{"id":31414,"date":"2025-01-25T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=31414"},"modified":"2025-01-24T17:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T17:10:17","slug":"mighty-marvel-masterworks-presents-the-silver-surfer-volume-1-1966-1968-when-calls-galactus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/01\/25\/mighty-marvel-masterworks-presents-the-silver-surfer-volume-1-1966-1968-when-calls-galactus\/","title":{"rendered":"Mighty Marvel Masterworks Presents The Silver Surfer volume 1 1966-1968: When Calls Galactus"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Stan Lee<\/strong>, Roy Thomas<\/strong>, John Buscema<\/strong>, Jack Kirby, Marie Severin<\/strong>, Joe Sinnott<\/strong>, Sal Buscema<\/strong>, Frank Giacoia<\/strong> & various (MARVEL)
\nISBN: 978-1-3029-4909-9 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> produced in less enlightened times.<\/em><\/p>\n

Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four <\/strong>#1 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule) was crude: rough, passionate and uncontrolled excitement. Thrill-hungry fans pounced on it and that raw storytelling caught a wave of change starting to build in America. It and succeeding issues changed comic books forever.<\/p>\n

In eight short years FF<\/strong> became the indisputable core and most consistently groundbreaking series of Marvel\u2019s ever-unfolding web of cosmic creation: bombarding readers with a ceaseless salvo of concepts and characters at a time when Kirby was in his conceptual prime and continually unleashing his vast imagination on plot after spectacular plot. Inspired, Stan Lee scripted some of the most passionate superhero sagas that Marvel – or any publisher, for that matter – had or has ever seen. Both were on an unstoppable roll, at the height of their creative powers, and full of the confidence that only success brings, with The King particularly eager to see how far the genre and the medium could be pushed. A forge of stunning creativity and endless excitement, the title was the proving ground for dozens of future stars and mesmerising concepts; none more timely or apt than the freewheeling cosmic wanderer and latter-day moral barometer dubbed The Silver Surfer<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

These stories are timeless and have been published many times before but here we\u2019re boosting another example of The Mighty Marvel Masterworks<\/strong> line: designed with economy in mind and newcomers as target audience. These books are far cheaper, on lower quality paper and smaller – like a paperback novel. Your eyesight might be failing and your hands too big and shaky, but at 152 x 227mm, they\u2019re perfect for kids. If you opt for digital editions, that\u2019s no issue at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

What Has Gone Before<\/em>: Although pretty much a last-minute addition to Fantastic Four<\/strong> #48-50\u2019s \u2018Galactus Trilogy\u2019<\/em>, Kirby\u2019s scintillating creation the Silver Surfer<\/strong> quickly became a watchword for nuance, depth and subtext in the Marvel Universe… and one Lee kept as his own personal toy for many years.<\/p>\n

Tasked with finding planets for space god Galactus<\/em> to consume and, despite the best efforts of intergalactic voyeur Uatu the Watcher<\/em>, one day the Silver Surfer discovered Earth, where the latent nobility of humanity reawakened his own suppressed morality; causing the shining scout to rebel against his master and help the FF save the world. In retaliation, Galactus imprisoned his former herald on Earth: the ultimate outsider on a planet utterly ungrateful for his sacrifice.<\/p>\n

The Galactus Saga was a creative peak from a period where the Lee\/Kirby partnership was utterly on fire. The tale has all the power and grandeur of a true epic and has never been surpassed for drama, thrills and sheer entertainment but it\u2019s not included here: for that treat you\u2019ll need to see any of many other Marvel collections…<\/p>\n

In 1968, after increasingly frequent guest-shots and even a solo adventure in the back of Fantastic Four Annual<\/strong> #5 (happily included here at the end; chronologically adrift but well worth the wait), the Surfer finally got his own (initially double-length) title at long last. There\u2019s also a sassy spoof to puncture any pomposity overdose you might experience.<\/p>\n

This stellar collection collects pertinent material from Silver Surfer<\/strong> #1-4, Fantastic Four<\/strong> Annual<\/strong> #5 and Not Brand Echh Astonish<\/strong> #13, reprinting appearances of the Starry-eyed Sentinel – cover dates November 1967 to May 1969 – and begins with \u2018The Origin of the Silver Surfer!\u2019<\/em>
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\nIllustrated by John Buscema & Joe Sinnott, the drama unfolds after a prolonged flashback sequence and repeated examples of crass humanity\u2019s brutal callousness and unthinking hostility, detailing how Norrin Radd<\/em>, discontented soul from an alien paradise named Zenn-La, became the gleaming herald of a planetary scourge. Radd had constantly chafed against a civilisation in comfortable, sybaritic stagnation, but when Galactus shattered their vaunted million years of progress in a fleeting moment, the dissident without hesitation offered himself as a sacrifice to save the world from the Devourer\u2019s hunger.<\/p>\n

Converted into an indestructible, gleaming human meteor, Radd agreed to scour the galaxies looking for uninhabited worlds rich in the energies Galactus needs to survive, thus saving planets with life on them from destruction. He didn\u2019t always find them in time…<\/p>\n

