Galactus is a Marvel villain of cosmic proportions.
Quite literally; the Devourer of Worlds goes around and consumes planets in order to satisfy
his hunger, all with morality thrown to the wind.
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Galactus first debuted in The Fantastic Four issue
48 in 1966, starring in a three issue story arc that would later be known as The Galactus
Trilogy.
Since then, Galactus has made some momentous appearances in the Marvel Universe, becoming
one of the top rated villains in the comics.
So today, we’re counting down our picks for the Top 10 Galactus Shocking Facts; tidbits
of interesting information concerning this gigantic big bad, and how he’s affected
the comics over the years.
10 Biblical origins Let’s start off this list by taking a look
at the inspiration behind Galactus.
After the Fantastic Four had been circulating for almost five years, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
decided to work on a new antagonist for the quartet, someone who had a god like presence.
According to Lee, “We felt the only way to top ourselves was to come up with an evil
doer who had almost godlike powers.
Therefore, the natural choice was sort of a demi-god, but now what would we do with
him?
We didn’t want to use the tired old cliché about him wanting to conquer the world.
There were enough would-be world conquerors in the Marvel Universe and in all the other
comic book galaxies.
That was when inspiration struck.
Why not have him not be a really evil person?
After all, a demi-god should be beyond mere good and evil.
He’d just be hungry.
And the nourishment he’d require is the life force and energy from living planets!”
Kirby would also note, “My inspirations were the fact that I had to make sales and
come up with characters that were no longer stereotypes.
In other words, I couldn’t depend on gangsters.
For some reason, I went to the bible, and I came up with Galactus.
Galactus in actuality is a sort of god.
He is beyond reproach, beyond anyone’s opinion.”
9 Galen of Taa Galactus didn’t just become a god out of
nowhere.
Initially, he was a mortal man named Galen of Taa, an explorer and scientist from the
pre-Big Bang universe.
An unknown cosmic cataclysm starts killing off all of the other life in the universe,
and Galan, along with other survivors on Taa, flee their home planet.
Unfortunately, they’re caught in the Big Crunch.
But Galan doesn’t die.
Instead, he’s bonded with the Sentience of the Universe, causing him to change and
gestate for billions of years, emerging as Galactus.
A Watcher witnesses his birth, but chooses to not destroy him despite his need to devour
planets whole in order to fill his insatiable hunger.
This makes Galen of Taa the sole survivor of his dimension prior to the Big Bang, or
at least, that we know of.
8 A Villain with a Point In Alex Ross’ Earth X, we get a slightly
different perspective on Galactus; he’s a villain with a point.
While you could argue that in the regular Earth 616 continuity he’s necessary for
balance, in the Earth X story arc, it’s revealed that without him devouring planets,
the universe would hold too many celestials.
Turns out that the worlds he was mowing down on were actually the embryos of new Celestials
yet to be born, and if too many of them were, the universe would come to an end.
And Earth was one of those Celestial embryos.
By the end of Earth X, Galactus is turned into a star by the Fantastic Four’s Reed
Richards, which prompts his wonder child Franklin Richards to step up and become Galactus so
that the universe will never be unbalanced.
7 His Armour One of Galactus’ aesthetic trademarks is
his purplish pink and blue suit of armour.
Especially that helmet.
But turns out it’s not just a style choice.
Galactus’ armour actually contains his power.
Galactus is made up of the Power Cosmic, which is immensely strong; he’s essentially raw
energy, and if he wasn’t contained, that energy could be disastrous.
So early on, he learnt to control his power and, as it describes in the comic, he created
an unique body suit which could help him regulate his awesome energies.
So rather than it being a means of protection, which is the function of most armour in general,
it protects the universe from HIM.
How did he craft it?
Using the same energy he’s made up of, the power cosmic.
6 The Ultimate Nullifier Being made up of the power cosmic, there’s
not much that can affect Galactus in terms of weaknesses.
He’s often portrayed as an unstoppable force.
But over time, one of his biggest fears was revealed in the comics; the ultimate nullifer.
What’s that?
Well, back in the Fantastic Four volume 1 issue 50, Reed Richards whips out this piece
of tech that’s meant to deter Galactus from killing the Silver Surfer.
Galactus, in shock, tells Reed to put it down, and that his ‘feeble mind; can not begin
to understand its power.
According to the villain, the ultimate nullifer has the means to destroy a galaxy and even
lay waste to a whole universe.
He then departs, giving up and using dimensional displacement to teleport away, but making
sure to warn the Fantastic Four that humans should be mindful of their ‘promise of greratness’
to themselves, and that it may be the means to their demise.
