FH Mini 130 - A Galactus-Sized Explainer

Hello out there in Flop House Podcast Land.

My name is Elliot Kalen.

I am one of the three Flopsketeers, the regular co-hosts of the Flop House.

And it is my deep dismay to tell you that Dan and Stewart are not here today.

It's just me.

Just kidding.

Here they are.

Dan, Stewart, introduce yourself, please.

Wow, it's me, Dan McCoy.

I was wondering how long you're going to keep that up.

It's me, Stewart Wellington.

I was going to go down that road, and then I decided I didn't want to.

So this is a Flop House mini.

Normally on the Flop house, we watch a bad movie, we talk about it.

Last week, of course, was love hurts and boy did it ever.

This week though, we're going to ease our wounds and kind of like nurse ourselves into good health from that hurt by doing a mini, which is when we talk about whatever we want or in this case, whatever the fans want, one fan in particular, because there was one fan in particular, Andrew, last name withheld, who wrote into the podcast asking for an explainer.

I've done these kind of explainers every now and then for comic bookical things when there's a a comic bookical movie coming out.

I did an explainer for the Eternals.

I did an explainer for Adam Warlock.

One of those explicit things.

These really cleared everything up for me.

They did.

I mean, one of those Adam Warlock explainers got hijacked by Tom Brokaw.

We don't have to worry about that happening today because I know he's out in the desert going on what he calls a dune walk.

So we don't need to worry about him returning for this.

But Andrew, last name withheld, requested

an explainer for the upcoming Fantastic Four First Steps is the name of the movie, right?

Yeah, real quick, a dune walk.

Is Is that when the Fremen do that little stanky leg thing across the street?

It is.

Exactly.

He's practicing that.

He does that just for days straight until he goes into a fugue of some kind.

So there's a new Fantastic More movie.

There's a new Fantastic Four movie coming up.

Not a Fantastic More movie, which is what I was about to say.

Well, there's more Fantastic Four, because as you said, it's called First Steps, but this is the fifth Fantastic Four

film.

There was the Corman one, right?

There were the two Tim, is it Tim Story?

Not Tim Story.

They have stories in them.

The one that had Jess Galba and those ones and chick lists and whatever.

And then there's the F4 or whatever.

The one that we did on this podcast, the Trank.

Oh, yeah.

Which is your favorite?

Which is your favorite of the ones you've mentioned before, Dan?

You know, like the Trank one actually had some interesting stuff in it.

It just felt like it was something

something got fucked up with it.

the studio or something.

Honestly, honestly, of all the Fantasy 4 movies, my favorite is probably the Corman one, just because it's so, it's so, it's not good and it's so cheap, but it has the same kind of like ramshackle feel that the early Fantastic Four issues have

in a bad way.

The ramshackle feel in the early issues is good, but they have it a bad way.

But anyway,

that's right.

It was Tim Story who directed

the Alba Chickless movies.

I said they had stories in it.

I lost a bet.

But, but.

One of the writers, one of the listed writers for the first Fantastic Four is Mark Frost,

co-writer of Twin Peaks with David Wayne.

Well, that's why Invisible Woman ends up dead, wrapped in plastic at the end of the day.

Namor would be bummed out.

He would be so bummed.

I mean, and as we know from What If comics, anytime Reed Richards loses his wife either to Namor or to death, he goes insane and tries and just goes mad.

So Andrew wrote in and said, I'm looking forward to the new Fantastic Four movie.

However, I'm not entirely familiar with all of the characters, in particular, Silver Surfer, Galactus, and the mythology of the comic.

And he asked for a small primer in the same vein of the Adam Warlock one.

So that's what we're going to do today.

And this is going to be a special episode mini called Elliot Explains the Galactus Trilogy.

Let's say Galactus Saga trilogy.

I'm going to say Elliot Explains the Galactus trilogy.

And first I want to start by saying, Dan, Stu, how familiar are you with the Fantastic Four characters?

And these are the characters that are going to be in this movie, The Fantastic Four First Steps.

How familiar are you with them?

I know that Ben Grimm, the thing, just hates that, the ANC Street gang.

I mean, they're always pranking him.

They're always pranking him.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

I know that Silver Server's name is Rorin Nad or something like that.

No, it's Norin Rad.

Okay, so you don't know something about him.

You know, so they're, you know, like they're four, they're, they're four folks.

Yeah.

Three of them are related.

One of whom is Jewish, right?

Or at least in the same family, not related, all three, but and one of them is the best friend.

Yeah.

And they went into space.

They got bombarded with cosmic rays.

One of them got stretchy.

One of them can be invisible and make force fields.

One of them is a rock guy.

And one of them is a flying guy.

By a rock guy, you mean he collects minerals?

Yeah.

I mean, he's.

Yeah.

His name is Slash, and he's a guitarist or G and R.

The G stands for geode, and the R stands for rocks.

So, Dan,

you've done a great job.

Stuart, you've done it.

Yeah, you almost got server's name right.

So let me take you back to the beginning.

So the Fantastic Four, they are the birth of the Marvel universe in comics.

So it's ironic that they're coming so late in the movie versions because in 1961, Marvel Comics is not even fully called Marvel Comics yet, as I think it's still potentially between names.

It was called Timely at one point.

It's called Atlas at one point.

I think it was between Timely and Marvel.

I could be wrong, but it's November 1961.

That's the cover date, which doesn't mean it's actually when it came out, but that's the cover date.

They do this, that they've been doing monster comics for a long time at Marvel, and it's time to bring superheroes back for them because superheroes are doing fine at DC again.

And Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the two of the three bedrock foundational creators of the Marvel characters, the other one being, of course, Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, they come up with this team, the Fantastic Four.

Now, here's the thing: we're going to get into just slightly in this, but not a lot.

For decades, the argument has been: who deserves more credit, Jack Kirby or Stan Lee?

Did Jack Kirby come up with it?

And then Stan Lee just kind of put his gloss.

Did Stan Lee tell Jack Kirby, this is what I need you to do?

And we'll figure out together.

There's a great, great book called

I think, Kirby and Lee's Stuff Said, I think, which collects all of the existent kind of interview or known quotes from Kirby and Lee about working together and puts them kind of in chronological order.

And it's the closest I've been able to see of something that actually kind of digs in who did what and how much people can be credited with which aspect of it.

But anyway, I highly recommend that book if you want to learn more about the Kirby-Lee relationship and how they work together.

It's from Tomorrow's Publishing, I think.

So go to them and find it.

It's a great book, Kirby Lee's stuff said.

I think stuff is spelled S-T-U-F.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I can't remember.

So we're not going to get into that super much, except in terms of the Silver Surfer later, because that's the part of the story.

The Silver Surfer is the Stanley-Jack Kirby relationship.

Anyway, they come up with these superheroes.

They got four of them.

And they are Reed Richards, Mr.

Fantastic.

He's stretchy and he's a brilliant genius.

Ben Grimm, Reed Richards' best friend and college roommate, The Thing, fighter pilot, goes into space, becomes back a strong guy made out of rocks.

