Maybe this is MPSIMS, but…
When Galactus and FF first met each other (around ish 150??) I only read the first comic of the mini-series (hey, I was a lil’ sprout…didn’t have the cash!).
Questions:
How did they finally beat Galactus? The guy eats planets, for chrissakes.
IIRC, Ben and Reed were captured on big ‘flesh-magnets’ by some creatures. How did they get out of that? What was the creatures’ problem anyway? I think it has something to do with that planet being a possible substitute for Galactus eating Earth…?
How does Galactus back-story go? He existed before the big-bang, old gods, something like that? Help me out.
How did the Silver Surfer go from bad guy to good guy? Was it in this mini-series? What happened to Galactus’ other sentinels before SS?
Thanks,
-sb
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
I seem to recall that the first “victory” over Galactus came with the help of The Watcher.
I don’t know why Galactus kept coming back to Earth, though.
About 10 years ago, Galactus almost died, and the F4 had to save him. When he recovered, he was really seriously POed at The In-Betweener.
Don’t recall the “flesh magnets.”
The origin of Galactus was told in just the past 10 years or so. He is the “survivor” of the previous incarnation of the universe. Actually, I think he was sorta “created” from the previous universe.
This type origin has been used before in Marvel. Gorm, the “Over-mind” (a F4 enemy) was the “creation” of all of the race of his planet, packaged into one person. He was defeated by The Stranger, who had the same type origin (but he came from an even BIGGER planet).
I didn’t know that the Silver Surfer was ever a bad guy, just that he was Galactus’ herald. I thought that he was the first character used as his herald, but I could be mistaken.
I haven’t read comic books in many years, and I haven’t seen the storyline in question since I was 13 or so… but it’s familiar.
The FIRST time Galactus faced the Fantastic 4, the Watcher violated his oath of neutral observing, and told the Human Torch of a super weapon that could destroy even Galactus. He showed the Torch where to find it. The Torch went through all kinds of obstacles, then brought the weapon to Reed Richards. Reed threatened Galactus with it, and Galactus reluctantly agreed to leave Earth.
SOmeone who took the story MUCH more seriously than I did can probably tell you details like the name of the weapon, etc.
Former comic book nerd and owner of several generation of Marvel Universe Trading Cards reporting.
I believe FF could only defeat Galactus using some bizarre alien hand-held weapon called the Ultimate Nullifier. This may be the thing that other posters claim the Watcher helped Torch find.
Name the creatures and I might be able to help ya
My card on him say Galactus was “the last survivor of the universe which existed before ours.” He was “once mortal… When the life cycle of his universe came to and end, he escaped death to be reborn into the new universe… after millions of years of incubation in a cocoon of cosmic energy.” Sounds a lot like my own life.
4)Again from the Series I cards: “It was [Silver Surfer’s] task to seek out planets suitable for Galactus… but it was on Earth that the Surfer realized that is was wrong to continue to help Galactus destroy inhabited worlds, and rebelled against Galactus.” His punishment was to be trapped on Earth. He eventually escaped.
Marge: Your father is… resting. Bart: “Resting” hung over? “Resting” got fired? Help me out here.
Who would win a fight between Mephisto at his strongest ever(Marvel has weakened Mephisto), and Thanos at his strongest and without those Infinity Gauntlet and suits that make him stronger.
the silver surfer was the inhabitant of some other planet off in the cosmos that galactus visited. the silver surfer struck up a bargain with the big fella: if galactus spared his home planet, he would serve as galactus’s “herald,” searching out new planets for the big guy to consume.
eventually, he came upon earth, and realized that he couldn’t continue turning over billions of innocent life forms to serve as food for galactus. so he rebelled, and galactus stripped him of his powers and abandoned him on earth.
The FF’s first meeting with Galactus was earlier than issue 150. I want to say issue 48-50, but I may be off by an issue or two. Initially the Watcher tried to conceal Earth from the Silver Surfer by screening it with fire and then asteroids. When the Surfer arrived on Earth, the Thing punched him off a roof and he ended up in the apartment of Alicia Masters, the Thing’s girlfriend. She convinced him that the people of Earth were worth not killing and he rebelled against Galactus. Meanwhile, the FF minus the Human Torch fought a delaying action against Galactus while the Torch, sent by the Watcher, sought out the Ultimate Nullifier, (at that time) the only thing that could destroy Galactus. Under threat of the Nullifier, Mister Fantastic extracted an oath from Galactus never to attempt to feed on Earth again. The Surfer, as punishment for his rebellion, was confined to Earth. He later escaped after figuring out that it wasn’t he who was bound to Earth but his surfboard.
The Ultimate Nullifier is a superweapon. It has the power to kill any living thing and there is no defense against it. However, its drawback is that when it’s used it kills both its target and its user.
Aha! Okay, the mini-series I was referring to began on ish 173 (so I guess it wasn’t the initial meeting). So that begs the question: if the FF had sent him packing with the Ultimate Nullifier the first time, why did he head back?
Oh, yeah, and the other questions in the OP, like the flesh magnets, are still open.
Too bad Marvel doesn’t have some uberarchive of old comix that were scanned in-I’d be willing to pay some bucks to go back and read a lot of the old back issues of FF, X-Men, heck, even Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos…
-sb
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
OK, here’s where I become crowned Ubergeek. I believe that Galactus in this run (not really a “mini-series” as it was contained within the title) was after “Counter-Earth,” whih was a planet created by the High Evolutionary and located in Earth’s orbit on the other side of the Sun, but was about 1/10th of Earth’s mass. Galactus agreed no to devour Counter-Earth and its millions of inhabitants if the FF found him a planet which willingly sacrificed itself in C-E’s place. Each member of the FF (except for the Invisible Girl who was still a wimp) was sent to another planet to see if they’d volunteer. The Thing was sent to an all-metal planet, ruled over by a robot named Torgo (whom the Thing had met previously in another book). Torgo used flesh-magnets (they attracted flesh instead of metal, see) to pin the Thing. Unbeknownst to Torgo, the Thing had recently reverted to human form and was wearing a Thing suit (exoskeleton). He was able to slip out of the suit and escape. Why didn’t the flesh-magnet attract him? Who knows? Anyway, Torgo’s planet didn’t volunteer so back went the Thing to C-E, where he learned another planet did volunteer. Galactus consumed that planet, called Popup (home planet of the Impossible Man), and was almost killed by it because he was unable to metabolize their weird shape-changing energy. I last read this about 15 years ago so I may be hazy on some of the details. Hell, I may be mixing two or more storylines for all I know. But I’m pretty sure this was the storyline you’re asking about.