My Fantastic Four-Ay: Part Two.

While the Thing quickly became one of my favorite Marvel superheroes, thanks in part to John Byrne’s portrayal in the (probably) first issue of Fantastic Four I purchased off the stands, I very quickly latched onto my favorite Marvel supervillain:

If #259 was my first purchased new issue of Fantastic Four, then #257 (cover date August 1983) was likely one my earliest back issue acquisitions of the series. And what a cover that was, with Galactus’ visage split with that of Death, which I probably thought was largely symbolic when I pulled the comic out of the bins, but surprise, it’s actually a literal representation of the story inside. But more on that in a moment.

I’ve read stories with Galactus, or referencing him, before, primarily in the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer stories reprinted in the Origins of Marvel Comics and Son of Origins of Marvel Comics 1970s paperbacks that I checked out several times from the library as a young’un. Those books were a primary source of my knowledge of Marvel characters, along with Stan Lee’s semi-apocryphal text pieces therein, which is something I somehow neglected to mention in the previous installments of this series of posts.

The Galactus I encounted in those stories, the 1960s era rendition of the character, were likely more in line with the bombastic, cosmic storytelling of Lee ‘n’ Kirby, or fitting into the more quixotic Silver Surfer stories by Lee and John Buscema. What Byrne gave me in this comic was a combination of both, starting with this issue’s splash page that I remember being quite taken with:

I mean, what? That’s how you start a comic, throwing what may be the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe at you and having him make this quiet, tragic-seeming admission. Plus, that’s a hell of a drawing.

Then Byrne hits us with this two-page spread, that really lays into the cosmic bombast while still giving Galactus his somber soliloquy as he ponders his existence:

I know at least a couple of you out there winced when I referred to Galactus as a “supervillain” earlier in this post. A lot of hay has been made over the fact that Galactus is not a villain, as such, as he is “beyond such concepts as good and evil.” It’s established early on that he does what he does (tools around the universe eating planets) because it’s what he must do to survive. Not out of malice, just out of necessity.

I suppose if you’re on the planet being eating, that’s a splitting of hairs you really don’t have the time for. But this issue, getting into Galactus’s head, as he goes into his motivations and his doubts, goes a long way to fleshing out a being that could have just been a giant monster that our heroes fight occasionally, and let that be that. Giving him this level of…dignity goes a long way to establishing just who and what he is, and while Byrne may not have been the first to do this with the character, this was the first time I’ve seen it done with him. And it just fascinated me.

What especially grabbed me is Byrne further indicating Galactus’s importance to the universe at large, by having him literally have a conversation with Marvel’s embodiment of Death:

Death straight up says that she and Galactus as “two corners of the great triangle which is the universe” (the third corner being, of course, this fella). I ate all this up, buying into the mystery and the cosmic significance of Galactus, and wanting to Read More About It.

Now, later in the issue, Galactus gets his mojo back and decides to eat a planet, this time just happening to be the homeworld of some old pests of the Fantastic Four, the Skrulls:

…and while the Big G usually sets up machinery and such to more effectly absorb the planet’s energies, sometimes you just wanna dive right into the pie and not bother with the fork, right?

And, luckily for me, this would lead into more delving into the nature of Galactus some issues later, as Reed Richards is forced into a space-trial, accused of being responsible for the destruction of the Skrulls’ planet.

Reed’s responsible, you see, because in a previous story, he took the steps to revive a fallen and really dying Galactus, because he wasn’t just going to stand by and watch someone die. Even a someone who’s taller than buildings and likes to eat planets.

And having learned that, I of course, in my Fantastic Four back issue buying, decided to pick up that particular storyline, three issues running from #242 to #245 (May-July 1982). Here’s the middle issue, with a great cover image that, eventually, was turned into a statue or toy of some kind:

It was also in this issue that I learned of the origin of Galactus’s new herald, Nova, who had been in the newer issues I read. It was weird, working my way backwards in time, filling in the holes in the newer stories I’d read. It’s a sensation I don’t really experience much of anymore, piecing together long runs and slowly having the full story come together, like getting chapters of a book out of order and reading them as they come. The old comics I collect now (like Popeye and Turok are episodic, and don’t have continuing subplots and such.

Regardless of the order in which I encounted his comics, Galactus continued to fascinate me and I would pick up his appearances as I saw them. And pal Cully (whom you’ve seen in my comments from time to time) would lend me his run of Lee/Kirby Thor that centered around Galactus and Ego the Living Planet, and that was almost too much cosmic shenaniganery for me to handle. Eventually I would get my hands on Supervillain Classics:

…which would fill in the holes on his backstory for me, using literal panels extracted from previously published comics and tied together with short bits of explanatory text.

Of course we’d eventually see Hatless Galactus, but maybe we’re getting a little off track here.

I still have a fondness for Galactus, particularly when creators have new and unusual takes on the character (like Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo having a depowered Galactus trying to exist as a “normal” person). I also enjoyed getting an actual Big Guy in a Wild Helmet version of Galactus in the recent Fantastic Four film.

Galactus pops up in a lot of places, but whenever he shows up in the Fantastic Four comic, I’m pleased to be seeing my old pal, the one who introduced me to the whole Cosmic-Ness of it all in the Marvel Universe.