Sue Storm, not yet Reed Richard's wife, but they will get married eventually.

It's his girlfriend.

She eventually, she goes up with him in space, becomes the invisible woman, first the invisible girl.

And then 20 years later,

her name finally changes to the invisible woman.

She grew up after 20 years.

Literally, at a certain point, she had, I mean, for a lot of it, she is married and a mother, and she's still calling herself the invisible girl.

Stanley kept saying, girl, you'll be a woman soon, but it becomes a matter of money.

But not yet.

But not yet.

And Johnny Storm, uh the hot rud loving younger brother of sue storm who becomes the human torch and so like you said dan they go up into space they get hit by cosmic rays because their spaceship is experimental it's not shielded right they come back with these powers and they become adventurers and they become the first superhero group of the 60s marvel and that's do their do their powers are those extensions of their like personalities Do the cosmic rays just take what was there and expand it?

Yeah, Reeves a really stretchy person.

He's not a person.

Well, I mean, you could say.

He's kind of

Well,

you could say, as their characterizations develop, that Johnny is a hothead.

So, like, he's a young guy who's a hothead.

So people have semi torch.

Ben Grimm is a character who

is also a hothead, but has a...

But has a thing that becomes the core of him is the issue of self-esteem that he has, that he is super strong, but he thinks he's a monster.

He can never be loved.

His girlfriend, Alicia Masters, is blind, and he's always worried that

she's going to discard him if she ever gains gains her sight and can see what he looks like again so maybe it comes from a feeling of deficiency because his best friend is a genius you know uh read richards you could say that his thinking is flexible he's able to uh it can uh he is very rigid in other ways but that uh he's able to come up with these amazing ideas in the way that he stretches his body and as the invisible girl is written by stan lee she is constantly disappearing into the background because as the female character he does not care as much about her and does not give her as much to do so i guess that's that's part of it but this is where the marvel universe really begins in the, in the Silver Age.

And this is the book that Jack Kirby, for a long time, as the artist on the book and eventually mainly the plotter on the book who was writing the stories and then Stanley would write the dialogue, he was using this as his laboratory for creating new places and concepts that the other Marvel titles could then work off of, you know, and use.

Jack Kirby isn't is he's

one of the best known comic artists for a reason.

He's the king.

He's one of the greatest artists that ever worked in comics, not necessarily because he has the best technical skills, although his storytelling skills are

among the best that there ever were.

His characters, their proportions are weird, their anatomy is weird.

They're not always consistent in a great way from panel to panel, but his storytelling and his power are so strong.

And also his imagination is so incredible.

It's so his he he is like an idea machine.

when he's at his best and also when he's at his worst because his worst comics are the ones where he's just throwing a parade of ideas at you, and you're like, oh, wait, hold on, hold on, stop and explain any of these to me.

Hold on, stop and do something with one of these ideas.

And he's like, nope, sorry.

I got another idea coming up.

Anyway, we're talking about Fantastic Four, specifically for this movie.

They are, as people say all the time, they're not just a team of superheroes.

You know who they are, guys?

They're family.

And I wanted to get into this.

So I have read.

a fair amount of

old comics, but certainly much less.

A Fantastic Fair amount.

Certainly much less than Elliott, probably less than Stewart, but I've read a lot of the early Fantastic Four books, like the very first ones in like, you know, one of those collections, because I'm like, yeah, well, you know, this is where it kind of started.

I'm curious about it.

And I like the space age vibe of all of it.

And everyone talks about how, oh, the innovation was like.

These are these are real people, right?

They're like, they're like a family.

They argue a lot, but they love each other.

And I got to say that reading a lot of those first comics, I was put off by the Fantastic Four because they seem to argue a lot and maybe not like each other that much.

All the time.

Yeah, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm seem to have like a Bart Simpson and Homer Simpson relationship.

I mean, they are constantly fighting each other with their powers.

Yeah.

I think, Dan, so those earliest comics are pretty, I mean, there's an energy and excitement to them because it feels like something new is being done.

But it is a, it's the, but the later ones, the later issues of that Kirby Lee run, kind of the middle of the run, is the sweet stuff.

And I'm going to talk about that.

So I'm glad that you brought that up.

It's a little bit like listening to the earliest Beatles albums and then listening to like Sgt Pepper, where you're like, oh, there's this energy and there's this excitement in the early ones, but it doesn't have the ingenuity and it doesn't have the kind of like, this kind of like innovative beauty that the later work has, you know.

But you're right.

And I think when it first came on the scene in 1961, the difference was that the characters argued, as opposed to the DC characters who are pretty, like, alternated between being incredibly pleasant and professional and doing terrible things to each other to teach each other lessons.

You're like, sorry, Jimmy Olson, you have to marry a gorilla now because I'm teaching you a lesson about humility.

Like,

I think it's, it's the feeling.

Those comics really are for young people,

especially those old ones, where it's like the emotions are really high all the time.

There's an adolescent energy in some of those early Fantastic Four issues that's kind of similar to like Rob Leifeld's X-Force comics from the 90s, where if you look at at them, they are objectively kind of dumb.

The art is objectively like not technically right.

Oh, what do you need?

Like backgrounds and feet?

Yeah, you want to get it.

You want feet that look like they're on the ground.

And maybe people's thighs are not as big as their torsos.

But when you're reading that comic book when you're 13, you're a 13 or 14-year-old boy, you're like, this is amazing.

And it's the energy of it and the feel of it that's really exciting about it.

Like, give me a bunch of tiny lines all over everything.

Exactly.

That's how I feel.

Like, I'm covered in tiny lines and pouches full of, I don't know what, because I never see anyone use them

that just change, I guess.

And so

as the so I think the mistake, if you're getting into the Fantastic Four, this is a Elliot Kalen tip.

The mistake is to start from the very beginning, Fantastic Four number one.

Where you want to start, I think, is with this run of 10 issues in the middle of the Kirby Lee run.

Kirby and Lee did this book together for 102 issues.

And it's one of the longest straight runs that a writer and artist have done together.

There are longer ones, and then you've got like Cerebus, which is 300 issues, but that's also a madman.

Like, that's literally a person who's emotionally unbalanced doing a

Gerhard or whatever.

Gerhard is, that's not Gerhardt that I'm getting at.

Gerhardt, that's a job for Gerhardt.

I was, yeah, this is Gerhardt.

He's just a working guy doing backgrounds, you know.

But between issue 43 and 53 is when Kirby's imagination, in some ways, is at his most fecund, and he and Lee are really keyed in for the most part about what they're doing.

And that's a run that starts with the creation of the inhumans, characters who had their shot with the Marvel Snake Semitic Universe and fucked it up and totally whiffed it, which makes sense because the Inhumans are a kind of weird, it's a weird batch of characters.

I like them, but they're weird.

They're kind of like a precursor of the Eternals, a weird batch of characters that I do not like particularly that also had their chance at the Marvel Universe and whiffed it.

But the Eternals had less to work with.

Anyway, in that run, you've got the Inhumans.

You've got Black Panther at the end of it being introduced.

