You think
your job sucks? How would you like to be the herald for one of the most powerful, godlike and hated creatures in the universe? Tooling around through space on a surfboard? And then end up trapped on one of those planets he was supposed to consume? Yeah: nine to five not looking so bad now, huh? Meet
Born Norrin Radd on the far distant planet of Zenn-la, his race have reached the apex of evolution. With every evil eliminated – war, crime, poverty – his people have slipped into a “
Eloi-like” state of boredom and listlessness, or so it seems to him. Nothing is built any more. No science is practiced. Nobody strives, nobody questions, nobody yearns. His society, in other words, has become stagnant, and Radd does not like this. He yearns to travel back to the time before perfection was achieved, and to this end visits the museum of antiquities where he climbs into a time machine, though it does not physically transport him anywhere. It's called a Mental Transportation Element, and it creates pictures in his mind of the time he wishes to see, from the very earliest savage days of Zenn-la, when its inhabitants struggled for survival and dominance over the animals, to the wars that tore through his planet for centuries, finally culminating in their Age of Reason, where war was renounced and the population dedicated themselves to study, art and literature.
He speaks to his lover, Shalla Bal, about his dissatisfaction with how things were on Zenn-la, where centuries of academic knowledge can be downloaded into the brain in an instant, making true learning redundant, where the heart's desire can be created by machines and where the parliament discuss endless laws, completely aware of the fact that their discourse serves no purpose, as they are governed by computers. He remembers how once, the people of Zenn-la were explorers, adventurers who conquered galaxy after galaxy (actually, they may not have conquered them, the text doesn't make that clear, but you have to assume some of them were inhabited and would have put up a fight) but that after so long exploring and colonising they grew bored, and returned to their home planet, never to leave again, the urge to explore and test the frontier forever satisfied, and no longer attractive to them.
Just then the alarm sounds, for the first time in a thousand years. An unidentified spacecraft has been detected moving towards them, brushing aside their intricate defences. Though worried at the thoughts of a possible invasion after all this time, Radd believes this may be the impetus his people need to, well, get up off their arses and do something instead of lolling around all day, looking for more and better ways to waste time and divert themselves. As the citizens and government panic, and dither about how to face this unexpected and seemingly all-powerful enemy, they turn to their computers for the answer. That answer is that they must deploy the Weapon Supreme, their planet-busting super weapon, which is the only thing that can save them. Unfortunately, the backwash from the weapon, in addition to knocking many smaller planets out of their orbits, wreaks havoc on Zenn-La, reducing it to rubble. But at least the invader has been destroyed.
But then they see that it has all been for nothing. The invading vessel, a massive globe nearly the size of their own planet, is not destroyed. It had moved into another dimension to avoid the blast, and now comes triumphantly onwards. Despair and panic grip the citizens, as long-submerged and forgotten fears surface, but cometh the hour, cometh the man (or in this case, the alien) and Radd is determined not to just lie down and accept what seems to be an inevitable fate. He rushes out into the streets, seeking allies to help him defend the planet, but finds to his dismay (though surely not surprise) that nobody shares his defiant attitude. He comes across a scientist, and demands a spaceship be built to carry him up to the alien, there to find out what it wants and perhaps turn it aside. Luckily for him, as mentioned, these people can create something like that in seconds, and so they do, and he sets off.
Approaching the ominous alien ship he hails it but receives no answer. Suddenly his ship is gripped in an irresistible force and pulled towards, and then inside, the alien ship. Here he comes face to face with the mighty Galactus, an alien cosmic entity who stands many hundreds of feet tall, dwarfing Radd, and tells him that his planet is to be consumed by the titanic being, to provide energy which will sustain the massive alien. The name of Galactus – also called the Planet Destroyer, and with good reason – is known to Radd, even though he has never personally been beyond his home planet, and he quakes and quails as he considers the fate which now awaits Zenn-la.
