A late Happy Thanksgiving to all three of my readers… and to anyone else out there who might be stopping by. Hope you and your family had a great one, and that the good times continue throughout the holiday season and well into next year.
But now, it’s time we got back the internet’s most unreliable list.
TCB’S Top Five Prefabricated Villains: Number Two
GALACTUS
First Appearance: Fantastic Four # 48
“Heresy”, you say? Well, maybe a little bit, yeah, and the truth is, Galactus almost didn’t make the list. He’s certainly become a fixture of the Marvel Universe over the last forty plus years and definitely moved way passed one-trick pony status. However, that’s only in hindsight, and what we’re talking about here is how these guys were conceived, and more importantly, perceived from the onset… and with that in mind, Big G is a total prefabber.
“What’s Galactus’ deal?”
He eats planets.
Created and introduced by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in 1966, Galactus was intended to be little more than a sales stunt. Both Kirby and Lee were tired of the usual villains for the Fantastic Four, and sales showed that the audience might be feeling the same way. So, in an effort to take things up a notch, they came up with Galactus — a planet devouring godlike being from space so far beyond typical “super-villains” that he defies even explanation or title. He just IS.
“Why’s Galactus a prefab villain?”
If you’ve read the Galactus Trilogy (FF #s 48-50) , you know how strange it feels. The first 10 of FF #48 is the finale to an Inhumans story started issues before. It’s only about half way through, after the FF have wrapped things up in Attilan, that The Watcher and Silver Surfer show up, and Galactus makes his debut at the very end. Sure, the cover shows us the Watcher and warns of ”THE COMING OF GALACTUS“, but readers in ‘66 had no idea what any of that meant. They were just picking up the FF, and suddenly, in what they probably thought was just another Inhumans story, they found themselves knee deep in a battle to save the planet from God and Frankie Avalon. That’s built to thrill comics, kids… and if you don’t believe me, build a time machine and go hang around a spinner rack to see if I’m wrong.
In the days before Previews and the internet, Galactus was huge and completely unexpected. Fans hadn’t even been introduced to the Celestials yet, and Giant Man was about as big as you got, so when Galactus shows up, all 30 stories tall, tuning fork headgear, and no pants, and says “Hey, sorry, turkeys… but I hunger!”, it must’ve blown their minds.
And just like the Fury, Elecktra, and Bane, Galactus appears without warning or a previous appearance, but fundamentally changes things from there forward. From a purely fictional standpoint, you’re forced to imagine yourself as the man on the street in the Marvel U. You enjoy football, have a fairly good job, attend church a couple times a year, help your kids with their homework, etc… then suddenly, without warning, Earth’s going to be fucking eaten. That’s not destroyed in some galactic war against alien robots or whatever. No, that’s EATEN. How utterly hopeless it would be to find out that your whole life and everything you hold dear was Just breakfast in the greater universe. Yeah, that’s what we call a game changer, folks… that’s Galactus.
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