You've got the best single issue, I think, of the run, This Man, This Monster, issue number 51, which is a heartbreaking story about thing and about this mad scientist character who's just in it for one issue and gets a full human story.

And you get, in between those stories, after The Inhumans and Before This Man, This Monster, you get the Galactus Trilogy, issues 48 through 50.

March to May of 1966.

I think that's when they were cover dated.

That's the middle of this 10-issue amazing run that happens in this 102 very foundational run.

You have these three issues, the Galactus trilogy, which is a really fantastic story.

And within that story, laid the groundwork for so much stuff that would be like the Marvel way of doing things.

And again, it's kind of amazing that this Galactus story is now, it's been told once in a movie, but they kind of, again, they whiffed it.

That it's because there's like a big cloud in that movie.

He's a big cloud.

He's not really a character.

Yeah, yeah.

That's true to Jack Kirby's vision.

Yes.

I mean, here's the thing about Jack Kirby.

He is not subtle.

So even if his villain was a big cloud, it would be a big cloud with a face, probably

lightning bolts going everywhere.

Yeah, probably a mustache.

I mean, like, the close to you have that is Ego the Living Planet, another Jack Kirby character who's literally a planet with a face with a beard.

But this, but the this Galactus story, this Galactus trilogy is

just this high point of

the Silver Age of comics and of the Fantastic Four and of the Marvel Universe.

And guys, I want to ask, have you ever read this story, the Galactus Trilogy, issues 48 through 50?

Never read it.

No, I never read it.

I know that Galactus' deal is he's like, he sees planets.

He's like, yum, yum, gimme some.

Yeah, he has a seafood diet when it comes to planets.

He sees planets and he wants to eat them.

Yeah, and he does that.

You did quote, so you did read it.

So you know his famous catchphrase, yum, yum, gimme stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And he's got little guys who go out and find the planets to Heralds.

He's got to numb down on.

He does have his Harolds.

That's right.

There's a funny comedy.

Does he also have Pinter Mollis?

Yeah, Harold.

Yeah, there's a lot.

Get all the Harold jokes in there.

That's great.

I ran out of Harolds after Pinter.

I had one.

Is that why his now fits all purple?

That would be fantastic.

I would love.

This should be, if a fan hasn't done it, they should do a tie-in between Galactus and Harold and the purple crane where it says Harold with the purple crayon and he rides on that crayon.

Anyway,

Harold is spelled, of course, differently.

It's like, you know, you have a trumpet before the king, Harold.

Yeah, yes.

To quote Smithers, when Burns asked him if Homer Simpson is related to, if this Homer Nixon is related to Richard Nixon, Smithers said, well, he his spells and pronounces his name differently, sir.

So this, so

I'll give you the brief story of what happens in this.

The brief version.

Okay, the Galactus trilogy.

There's this character they had already introduced called The Watcher.

Guys, do you know what The Watcher does?

And I don't watch.

He watches.

He's like, what if something happened?

He's supposed to not interfere, but he does it all the time.

Exactly.

So the Watcher.

Is he the guy with a pot on his head?

No, that is the high evolutionary, I think, think, you're thinking of.

I'm thinking,

he's the guy for

what the?

Oh, the pot.

That's Forbushman.

The guy who literally wears a pot on his head.

No, that's Forbushman from what the humor magazine that's Marvel.

That's not the Watcher.

No, that's not The Watcher.

The Watcher is the host of What If, the non-humorous magazine, where the What If is an excuse for every story for you to see the Marvel characters getting killed in different ways every month.

So The Watcher, his name is Uatu.

He is a big, bald baby in a toga.

And he lives on the moon and he just watches the earth and he does not interfere.

He has a strict rule of non-interference, which as Dan says, he interferes all the time.

He constantly is interfering.

And in this case, he does because he has to warn the Fantastic Four, Galactus is coming.

And they're like, what is this?

And he's like, it's the worst thing in the world.

And soon they are greeted by.

The herald of Galactus.

That's right, the Silver Surfer.

And as we learn, Galactus, he's a huge guy with this amazing helmet.

that he, it is one of the all-time great Kirby helmets.

He and Hella have the best Kirby kind of headpieces, and it's just, it's amazing.

It's a fantastic look.

Galactus.

Yes.

Galactus's original design is not the best.

He has a big G on his chest and wears a short, short sleeves and kind of a toga with bare, like a toga skirt with bare legs.

But the next time you see Galactus, he's wearing pants and he doesn't have a G on his chest.

And the

design is fantastic.

I also love that he's always just like standing.

Yes.

Galactus.

So, yeah.

So, what were you going to say, Dan?

I'll tell you.

My college friend, Matt Bird,

has a Marvel

reread

podcast called Marvel Reread Club.

They were just mentioning, I think Galactus just showed up for the first time, or maybe they're just mentioning him in an episode, but they pointed out the humor of, of course, a character arriving on Earth who's not from Earth, having the initial in English of their first name on their shirt or whatever.

And Marvel did the smart thing was just discarded it the next time as opposed to what Superman has had to do over and over again where they're like, oh, that's a Kryptonian symbol.

That's what their family does.

Yeah, it means that he's down to clown.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like a pineapple, an upside-down pineapple or whatever.

So this, with that SM,

it's like wearing a red red handkerchief in the back pocket of my pants.

It lets you know what I'm into.

So

to make a a long story short, crystal stuff.

Yeah, Superman is really into crystal stuff.

That's true.

That'd be so funny if Superman is like, he's a great superhero, but he's always going to crystal shops and being like, well, what's the energy vibrations on this one?

Yeah,

this is the crystal that has my dad in it.

And this is the one that goes in my butt.

Yeah.

Well, I just, and I love the idea of it.

I don't like to get them mixed up.

That, like, yeah, there's like crystal shop, like New Age crystal shop owners.

They're like, yeah, there's this weird guy, Clark Ken, who keeps coming around buying up crystals.

He seems so like straight-lace.

He's always got a glass of crystal light in his hands, you know?

Yeah.

So Galactus, he's the devourer of worlds.

He is an enormous giant who feeds off the life energy of planets.

He has a machine he sets up that sucks the life energy out of planets, leaving them withered, lifeless husks, destroying all life on them.

That's the only way he can survive.

The silver surfer is his herald.

He is a shining silver guy on a silver surfboard.

And this is Jack Kirby being really influenced by 60s kind of surf culture.

He was always kind of like picking things out of the zeitgeist and just throwing them into his books.

And the silver surfer flies through space, finds planets for Galactus to eat.

Galactus comes and sets up his

machine, sucks all the life out of it, and they go off to find another planet.

And the watcher is like, I've become attached to Earth.

I can't interfere, but I'm going to warn you about this.

The amazing thing about this story is that the Fantastic Four try to fight Galactus, and they cannot do it.

He is just too powerful.

And there's a scene where he's setting up his machine, and the characters are literally like Mr.

Fritz just shaving.

They're just kind of doing regular taking care of themselves stuff because they feel like there's nothing they can do.

