Sunday, June 8, 2014

When Burps Galactus!


It's almost inconceivable to think that a planet's population could react to the coming of Galactus with anything other than panic, despair, and pure terror:






Nor is it generally difficult to encounter the countless refugees who survived his cold, methodical destruction of their respective worlds:





Which heralds the dreaded arrival of another


Marvel Trivia Question




Was there ever an occasion where a planet rolled out the welcome mat for Galactus?



We'd find the answer as Galactus prepared to destroy "Counter-Earth," a duplicate of our own world created by the High Evolutionary which orbited the far side of our sun. The Fantastic Four were there at the time, exploring an incredible proposal made by Galactus:



As you might imagine, the chances of the FF being successful were slim to none; in fact, if they could have stamped this "Mission: Impossible," they probably would have. Nevertheless, the team explored three such possible worlds which the Evolutionary located in that region of space. One world inexplicably turned out to be a dead one, despite the Evolutionary's equipment identifying it otherwise; another had its environment artificially created by Skrulls. While the third offered the only answer to the FF that any sane population would offer:



That leaves the supposedly "dead" world, which seemed like a *ahem* dead end, didn't it? But, just as Galactus is about to turn his attention to Counter-Earth, he receives a rather unexpected message from that world:



And so the Evolutionary and the FF watch, as the unthinkable happens: not so much Galactus preparing to consume a world's life energy, but that the planet's inhabitatants have actually signed off on it.




But when the deed is done, and Galactus prepares to consume the energy his equipment has extracted from the planet, he's going to wish he had a bottle of Pepto-Bismol at hand, as he finds the planet's energy to be indigestible. And fatally so:



So, what gives? Why this reaction to the planet--and why the offer from its people to consume it in the first place? Well, remember that crack about "Mission: Impossible"? It turns out this planet was the homeworld of someone the FF were already well familiar with:




If you're worried about Galactus--and why wouldn't you be?--the Evolutionary managed to save him for the time being, so that he was able to reform himself back to the planet-eater we all know and flee from.

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