Here Comes the Silver Surfer

Judging by the trailer for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer--not to mention the well-placed, life-sized promotional displays of the supposed supporting character surfing his way through theater lobbies across the country--it ought to maybe be the Fantastic Four whose names follow that colon.

The Silver Surfer, it seems to me, has already stolen the show.

And just who is he, anyway? The Silver Surfer is, in a way, the Superman of the Marvel Universe. I recall fondly those slow summer days of my youth arguing with the purveyors of my local comic book shop, the place my friends and I hit up time and again whenever we needed a 4-color fix, as to which invincible alien would win in a fight. Superman vs. Silver Surfer ... now there's a storyline!

In any case, comic book fans were first introduced to the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four #48, first of a 3-part series (#48-#50) now commonly known as "The Coming of Galacticus." It was March of 1966, and the height of the Silver Age of Comics. Created by masterminds Stan Lee and Jack Kirby--who also brought us such Marvel mainstays X-Men, The Hulk, Spiderman (Lee) and Captain America (Kirby), just to name a few--Silver Surfer was a fantastic hit with fans.

Today, a NM (near mint) copy Fantastic Four #48 sells for upwards of $1,500 on ebay, by the way. Lesser quality copies might still be found retailing for a few hundred dollars a pop at scattered comic book shops across the states. Especially now that the Silver Surfer is a movie star, supporting role or not.

In that series, readers met Galacticus, Devourer of Worlds, who feeds off living planets to sustain his boundless energy source, the Power Cosmos. Earth was next up on the menu. The Silver Surfer, as the herald of Galacticus, was an interstellar maître d' of sorts, leading the godlike entity across the universe to his next meal, and announcing his arrival to the helpless inhabitants of these hapless worlds. In return for these services (and so he could perform them in the first place) Galacticus had imbued the Silver Surfer with a small portion of his Power Cosmos.