Like there's no, and it captures a feeling of if anyone has ever been in a place where there is an enormous catastrophe and there's the moment after that catastrophe where you do not want to do with yourself.

Like these comics kind of capture that feeling in a hyperbolic way.

The same way that this is a tangent, but

the thing that hit me the hardest in terms of capturing the feeling of what it was like the day after September 11th or the night of September 11th, being in New York City the night of September 11th was this issue, I think it's the second or third issue of the second League of Extraordinary Gen Men volume, where Martians have landed, they have set a village on fire, the league has shown up, and now it's the night after that, and they're just in an inn, and they don't know what to do with themselves.

They're playing like kind of matchstick riddle games.

They're just kind of sitting around.

They don't know what to do with themselves.

There's nothing they can do.

That's what it feels like.

And there's a, there's a, something enormous has happened.

You cannot affect it, but

time is there.

You know, you're still living.

So, and uh, and it captures that feeling.

Ultimately, let's keep the digressions on this very non-digression podcast to a minimum.

You're right.

Thank you.

I got to be super streamlined as I, as I explain this comic book from 60 years ago.

You're right.

Thank you, Stuart.

The

ultimately, two things happen.

that turn the tide for humanity.

One is Alicia Masters, the blind sculptor, who is Ben Grimm, the Thing's girlfriend, and is also the niece of the puppet master.

We don't need to get into that.

A hilariously, a villain who also looks like a big bald baby.

Like he looks like a living kind of bald, howdy-duty style puppet.

He's not in this storyline.

She meets the Silver Surfer and convinces him that there's something worthwhile in humanity and that he should turn against Galactus and try to defend them.

And he does this.

Do they like bump into each other at like a street fair or something?

How do do they find it?

I don't remember how they find it.

He ends up in her apartment.

I don't remember how.

And Silver Surfer in this storyline, but nowhere else, is presented as a fairly inhuman figure who does not understand,

doesn't understand life or emotion.

Later on, as we'll talk about, Stanley decided that wasn't the way he wanted the character to be.

And he really changed the character drastically without Jack Kirby's input or knowledge in a way that really pissed Jack Kirby off.

But both Jack Kirby and Stanley really took to the Silver Surfer in different ways.

And this is a character who Jack Kirby is just a full creator on.

That literally

he handed in the pages of the book to Stanley, and Stanley was like, oh, there's a new character in this.

I don't know who this character is.

Like, what is this thing?

Because Jack Kirby just decided Galactus is so big, he needs someone to announce him.

He needs a herald to come along before him.

But anyway,

Elisa Masters convinces the Silver Surfer that he should defy Galactus.

And the Watcher, non-interfering as always, helps Johnny Storm travel through dimensions

on a

quest that almost drives him insane at how minuscule humanity is, at the scope of the universe.

He comes back and he goes, we're like ants, ants.

Like he's almost mad.

Like he's almost bonkers.

But he's able to retrieve an item called the ultimate nullifier, the most powerful weapon in the universe that can just,

if as long as you are holding it and focusing on entirely with all of your thought on one object, that object ceases to exist.

Now, the problem is, if your mind slips for just a moment, it eats up you and you cease cease to exist.

As happens to Quasar many years later.

I'm not going to bad at that.

It would be, yeah, everyone would be bad at it.

It's terrible.

You got to be just the biggest Zen master to use it.

And Galactus is so afraid of the ultimate nullifier, which is this tiny little handheld device.

It's another great Kirby design that he says, if you give that to me, I'll leave and I won't eat Earth.

I just, I don't want you to have that.

You're like children playing with a nuclear weapon.

Like you shouldn't have it.

And at the end, He takes the ultimate nullifier and he leaves.

Earth is saved.

And the Silver Surfer is damned by Galactus to be stuck on Earth.

He says, you will never soar the spaceways again, or something like that.

And now, for a long time, the Silver Surfer was stuck on the planet Earth and couldn't get back into space.

And that's Galactic.

And his name is Herald after that.

He's had a bunch of other heralds.

And of course, he's had other Heralds after that.

He had, I forget if the one after that was, I think it was Fire Lord.

There was Air Walker.

There was Nova, Frankie Ray, there was...

Terex.

You know what?

Terex might have been.

No, I remember.

There's Terex,

whatever his name is.

There's Morg, the executioner, or whatever.

He's had a ton ton of heralds.

His heralds are always turning on him or becoming so dangerous that he has to destroy them or something like that.

But being his herald, Silver Surfer has a bunch of powers that we'll talk about when we talk about his origin, which I'm going to talk about very soon.

So that's this original Galactus story.

The Silver Surfer shows up.

He's like, my boss is going to eat this planet.

Agalatis shows up.

Nobody can stop him.

Silver Surfer is like, hey, you know what?

Humans ain't bad.

I'll try to protect them.

And the heroes are like, look at this thing we have.

And Galactus is like, put that down.

Give it to me and I'll leave.

And that's the basics of the story.

But the way it's handled is great.

And what's amazing is issue 51, the last issue, issue 50, I'm sorry, issue 50, the last issue of the trilogy.

The story ends with Galactus like halfway through the issue.

And then Johnny Storm like goes to college.

And it's about Johnny Storm going to college and meeting like his new roommate, Wyatt, and Wyatt, the football coach who really wants Wyatt to play on the team and Wyatt doesn't want to.

And there's something amazing about this huge epic cosmic story that ends partway through the issue.

And it's like, yeah, well, life goes on.

Johnny's got to go to college now so it's really amazing and so the this i mean there might be a class there about defeating galactus you never know that's true that's a good point he should have taken it first yeah and the thing that makes this story special in so many ways is is partly the scope of the thing is the thing either partly the scope well the issue that comes directly afterwards is an amazing thing story and that is what makes that one special this man this monster uh and the which i highly recommend if you're going to read one Fantastic Four issue, issue 51, This Man, This Monster is the one to do.

It's just, it's just beautiful.

But is it a Fantastic Four, like that one Alan Moore issue of Swamp Thing is to Swamp Thing?

Which one issue of Alan.

So the one where he has the sex one?

No, the one where he's like, he realizes that he's the one.

You know.

The first issue?

Spoiler.

Yeah, really.

The first issue of the run.

I mean,

not technically the first issue of his run, but the first issue of

the Alan Moore storyline that he's doing.

Yeah, I mean,

it's different than that.

I feel like it's different than that.

but you could say that

with uh with the it's like it is to that what the issue of Amazing Spider-Man is.

I think it's 33, where Spider-Man lifts all that heavy junk off of him, where he's able to find the strength to save his aunt and save himself from this big, heavy machine that's on top of him, which is the greatest moment to me in the entire Spider-Man run.

I mean, that's weird, though, because I feel like that's an example of a trope that you hate in general, which is, I just got to want it more.

No, because the issue,

it's the buildup.

Because so that this is a huge digression.

And then we'll do, I'll leave space for ads, and then we'll come back and talk about the origins of these characters, what happened to them after that trilogy.

But

that issue, Dr.

Octopus has trapped Spider-Man under this heavy thing of metal.

