Galactus’s First Story Was Weirder Than You Remember

After his first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the main antagonist of Fantastic Four: First Steps, plenty of fans have wanted to read more stories featuring Galactus. The World Eater is one of Marvel’s most iconic and terrifying villains, being more a force of nature than anything else, so wanting to learn more about him is always encouraged. In that vein, there’s no better place to start reading Galactus than the very first story he appeared in, unofficially named the Galactus Trilogy by fans. This three-part Fantastic Four adventure is a classic and is definitely worth a read, but what many people don’t know is that while this is the comic that introduced Galactus, how it did so is way weirder than you’d think. The Galactus Trilogy is bonkers when you get down to dissecting it, and I loved every page of it. 

The Coming of Galactus… Eventually

This adventure started in Fantastic Four #48, but it didn’t begin at the start of the issue. In fact, a decent chunk of this issue is dedicated to wrapping up the events of the previous storyline, which involved the Inhuman villain Maximus trying once more to reclaim the throne of Attilan by killing all of the humans on Earth. His plan failed, however, because the weapon he used couldn’t kill Inhumans, and humans and Inhumans are of the same species. Seeing that he couldn’t win, he instead chose to seal off the Inhumans from the rest of the world with a negative zone forcefield. The Fantastic Four escaped, but the Inhumans were sealed away, seemingly forever, and Johnny mourned being separated from his love Crystal.

They went back to New York, only to find the entire sky on fire, yet with no heat. The people of New York reasonably freaked out, then unreasonably blamed the Human Torch and tried to lynch him. Without warning the fire faded, only to be replaced with a wall of space debris. The Watcher appeared and told the Fantastic Four that he was responsible for the illusion, breaking his vow to not interfere in the affairs of the universe in order to hide the Earth from the notice of the Silver Surfer. This didn’t work, and the Surfer landed and sent up his signal to Galactus. The Thing attacked the Surfer, and although he didn’t stop him, he did manage to fling the herald clear across the city and the skylight of his girlfriend Alicia Masters’s apartment. Unfortunately, this couldn’t stop the arrival of Galactus, who sported a very different color pallette from what we’re used to. Fun fact, his look will change with every issue the World Eater is in here, before his design is finalized in the final part. 

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Galactus the (Almost) Unstoppable

The Fantastic Four struck Galactus to try and stop him, but he swatted them aside like gnats and threatened them. Trying to ignore the lesser beings, Galactus began charging his machine to consume the elemental energies of Earth, while the Watcher revealed that he had a plan that could stop Galactus, but only the Human Torch could accomplish it. While the Watcher and Torch headed off to a completely different dimension to acquire what they needed, the rest of the Fantastic Four attempted to slow down Galactus. Reed, for his part, decided that since he couldn’t think of better plan the best use of his time was to completely crash out and try and punch Galactus in the face, which is a hilarious showcase of how every man in Marvel before the ‘80s was a punch-drunk psycho just waiting for an excuse. Meanwhile, Alicia Masters talked with the Silver Surfer, and managed to convince him that human life has beauty and value, which turned the Surfer against Galactus, as he could not stand back and do nothing while Galactus consumed his first world with sentient life. The Surfer unleashed his Power Cosmic on Galactus, and proved to be the only one capable of fighting him on something near a level playing field.

While the heroes battled for the entire world, the Human Torch was taken to a different realm. To find the weapon they needed, he had to fly through energy strands of unlife that would wipe him from existence if he so much as touched them. The reason Johnny was selected was because he could fly and avoid the strands, which is really funny because even back then Johnny was far from the only person capable of flight, but anyways, Johnny eventually found what he was looking for; the Ultimate Nullifier. He brought the weapon capable of ending the Multiverse back home and gave it to Reed. Upon seeing the device, Galactus was so terrified he immediately decided to leave, saying that it was like giving a nuclear bomb to ants. Galactus agreed to leave the Earth alone, but stripped the Silver Surfer of his power to leave the Earth as punishment for betraying him. Thus, Galactus left, and the world was saved. The funniest part of all of this? This plot was resolved not halfway into issue #50, and the rest of it focused on Johnny starting college. Galactus wasn’t even the climax of the first comic he starred in, and that’s really funny.

So there we have the story of Galactus’s comic book debut, and there’s a lot to love about this story. It’s a classic Fantastic Four adventure with awesome stakes and incredible worldbuilding that redefined the Marvel Universe, but it also is only about two issues worth of content, considering the halves it takes up in issues #48 and #50. This story also had a few moments that were just a little too silly, but hey, that’s just how comics were and are, so that’s nothing to be ashamed of. The Ultimate Nullifier is just kind of acquired without effort and is definitely just a straight up unsatisfying macguffin, but other than that, this is still a great story that I heavily recommend any fan of Galactus or the Fantastic Four check out. It’ll be worth your time, especially if you only read the plot essential parts!