Voluntary Shapeshifting / Comic Books

• The DCU is positively lousy with shapeshifters: Beast Boy, Plastic Man, Offspring, all Martians (including resident superheroes Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian), Madame Rouge, Gemini, Everyman, Metamorpho, and Elongated Man, among many others. Shapeshifting may well surpass flight on their list of ubiquitous superpowers, at least among the younger generation.
  • Plastic Man is regarded as the most powerful shapeshifter in the modern setting, with the ability to take virtually any shape, change color, and survive numerous attacks that seem tailor-made to hurt shapeshifters, such as being frozen and shattered.
  • Chameleon Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes is a Durlan, another one of those alien races where everybody is a shapeshifter. It's fairly easy for them to get mode-locked and they usually lose their memories when they do meaning they end up Becoming the Mask.
  • Beast Boy from the Teen Titans: any animal regardless of size, but he will always be green. Madam Rouge from the animated version has no such weakness.
  • Martian Manhunter from Justice League had blob-form powers and disguise forms, as well as a few other notable abilities. Like the ability to survive being ripped in half. Scary.
    • Traditionally, he also has Flying Brick powers (at a similar level to Superman) and powerful telepathic abilities, making him one of the most powerful characters in the DCU overall.
  • Batman villain Clayface.^note  Almost every version. The original Basil Karlo, was an actor who was a master of disguise using makeup. This was later retconned, but the original was not a shape shifter. Being chemically altered gave him the ability to regenerate his body mass, change his shape, size, density and shape-shift into any form he could think of.
  • Jason Blood is able to transform into the demon Etrigan by saying a short poem.
  • DC's most famous one-form shape-shifters are probably Captain Marvel/Billy Batson and his family in addition to his arch-enemy Black Adam.
  • Firestorm foe Silver Deer can magically change her appearance to that of another person or take on animal form. When in animal form she possess that animal's abilities.
  • Hercules had a magic mirror which would allow him to disguise himself as another humanoid, but he wasn't always very smart about it. A good example of this was when he used it to impersonate Cassie Sandsmark's deceased boyfriend Kon-El to talk her into joining him, but understandably infuriated her instead.
  • Legends of the Dead Earth:
    • In Action Comics Annual #8, the actors who play Lois Lane (Loiz), Jimmy Olsen (Jimmee) and others at Bizarro World belong to a race of shapeshifters.
    • In the Supergirl Annual #1 story "The Legends Lives On", S'Age claims that Supergirl was a shapeshifter, which leads her to believe that her crewmate Flexi, a half-Durlan shapeshifter, is Supergirl in disguise.
    • In the Guy Gardner: Warrior Annual #2 story "Hypersensitive: A Changer for All Seasons", the title character Stonewall Fencer is a shapeshifter.
  • In Voodoo (2011), this is part of the title character's powerset — she can assume other people's forms.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): The Glop is a Blob Monster alien that can shape itself into pretty much any form that doesn't take up less or more mass than it's made of and can form and eject things based on substances it's "digested", like rocket propelled explosives
    • In Wonder Woman (1987) one of Diana's Space Pirate Revolutionaries who stayed with her from the planning stages of the initial Slave Revolt against the Sangtee Empire was Nol Lapp, of the aforementioned Durlan race.
    • Wonder Woman: Warbringer: The Oracle's female body doesn't change but they switch up their head constantly and in mid-conversation, as they don't really have one of their own. She mostly uses faces whomever she's speaking with will recognize and often be unsettled or upset by, but throws in creepy animals like baboons to keep things interesting.
    • Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons: Hera states this is an ability of the Gods, claiming their current forms are as easily discarded as old clothes.
    • Circe is an incredibly powerful magic user who frequently uses her magic to alter her looks, and costume mid battle. She once trapped herself in a mortal form for a gambit to benefit from Ares' latest plot while messing with Diana but the whole thing backfired on her, and she ended up caring for Diana as a friend even when she went back to being Circe.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The Skrulls are an entire race of voluntary shapeshifters, something they use to great advantage in the Secret Invasion (2008) crossover event.
  • X-Men:
    • Mystique is the major example naturally. Her morphing ability allows her to morph into anyone/anything (including a wooden chair and a giant dragon on separate occasions), but she retains her "default mode" mass (her larger transformations would, well, tear like a hot-air balloon filled with blood if damaged...which is what happened to her as Bishop in Uncanny X-Men issue 301).
    • Morph from the '90s series, who was in turn inspired by Changeling from the comics. Morph (maybe not the same guy) also appears in the Age of Apocalypse event and the Exiles ongoing monthly title.
    • Kevin Sydney (who is, in fact, the same guy for both versions of Morph) transforms in a similar fashion as Mr. Fantastic does by reshaping his features via concentrated power of will.
    • Apocalypse is a mutant enhanced with futuristic technology and has absolute molecular control over his size and shape. Besides his laundry list of other powers, he can form his limbs into melee weapons, heal himself and disguise himself as a human.
  • Impossible Man from the Fantastic Four comics and cartoon is a trickster-like alien who can turn into all kinds of crazy things. In an episode of the '90s series titled "Hopelessly Impossible", he turns into Galactus, Lawrence Limburger, Hulk, Lockjaw, and a Ninja Turtle.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk developed the ability to do this at one point in the early 1980s when Bruce Banner had taken complete control of the Hulk's form. While he normally stayed in his basic human body, Banner could transform himself into the Hulk at will and retained full control of his body while doing so. The emotionally reserved Banner couldn't get as angry as any of the actual Hulk personalities and so wasn't as strong, but he made up for it by using his scientific smarts to fight as a Genius Bruiser.
    • There is also his "Joe Fixit" personality, where he would be Bruce Banner by day, and "Mr. Fixit" Hulk by night.
