He could simulate vast superhuman strength and durability using gravitonic fields to surround his body, but he could not actually manipulate density or increase his physical strength.
Aside from his powers to manipulate gravity, Hall had a PhD in Physics and is intellectually brilliant, with expertise in advanced physics, including teleportation. His greatest limitation was that he was emotionally and mentally very disturbed.
Other Media
TV
Avenger Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Graviton made a cameo at the end of Breakout part 1 and was the main villain in Breakout part 2. Eventually he was taken down by Wasp and The Hulk.
It is shown in Season 1, Episode 7 that Dr. Franklin Hall was recruited by Nick Fury sometime around 6 years prior to present day to join S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to assist in creating super soldiers. Dr. Hall agrees and is later seen conducting an experiment in a lab which becomes very unstable. Nick Fury orders Dr. Hall to shut it down, but Hall refuses and instead gives it full power causing the experiment to explode and send Hall reeling backwards. He later wakes up and finds himself strapped to a hospital bed while 2 doctors are reassuring him that everything is fine. He becomes very upset and demands to know what happened to his lab. All of a sudden, the doctors begin levitating in the air along with everything else in the room. He realizes that he now possesses total control over gravity itself and easily sets himself free while demanding to see Nick Fury. It is revealed that all of this is actually taking place in a controlled environment within S.H.I.E.L.D.Upon realizing the threat that Dr. Hall now poses, Nick Fury gasses the room and Dr. Hall becomes unconscious.
Now in Present Day, it’s shown that Dr. Hall has been in a forced artificial coma for the past 6 years but due to The Raft’s security systems being breached, he is now released. He raises the entire prison several hundred feet in the air above New York City and also locates Nick Fury, whom he levitates with him in the air. He tells Fury that he wants to exact his revenge on him for holding him hostage all these years and then show the world his power. Nick Fury is saved by Thor who flies directly into Graviton, sending him several hundred yards away. Fury is saved from crashing into the ocean by Wasp, while Thor and Graviton engage in aerial combat. Graviton sends Thor to the bottom of the harbor and then easily overpowers Iron Man, Wasp and Ant Man. He destroys a clone of Nick Fury and then sets out to find the real Nick Fury. He is then confronted again by Iron Man, Thor, Wasp and Ant Man but again overpowers them. The day is saved however when Hulk appears and is able to go toe-to-toe with Graviton, despite the latter using his full powers on Hulk. After a long struggle, Graviton is finally defeated by a godblast from Thor, after being weakened by the combined efforts of Iron Man, Hulk, Ant Man and Wasp. Nick Fury then invites them to join S.H.I.E.L.D. but they refuse and instead decide to become a team themselves. And thus, the Avengers are formed.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Dr. Franklin Hall first appears in the third episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. titled The Asset and is portrayed by actor Ian Hart.
Hall discovers that former friend and industrialist Ian Quinn had discovered a large quantity of Gravitonium. Fearing what Quinn would do with such power, Hall arranged to have himself kidnapped by Quinn, where he pretended to work with Quinn towards his goals. In reality, Hall planned to destroy the Gravitonium, along with Quinn and himself by overloading the gravitational generator.
This plan was ruined when S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson and his team were sent in to extract him. Coulson finds Hall in the process of activating the device and shuts it down, determining that the destruction caused would harm much of the local population. The after-effect drew Hall into the mass of Gravitonium, consuming him. Coulson ordered the mass of Gravitonium be secured in an unmarked vault at The Fridge, a S.H.I.E.L.D. storage facility. In the final scene Hall is revealed to be alive inside the Gravitonium.
Later in the show Glenn Talbot gets the powers and the look of Graviton.
Video Games
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Graviton appears in this Game Boy game .