And the medicine that Ant-May needs to survive is just out of reach.

And the room is flooding.

The stakes are so bad.

Spider-Man is going to drown.

And if he does, Ant-May is going to die.

And he does not have the strength to do it.

And the issue is, it's not that he is hurt and he suddenly is at full power and gets berserker strength.

Instead, it is, you have this, I think, a five-page sequence where he is talking himself up to it.

He says, that's it.

I can't do it.

I failed.

And thinking to himself, no, I've got to do this.

It's not like I, it's my inner strength that's important.

It's not my outer strength.

I have this responsibility to Aunt May and I have to do it.

And each page, there are fewer and fewer panels until finally the last page is this just one full panel splash page of him throwing the thing off going, I did it.

And then afterwards, he's totally, he's, he's like complete, he's, he's weak and he's just in a, he's like in a daze as he's fighting his way through to get out.

And it's the difference I think of in movies that happen super fast.

And then when they did this scene in Spider-Man Homecoming, it happened super fast.

It didn't work.

And what works for me is the buildup, the buildup and the philosophy behind it.

Because the thing I love about Spider-Man, what makes him the greatest character in fiction to me, is partly that he has an ethic and a philosophy.

And you feel him living out those ethics and trying to make those ethics work in a world that makes it very hard to remain ethical and still be true to yourself and still be good to all the people in your life.

It's a very, for lack of a better word, to me, he's a a very Jewish character in that way, where he's about, these are the laws I have to live by and life makes it so incredibly hard for me to live by these laws.

And I have to square my responsibility to the rules that I have under understand to be the right way to live and the reality of living in a world that does not operate by those rules.

And that's why those rules exist, because if they, if that was the way the world worked, we wouldn't need them, but the world doesn't work that way, so we need them.

And so it is him.

Working through that philosophy as he's regaining the strength in himself to do it, as opposed to the thing you see in movies where it's like, oh, I've been beaten all the shit.

And the bad guy goes, oh, now I'll kill your child.

And the person goes, no, and jumps up and suddenly is full of, you know, justice strength.

Instead, it's how deep he has to dig in himself to find that strength.

That's what makes it work for me.

Anyway, so that's, so this, that, this man, this monster is the equivalent of that to me, you know, in terms of early Marvel stuff or single issue stories.

So thing about Galactus is he is a godlike figure.

That's what makes him different from other super villains.

He's not a guy who wants to conquer the world.

He is a force of nature.

He's a cosmic force of nature that does what he does purely to survive.

And he constantly says this to everybody.

He constantly says, I am neither good nor evil.

I do what I do without pleasure.

I merely do what I must to survive.

He does it while holding his hand out to people.

Yeah, he's always holding his hand.

Jack Kirby loves throwing people with their hands out in like Roman oratorical poses, you know?

He's always doing that.

And there's a legend that for years, there was this legend that Stan Lee said to Jack Kirby, give me a story where the FF fights God, and that this is what he came up with.

That's not true.

But Kirby was definitely thinking on the level of like, we want a god-like figure.

How do we get bigger with these stories?

They're going to fight a force of nature who is not immoral, but purely amoral.

There's no morality to what he does.

Is that why he had a G on his chest?

Because it stands for God.

I mean, maybe.

Who knows?

I mean,

it's a good idea.

It stands for goof troop.

It stands for goon and all day long.

Goofy movie, come a the.

That's what Stanford loves it.

So that's the origin.

I mean, he would, he would love the songs of Powerline.

It's true.

So that's that.

That's Galactus and Silver Surfer as they appear in that first story.

Silver Surfer is kind of a

kind of emotionless herald of Galactus who learns to find a little bit of feeling for humanity.

Galactus is a force of nature, but

we don't learn the origins of either of these characters in this storyline.

Where did they come from?

And how much of it, I think, might show up in the movie.

We're going to discuss that after this break.

break.

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Thank you to all our sponsors and now back to the mini.

Okay guys, we're back.

Dan told you a bunch of ad stuff.

Go and buy those products.

Help us enrich the people who buy space on the

podcast so that you do that.

But before you do that, let's talk a little bit more about these characters because here's where it gets interesting from a behind the scenes perspective also.

Because one of the things I find most interesting about Marvel Comics is not just what's happening on the page, but what's happening behind the page with the creators involved.

I'm endlessly fascinated by the history of these people who made Marvel Comics, and to a lesser extent, Asian Comics, but mostly Marvel Comics.

This thing that at the time that these were being created was

considered a cheapy, kind of like trivial, vulgar art form, certainly not something where there was a lot of money in it, unless you were the guy who owned the merchandising rights.

And even then, it was not billions of dollars.

You know, it was maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And

which has become so important to so many people who are now adults.

But at the time, if you asked most grown-ups, hey, what do you know about the Fantastic Four?

They'd be like, What?

I just came back from World War II and now I'm trying to, I've been working as an executive or like on a, on an assembly line for 15 years or whatever, or 20 years.

Like, I'm trying to raise a family.

Like, I don't understand what's going on with the youth today.

Like, I don't have any, President Kennedy was killed a couple years ago.

I don't have any time for Galactus.

What is that?

And the amount of.

I got a moon landing to prepare for.

Exactly.

The amount of effort that was being put into these books that were essentially at the time considered, except by Jack Herbie, who thought this work is going to live forever, essentially throw away juvenile entertainment.

So they came up with this Silver Surfer.

Jack Herbie comes up with the Silver Surfer character, and Stanley instantly is like, I love this character.

This is my favorite character.

I want to do a whole book of the Silver Surfer.

I'm going to write it.

It's going to be my version of the character.

And you know what?

My version of the character is not.

a construct created by the Galactus who learns how to be human, learns how to have emotions, which was kind of, it seems like was Jack Herbie's original plan.

My version is a man who sold his soul to the devil as a sacrifice to save his world and is a sort of Jesus Hamlet figure, endlessly soliloquizing about why can't humanity get along?

Why is humanity so full of hatred and bloodshed?

Stanley's like all the stuff I feel as a mid-century American liberal about why can't we just love each other despite the colors of our skin.

Silver Surfer is my vehicle for that.

And so he starts doing a Silver Surfer comic with a different artist, John Busama.

And Jack Kirby, who had big plans for the Silver Surfer after his appearance in Fantastic War, was like, was devastated by this, that this character was taken away from him.

And also that the version of the character that now became Continuity Canon was not his version.

So what's the Stan Lee version, which became Canon?

Well, the Silver Surfer, we learn

was Norin Rad, an inhabitant, an inhabitant of the.

Close to what I said.

Close to what he said, Roarin Nad.

Yeah.

And the inhabitant of the.

Roarin Nads.

That's what I've got.

Yeah, he said his original power was Roarin Nads.

Yeah,

there's a villain named Angar the Screamer, who's kind of a psychedelic hippie.

And it would be funny if his power was Angar the Screamer's power was roaring Nads.

There's like

heavy vibrations that come out of his testicles that debilitate people.

Noran Rad lives on the planet Zenlaw.

He is in love with Shalabal, and Galactus comes to eat Zenlaw and to save his love and to save his planet.