    • The later "integrated" version of the Hulk (originally intended to be all of Banner/Hulk's personae combined into a functional whole, later retconned to yet another split personality) reversed this to a degree. Having control over his emotions and physical power, he stayed as the Hulk full-time, not reverting to "normal" even when sleeping or knocked out. However, when his mental control eventually began to slip, and the savage, destructive Hulk persona re-emerged, he would revert to human form as a sort of "safety valve", with the rampaging Hulk's mind stuck in the body of Bruce Banner and thus incapable of large-scale destruction.
    • Both She-Hulk and Red Hulk are typically able to control their transformations.
  • Sleepwalker, who had his own title in the early 1990s, is a variation on this trope. While he can't change his own physical shape, his warp vision can be used to alter the physical shape of any inanimate object within its radius, and affect its physical characteristics to a lesser degree.
  • Spider-Man:
    • The Chameleon started as a Master of Disguise with no power. Later, his powers are made innate; his epidermis and skin pigmentation have been surgically and mutagenically altered by a serum so that he can take on the appearance of any person at will. Later he returned to his powerless state.
    • Venom can camouflage itself by blending in with nearby walls and mimic other humans or clothing.
  • In Ms. Marvel (2014), the titular character can change her SizeShifter and appearence in any way, up to the Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever, or taking the shape of other people (as of issue #6 she only managed the original Ms. Marvel's and her own mother's, though), or even inanimate objects (store manequin, sofa). She is also capable of Partial Transformations which effectively also make her Rubber Man, and give her Super-Strength (bigger arm -> more muscles -> more strength).
  • Teen Loki and Loki God(dess) of Stories from Loki: Agent of Asgard usually use shapeshifting to shift between male and female forms, though they can also take other forms that represent themself, such as a fox.
  • The Mighty Thor was originally one himself, shifting between the God of Thunder and Dr. Donald Blake. Much later, the Goddess of Thunder would also shift human-mortal and Asgardian identities.
  • The Ultimates: The Chitauri have this power, but a bit more limited: they can only take the form of a human being that they consume.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The character E.V.E. from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was able to shift shapes to become stronger after each defeat by the titular hedgehog. She did this so flawlessly that Sonic even thought he was being attacked by multiple opponents. After reaching her ultimate form, however, this power was no longer used and may be an example of Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
  • Mimic the Octopus from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) is a sinister yet limited example. He can only mimic another person's form, but not their abilities and his telltale sign is his brown eyes when morphed. When he was finally captured, he broke into a shapeshifting rage, turning into monstrous versions of other characters, particularly Vector.
• Sham of the DNAgents can be any human form, but he doesn't transform his clothing.
• ElfQuest has a number of examples. The original High Ones shapeshifted into elfin forms, which most of them retained (and which bred true) after crash-landing on the magic-poor World of Two Moons. A few, such as Timmain and Haken, were able to painfully force their shapeshifting abilities despite the planet's lack of magic. Most notably, Timmain often shapeshifted into a wolf (becoming the wolf-mother of the story's main tribe) and, many generations later, taught Kimo how to do so as well. Winnowill was able to shapeshift into human form, as was Jink centuries after that. When Winnowill's spirit was absorbed by Rayek, she sometimes succeeded in taking control of his body and reshaping it into her own form.
  • To elaborate: shapeshifting in ElfQuest is an extension of "shaping" magic, i.e. rock-shaping, tree-shaping, and in this case, flesh-shaping. It's a painful process, but it follows the same basic logic as healing. This means that elves with healing powers are always potential shapeshifters but, in most cases, find the very idea unnatural and disturbing at first. Exceptions appear more and more often as the story progresses: Tyldak asks Winnowill to shape him into a bird-elf, Mender chooses not to grow a beard as he gets older, Skywise asks Leetah to make him into a pure elf instead of a wolf-elf (when he thinks all the other elves have died), and Suntop asks Leetah to shape him into a mer-elf temporarily so that he can spend time underwater with his lifemate.
  • An article in The ElfQuest Gatherum v. II specifies that the original High Ones shapeshifted on the genetic level. ^{fridge logic}Which means that all elves have the same number of chromosomes as wolves and explains why they can't breed with humans.
• Bigby from Fables has a default wolf form, can shapeshift to a man, and can take any degree of the in-between forms. His six brothers are much more versatile, but not nearly as strong.
• Shifty, a prominent member of the Confederacy of Crime in The Incredibles comic series.
• Last Man Standing has Karma, which is a Justified Trope considering she's a robotic spy with advanced synthetic texture-mapping tech for skin.
• Nikolai Dante: Viktor Romanov's weapon crest allows him to transform into the Romanov eagle.
• The Warlord: Shakira can change into a black cat at will.
• W.I.T.C.H.: Cedric. In the animated adaptation he's limited to his snake-like true form and a single human form, but in the original comic he can disguise himself as anyone, and has once used his power to sprout perfectly functional wings and take off.
• In the Italian satiric comic Jenus, God explains that, as The Omnipotent, He also has this ability. This happens when the Lamb of God asks Him how a giant like him could stand behind a small desk, and God reminds him of this and demonstrates by taking the looks of a potted daisy (and still talking). That said, He usually looks as the elderly version of the identity He used the last time he was on Earth-Ronnie James Dio.
• In Lori Lovecraft, shaman Arthur Black Crow can transform into a black crow at will.
• In Silverblade, retired actor Jonathan Lord is granted the ability to transform into any character he ever portrayed on the silver screen, gaining their powers and skills. Blackfeather can shapeshift into Native American manitou animals. The falcon can become any kind of winged creature that flies, from a butterfly to a pterodactyl (after it has seen one in a movie).

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