Galactus doesn't seem, on the face of it, evil really. He explains that he laments the imminent loss of life on Zenn-la, but that he simply has not time to scour the universe looking for suitable, uninhabited planets. He likens his destroying Zenn-la in order that he may live to a human stepping on an ant-hill, and it's kind of hard to argue with that sort of logic. Radd, however, offers to be his herald, one who will do all the groundwork for him, find him uninhabited planets he can consume, if he will spare his homeworld. Galactus agrees, and Norrin Radd is transformed into ... the Silver Surfer!
For ages uncounted he roams the universe, searching for planets for his master, ensuring no life resides on them. But finally he comes to Earth, at a time when Galactus's hunger is stretched to breaking point, and the huge entity decides to destroy this world regardless of the life teeming upon its surface. Having come to know and respect the humans here, the Silver Surfer defies, for the first time ever, his master, who tries to destroy him but is prevented by the Fantastic Four, who have recovered the Ultimate Nullifer, a weapon of even more power than the Weapon Supreme that the people of Zenn-la possessed. Unwilling to face its awesome power, Galactus backs down for the first time ever, but since the Surfer betrayed him, he takes away his powers, dismissing him as his herald, and trapping him on Earth. He who had roamed the trackless depths of the universe is now condemned to the flimsy confines of one small blue-green world.
Notes
The first thing that struck me about this is the incredibly stiff and over-dramatic style in which it's written. Instead of saying things like “We're going to die because we became too arrogant” it's sentences like “We, who thought ourselves the mightiest of the mighty, are now brought low by this unknown alien force.” And so on. It's very flowery, almost laughably so. Also, it seems Radd must articulate every thought in his head - “The museum of artifacts: pulling me towards it” or “I feel my destiny calling” - which also gets a little wearing. It's not just this story though: there's a small feature after this, in the same comic, about The Watcher, and the same archaic forms are used there. A doctor, lamenting losing his patient, wails “We are only human: if only we understood the secrets of the universe!” Uh, yeah dude. People really do talk like that. No, they do. Really.
It's quite a pity really, because although intrinsically, a story about an alien who gets made into some new alien who can surf the stars (what was Jack Kirby
on when he worked this one out?) being hard enough to credit anyway, it makes it doubly difficult to treat it with any kind of seriousness – even comic seriousness, where we all suspend our disbelief for the duration – when the speech is so bloody stilted.
I also have to laugh and grudgingly applaud the lack of effort to explain what the substance that covers the Silver Surfer's body is - “A silvery substance,” says Galactus, “of my own creation.” Nicely dodged, guys. Stan Lee was the same with cosmic rays and gamma rays, neither of which he understood, the former of which he made up, but hey: it's comics, who cares? Except that later, as you grow up and are not quite as willing to accept things on trust as you were when you were a kid, you
do care. You want to know how and why these things happened, and it's a bit deflating to find that there was precisely zero scientific research put in to any of this. It wouldn't be quite so bad if this were being played for laughs, but it's clearly meant to be taken seriously, which kind of only makes me want to laugh more.
I must freely admit, the Silver Surfer was never one of my favourite characters growing up. I disliked his aloof, holier-than-thou attitude, was not crazy about his white eyes and to be honest, even to someone brought up on the fantastic and weird traditions of Marvel, he seemed a step too far. Flying on surfboard? In space? A huge alien who eats f
ucking planets? Get out. There was also a marked lack of humour, something I found integral and often vital to Marvel, in
The Silver Surfer series. It always seemed so damn serious, self-important and up itself.
Spiderman this was not! I always kind of hoped Galactus would eat him, either on purpose or by accident, the latter of which would be at least funny. “Now where is that lazy herald of mine?
Belch! Oh, excuse me!”
I think once he was allowed leave the confines of Earth and get back out into space the stories got better – there's only so much you can do on Earth when you're basically invulnerable and no fun at parties – but we'll see as we go along. For now, this is at least the origin of certainly one of Marvel's weirdest and trippiest characters. Ah, those heady sixties!