The mental probing causes Franklin's mind to generate a ball of psychic energy that transforms a mustachioed jerk (who happens to be on a date where Johnny Storm is also on a date) into a purple masked strong man with mental powers. Ooooooookaaaaaaaaaay.

Despite the fact that Franklin generates a circus reject who spent too much time at beach discos, Johnny is the true loser here. The Torch is out on a date with a gal that's ready to go and Franklin interferes by changing some lout into Egospawn.  Was Frank subconsciously jealous (at the age of four, mind you) that his uncle was getting lucky? Is there any way this story could make less sense?

Franklin's powers often change to suit the needs of a story. Besides making purple strongmen in their underwear, he can project a dream version of himself, tear extradimensional demons in half, and project himself into the future to become a teenager, thus allowing Reed and Sue to miss all the happy years of watching him develop and skip to the stressful years of letting him borrow the the pogo plane for a hot date.

You know, this guy was pretty inexplicable to begin with, but it's an offense to good taste that he was actually bought back in Fantastic Force. They had this really goofy idea, you see, wherein Franklin was to be "four" because that what everyone in the future is obsessed with (four what?... don't ask me.) So they had a really hard time of being able to put together four aspects of Franklin and actually had to drudge up ol' Egopants here to round out the quartet.