The Nullifer wouldn’t return in the 616 continuity until years later in Fantastic
Four issue 341, with Galactus using the Nullifer to end his own life.
5 The Infinity Gems The Infinity Gems, or stones as we call em
these days, are without a doubt some of the most powerful objects within the Marvel Universe.
Nothing solidified that more than the painstaking conclusion of Avengers Infinity War.
And Galactus once ate them.
Dude was hungry!
In 2004’s Thanos issue 4, Galactus has set out on a mission to end his insatiable hunger
by collecting all of the gems, but instead of it solving the problem, it put him up against
something much worse.
Hunger, an entity, which wanted to consume all of reality.
Luckily Galactus manages to defeat Hunger, with Thanos’ help.
4 Aunt May Silver Surfer has long been Galactus’ herald,
and the two have had their ups and downs and depatures from one another over the years.
But Silver Surfer isn’t the only character to have been Galactus’ herald.
Yup, Aunt May, Peter Parker’s aunt May, was also a herald, too, once upon a time.
Galactus can bestow the power cosmic to whomever he chooses, and in 1984’s Marvel Team Up
issue 37, he chose May, making her into one of the strongest beings in the universe.
Wild, eh?
This transformed her into something called the Golden Oldie.
Initially, Galactus wanted to make the super powerful Franklin Richards his herald, but
Aunt May stepped in instead.
And what does she do?
She brings Galactus to an intergalactic chef named Dough Boy who makes him planet sized
meals to feed his hunger.
And these meals are called Twinkles.
May returns to Earth, and Dough Boy becomes Galactus’ new herald.
By the end of the issue, its revealed that the whole thing was a dream, by none other
than Stan Lee, with Lee, Jim Shooter and Danny Fingeroth, the creatives behind the issue,
all waking up.
Although according to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z number 3, this
dream reality is actually an alternate reality in the Marvel universe, named Earth 8417.
3 Cosmic Egg We talked a little bit about Galactus’ birth
after the Big Crunch in one of our earlier numbers.
So now let’s talk about the details pertaining to that.
Turns out Galactus, when he was born, came out of something called a Cosmic Egg.
And who created the cosmic egg?
The Marvel Universe’s most powerful chicken, the Phoenix Force.
Jokes aside, after the Big Crunch, the Phoenix Force was the one who placed Galen of Taa
inside of the egg.
When Galactus was all ready, the cosmic egg exploded, which caused the Big Bang.
Galactus then went into incubation for hundreds of years before re-emerging again.
The remains of his Egg would later become what he crafted into his home base.
2 Elvis Here we have one of the weirder Galactus facts.
Marvel has a series of hypothetical story lines that are called What Ifs.
Each of these What Ifs takes a question pertaining to what if events in the 616 continuity had
played out differently, and then tries to answer them.
This one is from What If issue 34, volume 2, a story called What if Thanos changed Galactus
into a Human Being?
And who is that human?
Elvis Presley!
Well, sort of.
He was transformed into an Elvis lookalike.
Luckily for Galactus, Adam Warlock shows up and saves the day.
The issue also contains a bunch of other comical what if stories, with its cover reading ‘what
if no one was watching the watcher?”
Which looks a whole lot like a nice little jab at DC’s Watchmen, released a handful
of years prior to this 1992 issue, based on the font chosen.
1 His Form Perhaps the most intriguing fact about Galactus
is that no one has ever seen his true form.
According to the comics, Galactus is not a being in the absolute physical sense, but
rather, a force of nature, and each mind that views him struggles as best as it can to perceive
that ‘unguessable force and an image it can comprehend.’
This was brought to readers attentions when Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four was put
on trial for resurrecting Galactus, and it was revealed that each race out there in the
galaxy perceives Galactus differently.
Humans see him as a gigantic humanoid man.
And in his one time cinematic adaptation back in the Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer
we see him as a different form; a large sentient cloud, rather than his big ol purple armour,
which was arguably an attempt to convey this or make him more ‘realistic’.
As you may recall, it was a bit of a bummer, but from a production standpoint you can guess
why the filmmakers opted out of using his typical form, although it did feel like a
cop out, and the film probably would’ve been better without it.
Plus, fun fact, jumping back to one of our previous numbers, his armour; it changes too
to the viewer, although he’s always wearing some form of armour and some form of a helmet.
So despite Galen of Taa having a form that resembled a human, Galactus, as a cosmic being,
is ambiguous, and entirely subjective to ‘lower sentient lifeforms’.
There we have it friends!
Which of these facts about Galactus surprised you?
Which ones did you already know?
Give us a shout about your thoughts in those comments down below!
And let us know what other Marvel villains you’d like us to do facts lists on.
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