Noran Rad says, Spare my planet, and I will agree to be your herald and to find other planets for you.

I will do the work so that you can just focus on chomping down those celestial orbs that you love to eat so much.

And he kind of loses humanity.

He gains what's called the power cosmic, an ill-defined power that allows him to do pretty much anything.

Yeah, I remember trying to get my brother to explain the silver surfer to me.

And he said, well, he's got the power cosmic.

And I'm like, what's that?

Was he always shiny or is that power cosmic?

That's power cosmic.

He gains the shiny covering over his body that allows him to survive in deep space.

Was he always a surfer or or was that a paracosmic?

That's a good question.

I've never seen a story where he's surfing on Zen Law.

The board is part of his power.

Okay.

And so he's always,

he can always call the board to himself.

One of his catchphrases is, to me, my board.

And then the surfboard will come to wherever he is.

He is, I love the Silver Surfer.

I think he's a great character.

I like Stan Lee's origin for him, and I love those issues, even though it gets very tiring to see Silver Surfer just constantly page after page of him soaring around in the air going like, oh, if only man could learn to learn love, why is there so much war on this earth?

You know, I love your elderly version of the song.

Oh, if only man we could learn love.

Yeah.

And he is very much a Jesus figure in the Marvel universe, understandly.

One of his main villains is Mephisto, who is one of Marvel's stand-ins for Satan.

He's a demon who wants devil who wants to get Silver Surfer's soul.

So the Silver Surfer becomes that.

He becomes this guy who...

Over time, has become a mainstay of the Marvel universe.

He's had his own title for a long time.

There's been great runs on his title.

Steve Engelhardt had a great run.

There's a run by Ron Mars and Ron Lim that is fantastic.

Jim Starlin, one of my favorite Marvel creators, he had a run on Silver Surfer.

There's a lot of great runs.

He's a big part of the Infinity Gauntlet story in the original comics, even though he's not in the movies.

And Surfer and Thanos and Adam Warlock are three characters that I love who are kind of always bumping into each other and revolving around each other.

So

he's one of the linchpins of the cosmic world that Marvel has.

Marvel has two types of worlds.

There's the worlds outside your your window, which is the New York of the Marvel universe, where it's just like you're in New York, but there's superheroes.

And then the cosmic universe, where there's constant energy bolts that are thousands of miles long flying around and gods and strange demigod characters and embodiments of abstract principles and forces that

see humanity as microscopic beings and so forth.

And the third one is the savage land, right?

Well, I guess you could say then it's the, it's the what you'd call kind of like uncharted lands.

And that's the kind of stuff that Kirby was always coming up with.

And there you'd have like the Savage Land or Wakanda, Black Panther's nation, which is secretly in those early comics, secretly this technological wonderlands that the rest of the world doesn't know about.

So I guess those are those three things.

The Savage Land, for anyone who doesn't know, is the part of Antarctica that aliens put a protective field over.

So it's always warm there and dinosaurs still live there.

And the X-Men seem to end up in the Savage Land all the time for some reason.

And there's a great X-Men Savage Land storyline in the John Byrne Chris Claremont run where Sauron comes back.

Sauron, a character dear to my heart, because my everlasting legacy in comic books is one panel of Sauron talking to Spider-Man.

So Jack Kirby had this idea of what Silver Surfer is.

Stanley changes it.

The same thing's not going to happen with Galactus, right?

Right, Dan?

I feel like you're setting me up for a trap.

It is a trap, Dan.

The same thing happens with Galactus.

There's a series of Thor comic books where, for some reason, they decided that this fantastic Thor villain, Galactus, should have his origin told in Thor.

They were trying to make Thor more cosmic.

He goes out in space a lot.

And they have this Thor storyline where he learns Galactus's origin.

Yeah, what's the story here?

Do you guys know what Galactus's origin is?

No, he's like a big dude.

He's a big guy, right?

He is a big guy.

He's a big dude, too.

He's a big purple dude.

Did he not start out big?

Is he like the smallest dude on his

scrum and that made him want to eat?

Even Dorf started small.

Yeah, even Galactus started small.

Galactus, so he starts out as a scientist named Galan on the planet Ta.

And this is not in our universe, but in the universe before our universe.

And much like in the Superman origin where

his father Jorel is like, Krypton's going to blow up.

And everyone's like, nah.

Galan, I believe, has an understanding that the universe is coming to an end.

There are these explorers that are with him.

I'm trying to remember it.

I should have read it before this episode.

The point is, he is the only survivor of the previous universe before our own.

And the spaceship that he's in that saves his life becomes a a sort of cosmic egg.

And when he emerges from it, he is Galactus.

And the Watcher sees all this and is, and it, you know, has, and

he's like,

and the uh, and uh,

why it doesn't wear wings anymore because it just keeps flipping off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

he keeps flipping backwards, and you just see the watcher's feet in the panel.

And the watcher had already had his origin messed with.

Jack Kirby's idea for The Watcher, I think, dovetailed with Galactus' origin.

Stanley said up, oh, The Watcher has this origin where the Watchers were an advanced race.

They met this primitive race and they gave them modern technology

and that race used it for weapons and destroyed themselves in nuclear war.

And the Watcher said, we are never doing this again.

We are never interfering.

We're just going to watch from now on.

And there's a whole lot of us.

We're a whole species of Watchers.

We're all big bald babies and togos.

We're just going to watch things.

We're the ultimate voyeurs.

We never get involved.

Jack Kirby starts doing, and he does that in in another comic that Jack Kirby wasn't working on.

Jack Kirby starts doing Galactus Origin, and it seems like they've had to recreate, reconstruct it based on the fact that these comics were obviously very cut up, obviously very changed.

It seems like he saw Galactus Origin as Galactus survives, you know, is the survivor of some cataclysm.

He's nursed back to health or rescued by Uwatu.

And Galactus then becomes this devourer of worlds, this cosmic force of destruction.

And that's when Uatu is like, I'm never going to do anything again.

It's too dangerous.

I will just become the watcher, and there's just one of me.

And apparently he may, it seems like Jack Kirby drew and wrote this whole story.

And then Stanley was like, Jack, are you not reading the other books?

Like, this doesn't square what we already said for the watcher.

And they had to remake everything.

So the point here is Galactus, he's the last survivor from the previous universe.

He's in a big cosmic egg,

turns him into the big purple guy in armor.

who travels around the universe having to eat things.

And by doing that, he has become a force of balance in the universe.

And what that means exactly has been described differently in different comics.

In the comic book Earth X, which is a great miniseries set in the future of the Marvel Universe, it's posited that celestials inject their eggs into the center of planets.

And in order to keep them from overpopulating the universe, Galactus eats the planets that have celestial eggs in them, but he doesn't know this.

At one point, Galactus is seen kind of shaking hands with eternity and infinity, these embodiments of the very basic reality of existence as it's in itself.

And they're like, oh, hail, brother, hail, sister, that Galactus is the third point of this Trinity somehow.

He's just a force.

He's a force of nature in the universe.

