And how, exactly, does finding planets for Galactus to destroy qualify you as a pure soul?

As I mentioned last month, I find all the over-emoting and speechifying Stan Lee wrote into Silver Surfer #1 insufferable. Reading the next couple of issues, I realized something else: making the Silver Surfer the mouthpiece for Lee’s sermons is ridiculous.Take #2, “When Lands the Saucer,” (art by John Buscema). Wherever the Surfer goes, people freak out and treat him like a monster, whether it’s a pitchfork-wielding mob in a Middle European village or pissed-off New Yorkers. How can humans be so hostile, so fearful? All the Surfer wants is friendship — will no one stretch out their hand? When he meets the friendly alien Badoon it seems like he’s found a haven — oh no, they’re really alien conquerors (who have, apparently zero knowledge of Galactus or his herald)! Will the Surfer’s suffering never end?

This ignores that only a few months earlier the Surfer declared war on the world. It was a trick, trying to get humanity to unite by giving them a common threat (possibly inspired by the Outer Limits episode “Architects of Fear” though it’s a shtick that goes back much earlier). Yes, how could humanity be so suspicious of Norrin Radd when only recently he rained cosmic destruction down on them? Not to mention working for the guy who tried to destroy the entire world — Galactus.That’s what occurred to me while reading #3, “The Power and the Prize,” where Mephisto makes his comics debut. Mephisto, lord of the nether realms, master schemer, corrupter of mortal souls. Mephisto, who doesn’t like the Silver Surfer at all.Mephisto finds the Surfer’s nobility not only offensive in itself, it’s a direct challenge to his tightening power over Earth: what if the Surfer inspires people to be better? To care about each other instead of giving in to greed and selfishness? Mephisto tries corrupting his foe, offering Jesus — er, Norrin Radd (seriously, this makes the early Adam Warlock look understated in its allegory) gold or power or sexytime with some succubi. When none of that works, Mephisto tries to destroy the Surfer with no more success.

It hadn’t occurred to me until this rereading how absurd all this is. The Surfer isn’t some pure innocent, he’s a former lackey to the most terrible scourge the universe has ever known. Until Alicia Masters stirred Norrin to care about humanity, he was quite willing to let his master devour Earth as he’d devoured countless planets before. That’s not the doing of a Christlike soul, it’s the behavior of a monster in need of redemption. A need Lee blithely ignores in his eagerness to preach the word.

IIRC, the series gets more interesting further on, though still preachy. I’ll let you know. At least the Buscema art will be lovely to look at.

#SFWApro. All art by Buscema.