The stories in this series were highly acclaimed – if not really commercially successful – both for Buscema\u2019s agonisingly emphatic and truly beautiful artwork and Lee\u2019s deeply spiritual and philosophical scripts. The narrative tone was accusatory; with the isolated alien\u2019s travails and social observations creating a metaphoric status akin to a Christ-figure for an audience concurrently maturing and rebelling against America\u2019s creaking and unsavoury status quo.<\/p>\n

The second 40-page adventure exposes a secret invasion by extraterrestrial lizard men \u2018When Lands the Saucer!\u2019<\/em>, forcing the Surfer into battle against the sinister Brotherhood of Badoon without human aid or even awareness in \u2018Let Earth be the Prize!\u2019<\/em>…<\/p>\n

A little side-note for sad nit-picking enthusiasts like me: I suspect that the original intention was to drop the page count to regular 20-page episodes from #2, since in terms of pacing both the second and third issues divide perfectly into two-parters, with cliffhanger endings and splash page\/chapter titles that are dropped from #4 onwards.<\/em><\/p>\n

Silver Surfer<\/strong> #3 is pivotal in the ongoing saga as Lee & Buscema introduce Marvel\u2019s Satan-analogue in \u2018The Power and the Prize!\u2019 <\/em>Lord of Hell Mephisto<\/em> sees the Surfer\u2019s untarnished soul as a threat to his evil influence on Earth. To crush the anguished hero\u2019s spirit, the demon abducts Norrin Radd\u2019s true love Shalla Bal<\/em> from still-recovering Zenn-La and torments the Sentinel of the Spaceways with her dire distress in his sulphurous nether-realm…<\/p>\n

The concluding chapter sees mortal angel of light and devil of depravity conduct a spectacular \u2018Duel in the Depths\u2019<\/em> wherein neither base temptations nor overwhelming force are enough to stay the noble Surfer\u2019s inevitable triumph.
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\nJust as wicked a foe then attempted to exploit the Earth-bound alien\u2019s heroic impulses in #4\u2019s \u2018The Good, The Bad and the Uncanny!\u2019<\/em> (inked by new art collaborator Sal Buscema) wherein Asgardian God of Evil Loki <\/em>offers lies, deceit and even escape from Galactus\u2019 terrestrial cage to induce the Silver Stalwart to attack and destroy the mighty Thor<\/strong>. The result is a staggering and bombastic clash that just builds and builds as the creative team finally let loose and fully utilise their expanded story-proportions and page count to create smooth flowing, epic action-adventures, with truth triumphant in the end…<\/p>\n

As foretold, this compulsive if not quite comprehensive comic book chronicle concludes with the groundbreaking vignette from Fantastic Four Annual<\/strong> #5 – released in August 1967 – wherein the rapidly rising star-in-the-making got his first solo shot. \u2018The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer\u2019<\/em> (inked by Frank Giacoia) is a pithy fable of cruel ingratitude that reintroduced the Mad Thinker<\/em>\u2019s lethal A.I. assassin Quasimodo<\/em>. The Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ<\/em> was a malevolent murder machine trapped in a static computer housing dreaming of being able to move within the real world. Sadly, although its pleas initially found favour with the gullibly innocent stranger from the stars, the killer computer itself had underestimated the power and conscience of its rash saviour. Eventually, the gleaming guardian of life was explosively forced to take back the boon he had impetuously bestowed in a bombastic bravura display of Kirby action and Lee pathos…
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\nOne last silly sally comes with \u2018The Origin of the Simple Surfer!\u2019<\/em> by Roy Thomas and the sublime Marie Severin from Not Brand Echh<\/strong> #13, May 1969. This time alien \u00e9migr\u00e9 Borin-Kadd<\/em> ruminates on his strange fate and pontificatingly pines for his daftly-beloved Shallo-Gal<\/em> when… well you get the idea, right?<\/p>\n

Completing the treats are a reprint cover gallery of stunning original art covers by Buscema & Sinnott and house ads.<\/p>\n

Silver Surfer was always a pristine and iconic character when handled well – and sparingly – and these early forays into a more mature range of adventures, although perhaps a touch heavy-handed, showed that there was far more to comic books than cops and robbers or monsters and misfits. That exploratory experience and inbuilt mystique of a hero as Christ allegory made the series a critically beloved but commercially disastrous cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre until eventually financial failure killed the experiment.<\/p>\n

After the Lee\/Kirby\/Ditko sparks had initially fired up the imaginations of readers in the early days, the deeper, subtler overtones and undercurrents offered by stories like these kept a maturing readership enthralled, loyal and abidingly curious as to what else comics could achieve if given half a chance, and this fabulously lavish tome offers the perfect way to discover or recapture the thrill and wonder of those startlingly different days and times.
\n\u00a9 2023 MARVEL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Jack Kirby, Marie Severin, Joe Sinnott, Sal Buscema, Frank Giacoia & various (MARVEL) ISBN: 978-1-3029-4909-9 (TPB\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times. Cautiously bi-monthly and cover-dated November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 (by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, George Klein & Christopher Rule) was crude: … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mighty Marvel Masterworks Presents The Silver Surfer volume 1 1966-1968: When Calls Galactus”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[317,239,54,288,98,72,79,107,157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-doom","category-drama","category-fantastic-four","category-hercules","category-hulk","category-marvel-masters-masterworks","category-marvel-superheroes","category-science-fiction","category-silver-surfer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8aG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31414"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31422,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31414\/revisions\/31422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}