At one point, Galactus get in the 80s, Galactus gets caught and put on trial

for eating the Skrull home world, I think it is.

And Reed Richards defends him on trial, saying, like, he's a force of nature.

Like, you can't put him on trial.

You have to, you know, I'm going to, oh, you know what it is?

I'm sorry.

Reed Richards is on trial for saving Galactus' life.

Galactus comes to Earth and he's dying.

And Reed Richards is like, no, he's necessary for balancing the universe.

And we can't let someone die.

So they save his life, and then Reed Richards is put on trial.

And the watcher shows everybody that Galactus is necessary in a sort of cosmic trip.

Everyone is saying that.

They don't blame anyone.

Blame the super scroll.

And they're like, oh, not again.

That guy, Killart, he's such a dick.

And they do a neat thing there where they say Galactus is such a huge concept that he appears to every species as one of their own.

So that's why he looks like a guy in a helmet to us is because we just

G for guy.

Exactly for guy.

The same way that we interpret God as a human, because we think of things from a human point of view.

We interpret Galactus as one.

Anyway, the point is, Galactus would show up with a different origin later, with his own origin that's changed.

Galactus, for a while, they were like, this guy is super powerful.

What do we do with him?

Here's what you do with him.

You use him over and over again until he becomes not as special as he once was.

And he just becomes just another dude that is coming by Earth every now and then to eat things or to have adventures.

Galactus.

Galactus hungy.

Can we eat Earth now?

But there's still a certain mystique to him.

And so here's what I want to talk about now as we round out this episode.

What you want to talk about?

You're not there yet?

As we've already gone too long, is our main story tonight?

Well, this was an explainer episode.

No, I'm curious about what they're going to do in the movie.

Because in the movie, I think what they have to capture, I think, is the feel of the enormity of this threat and that he is not just like a cool character, but that he is on a different plane of existence from all the other ones.

And I feel like there's a scene, there's a shot in the trailer where you just see Galactus's feet walking down a street.

And I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know if this is quite doing it.

Like, I don't want to see him walk.

I don't want to see him move.

No, you want to see him stand, basically.

There's a moment in the original comics where they knock him off a building and they're like, that's it.

We knocked him over.

We defeated him.

We were able to knock him down.

And instead of clamoring to his feet, he just kind of levitates and then...

turns so that he is now upright.

And they're like, oh shit, the guy didn't even have to use his hands to get up.

Like, that's how powerful this guy is.

Knocking him over didn't do anything.

How is he small enough to be on top of a building?

Was this like a giant space building?

No, it's just, he's, I think, that you have to, you have to imagine that he is, he can, he is not even just kind of, his body's not even just kind of resting on it.

Either he is levitating always, or he is so in control of his own matter that

he can

control how he affects that matter around him.

But anyway,

so I'm hoping they can capture that because the, The big changes that they're making in this movie are it's coming in a world that is post, for for us, the audience, post Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet and all that stuff.

You know, it is, it is no longer, Galaxy is no longer the biggest thing that you can imagine.

When someone has snuffed out half the universe with, by snapping their fingers, a big dude who eats just Earth is, I think they're going to have to work to get that, that, the enormity of that.

But also, you can tell from the trailers, the Silver Surfer is a lady now.

And I want to know how you guys feel about that because I'm not online very much.

I don't deal with discourse very much, but I am totally unaware of any discourse of people being upset that the Silver Surfer is a woman in the trick.

I mean, I like Julia Garner.

Yeah, and also like,

I mean, I love Julia Garner.

I was trying to get her for a project and I could not.

But the, but the, but she, but also, I have absolutely no issue with this.

And I feel like, I, I wonder if other people have no issue because they don't care that much about the Silver Surfer.

Understandable.

He's a character I love, but he's never been like a top popular character.

He's one of these characters who often has his own series, but cannot support his own series for as long as others.

He's like Doctor Strange or Daredevil that way, where his book is always getting canceled and relaunched.

Or if it is just, do we live in a world now where this kind of stuff doesn't matter to people as much, which would be great.

What do you guys think?

I don't think we live in that world.

You've been paying attention to the news.

I think that's a good thing.

Well, that's, I wonder if, so something, so something, a theory that was floated a long time ago that really struck with me was

people getting so mad about like the Zack Snyder cut and this character being like this in this movie from young men who have feel like they have no control over their own lives.

And so they feel like they can exert control over this as fans.

And maybe it's a side effect of those guys having one and America now being a misogynist, authoritarian shit show that they no longer care as much what gender the Silver Surfer has.

Because now they feel finally that they can.

take out their their ire and their anger at the real people whose genders they're mad about.

You know, I don't know.

I wonder if that's part of it is that the world is, has the world gotten bad enough that people realize how unimportant the Silver Surfer's gender is?

I don't know.

But maybe you guys have seen more stuff online than me.

No, I try not to go there anymore.

Okay.

It makes

Dan doesn't like being online anymore.

No, I mean, it's true.

It's been very good because you know what I've done more of recently?

Reading books.

Reading books was great.

I love reading books.

Books are my second favorite thing after my second.

It's like a movie in your mind, right?

Yeah.

It is.

Because Dan, Dan, I want to say that this has not had anything to do with this.

This might be too personal.

That makes me really happy that you are no longer in the stage of your life where you feel the need to be online and respond to

hardcore right-wing people on Twitter with an image of someone's boobs painted like to be Garfield's face, which you were doing quite a bit of at one point.

That's true.

That was during the first Trump years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean,

I'm not saying I'm never online or I never get cranky with anything, but

it's a lot less because I do it for my own health.

Okay, that's very,

and maybe that's the most important thing to explain in this issue, this episode, as we go way longer than I meant to talking on and on and on about Silver Swin Fantastic IV.

And I apologize to everybody if I was just boring you this whole time because I find these characters fascinating.

I find the backstory behind them fascinating.

I'm really curious how they're going to be handled in this.

I'm not excited about the movie necessarily, I think because there's so many more important things in life, but I am curious about it.

And I think maybe that's the lesson of all this is that.

Within the Marvel universe, the coming of Galactus, the story of the Silver Surfer, the introduction of the Fantastic Fourth of Marvel Universe within the Marvel Universe is of massive importance.

It's of massive foundational cosmic importance.

The Fantastic Four, they're coming late to the party, but they were in the comics, they were the first ones there.

I've always thought it was very funny that the Marvel Universe in the movie starts with Iron Man, a character that...

At the time, they could afford to make a movie of because no one gave a shit about that character.

He has always been, for most of the, of Marvel history, he has been a B-level character, Iron Man.

A very important character in being an original Avenger and things things like that, but a B-level character.

And now he's like,

this is one thing that didn't make me mad was in the Spider-Man, new Spider-Man movies when he's like, oh, gee, I just got to be like Iron Man.

And like, I got to use all this Iron Man gimmicker.

And I'm like, dude, do you not know you're Spider-Man, the greatest character?

Like, you're the best, greatest, most famous, most popular character.

You don't even know how hot you are.

And maybe that's what makes Spider-Man so great is he doesn't know how hot he is.

Yeah, exactly.

And he thinks he needs to be Iron Man when he's way hotter than Iron Man.

But I think the thing, the important lesson is that these things are of cosmic importance, the very survival of the earth within the Marvel universe.

But in real life, they're not that important.

It's just there to have fun, maybe learn a little bit, maybe be inspired a little bit.

If you can take something positive from these stories, which I have,

I think what I've taken positively from these stories, if I can be personal, especially from Jack Kirby's work, but also from Steve Dicko's Spider Man work, especially from Jack Kirby's work with his characters, The New Gods,

is

this feeling of being able to take control of your own life despite obstacles in your path and trying to be the best version of yourself and live by the principles that you think would make the world a better place and understanding that you will not always live up to those principles, but trying your best to live up to them most of the time and also recognizing that it's difficult to do that.

And it's difficult to be a full human being, to do right by the world, to do right by the people that you love, and also to do right by yourself and to fulfill your responsibilities.

It's hard to do that.

I feel like that is the, that's the lesson of that first run of Spider-Man, which means so much to me, is it is hard to be a good person, but that doesn't give you an excuse to not be a good person.

You don't get to opt out and you have to just recognize that it's difficult.

And with the Fantastic Four, that you are going to be confronted with problems that are seemingly unsolvable and maybe unsolvable, but you have to do your best because life continues.

And that's the beautiful thing about that last issue in the Galactus story.

Like I was saying, is they have just saved the world from Galactus, the devourer of worlds.

They've been exposed to the sheer magnificent scale of the universe in a way they never have before.

And they've recognized how tiny they are in the eye of God, like how small they are in the grand scope of things.

Then it's time to go to college, got to move in, got to meet your roommate.

Like Ben's going to go patch things up with Alicia.

He gets jealous because he thinks that she might be into the silver surfer that like those things are important too.

And they're more important.

And that like you can't, certainly more important than a fictional universe, but also that the things within your life are just as important as the big things.

And in some ways, more important.

It's difficult to do right by them, but you have to try.

And that's where the meaning of your life is going going to come from.

So, if you can draw those types of things, like I have, and I'm very glad that I have, I'm very thankful that I have from this work, that's amazing.

But

at the same time,

it's not real, like it's not real, and it doesn't matter.

And maybe that's why I'm so happy that I have not seen, and maybe if it's happening, I'm not aware of it.

And if it's happening, I'm not aware of it, then it makes me feel a little sadder that I have not seen this big backlash of like, what, Silver Surfer's a girl now?

Because it so doesn't matter, it so doesn't matter at all.

When they drop the other casting has been

has been very pleasing to fans.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe that's it.

I think then that the

it is a sign, I think, of maybe a healthy reevaluating of where the Marvel cinematic universe lives in people's lives and in culture

that, and hopefully where fictional universes in general live in people's lives and culture, that I feel like the tone I'm getting around most people of the Fantastic Morrow movie is like, yeah, I think I want to see that.

That looks fun.

As opposed to, I need to see it.

I have to know what's going to happen.

I need to know what's going to happen in this universe because it's my responsibility as a fan or as a moviegoer to be aware of it.

More like, yeah, this looks fine.

I think this is going to be good.

I hope it's good.

Well, not to take the wind out of your sails, Elliot, but if you, uh, if you just wander over to the Last of Us subreddit, uh,

your opinions on fandoms will change.

Well, I think this is a good, this has been a good lesson for everybody is don't go to the Last of Us subreddit.

Unless maybe ours is probably fine.

I try not to look at it.

Yeah, I think I don't want to get insulted.

No,

I think here's my final moral in this long thing, and then you guys can cut me off.

If you're going to be a fan of anything, be a fan of your life, being alive, living in reality, the actual world.

Do it.

Just do it.

You can be a fan of other things, but save your biggest fandom for your own life.

Yeah.

Learn to date yourself first.

Well, I mean, we talked a lot about dating yourself in that last

free seller.

And

the thing I will say is I don't have a lot of experience with Galactus, but every time I think of Galactus, I think of that

reoccurring B story in Top 10 where the one character's grandmother has super mice.

So the Exterminator or Ex-Verminator, I think is Verminator.

Yeah, he brings in

super cats, and it leads to a crossover event with Galactopus, which is a cat that looks like Galactus.

And I'm like, I just think about it all the time.

That, I mean, if you walk away from this episode learning anything, it is one,

spend more time in real life than in fictional worlds.

And also, you should read top 10.

That first run of top 10, that Alan Moore, Xander Cannon, Gene Ha run, it's so good.

It's such a great book.

Yeah.

And I'm a huge fan of the Smack spin-off as well.

Yes, the Smack Spin-Off is great.

That's true.

I bug Sander Cannon about all the time.

And he has a new book out, and it's great.

Yeah.

And I mean, you get that top 10 omnibus and read through that.

There's that one mini series in the middle that is not, is not so great.

But otherwise, it's all great stuff.

So guys, thank you for coming with me on this very long journey through the Fantastic Four Silver Surfer and Galactus.

If anyone is still with us, then I hope that you enjoyed it.

If you're not still with us, join us next time when we're going to be talking about a movie.

This has been the Flop House.

My name is Ellie Kalen.

We're on the Maximum Fun Network.

Please listen to the other Maximum Fun podcasts, sample them, see what you like.

You'll, I think, enjoy it.

If you are are interested in learning more about the Fantastic Four Kirby Lee issues, I'm going to go to the next one.

Visit your local library.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't take my word for it.

But I am going to recommend not a Max Fun podcast, unfortunately, but a podcast called Screw It.

We're just going to talk about comics by Will and Kevin Hines.

And they read through the entirety of the Lee Kirby Fantastic Four run and did a podcast of it.

It was great.

Or you can go to the Marvel by the Month podcast, a friend of this podcast also.

They read through all those issues and they did a great job with it.

If you want to dig in more into Marvel history, those are two great podcasts to do it with.

But first, go to the Maximum Fun podcast.

I want to thank our producer, Howell Dotty, a.k.a.

Alex Smith.

He goes by Howell Dotty Online and Alex Smith in real life, which is the real one.

I don't know.

He just stares in a mirror and says,

who am I?

Am I Alex or Howell?

Thank you so much for probably putting in some sound effects to make this like a funnier episode than it was otherwise.

And thank you finally to you, the listener.

If you like the Flophouse, why not leave us a positive review on the podcast dealie of your choice?

Why not?

Or tell a friend about it.

You know what?

Spread the word of the flop house.

Yeah.

Go on a street corner.

Make this your life.

Spreading the gospel of the flophouse.

Congressman.

Yeah.

Be our herald.

Congressman.

Painting yourself.

Yeah, Congressperson.

Paint yourself all silver and go out and be the herald of the flop house.

And the flop house, devourer of time, is coming your way.

You better listen to it.

Until then, I am Elliot Kalen.

I'm Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington.

Saying, go outside, do something in the real world for a little bit.

Babe, babe, wake up.

The Flophouse Mini's finally over.

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