The Origins of Galactus, as Told by RJ Writing Ink
Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds! The eater of planets! One of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s greatest creations, his introduction in Fantastic Four #48 is the stuff of legends. Yet for all his importance, Galactus has never had a live-action portrayal befitting someone of his importance in the pantheon of the Marvel Multiverse. With the upcoming film, Fantastic Four: First Steps, aiming to change that, now is the perfect time to go over this truly cosmic force of nature. I’m RJ Writing Ink of The Game of Nerds, and today, we’re recapping the origins of Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds.
Born as Galan of Taa
Galactus may be one of the most powerful entities in Marvel’s roster, but he wasn’t always like that. In fact, he actually predates the Marvel Universe as we know it. Born a mortal named Galan on the planet Taa, the future Devourer was once a normal man, albeit a brilliant scientist. Unfortunately for him, he was born right as the Multiverse was nearing the end stages of the Big Crunch. When that happened, everything left would die. Rather than wait for the end, Galan decided to go out with a bang: piloting a ship into the heart of the singularity!
Rather than dying, though, he would wind up being saved by the sentient embodiment of that iteration of the Multiverse. Choosing to merge its remaining power with Galan, the man survived the Big Crunch. And when the next Big Bang led to the birth of the next incarnation of the Multiverse, Galan re-emerged. However, he was no longer a mortal. Now, he was the entity known as Galactus.
Either that, or his universe was destroyed by something else. The overall cause has been retconned over time, but the basics remain the same.
Reborn as Galactus
Regardless of his origins, the fact remained that when the Multiverse was reborn, Galactus was there, and he was now a cosmic entity stronger than most gods. Using his new powers and genius, he built himself a home in the form of Taa II, a roaming worldship the size of a star system. Meanwhile, life began to take shape in the newborn cosmos. But that was when the hunger pangs first started. His body started to hunger for energy, and the longer he tried to ignore it, the greater the pain became. When he finally hit his breaking point, Galactus instinctively reacted by consuming the energy of the closest planet he could find. After that, the hunger went away.
Even though he was now a cosmic entity rather than a mortal, Galactus was still beholden to the need for sustenance in order to survive. In his case, he needed to take in calories on a planetary scale; the more life they had, the heartier the energy would be for him. At first, he tried to do the ethical thing by only devouring worlds devoid of life. Eventually, though, Galactus was forced to accept that sometimes, you had to kill living things in order to survive. That doesn’t necessarily make it evil; it’s simply a law of the cosmos that everyone has to follow, including him. And with that came a new understanding. Like an apex predator hunting prey to prevent overpopulation, Galactus’ role was to do that on a universal scale. Now beyond basic morality as mortals saw it, Galactus embraced his new role as the Devourer of Worlds.
That didn’t mean he had forsaken his humanity completely, though. He still had standards, and if he could avoid eating planets to survive, he would.
Cosmic Genius
As far as the actual process of devouring worlds, Galactus was capable of doing it under his own power. However, since he was still a scientist at heart, he decided that method was too messy and consumed too much time and energy. Instead, he created machinery that could convert a planet and everything on it into energy he could absorb. In addition, to help him find new planets to consume, he started to take on Heralds. Imbued with part of his power, they would act as scouts looking for what was next on the menu, and the most famous of them would be the Silver Surfer. And this process would continue for countless eons, with countless worlds and lives becoming food for the cosmic entity.
Until he came across Earth.
Taking the First L
By this point in time, the Fantastic Four had already established themselves as one of the foremost group of heroes of the modern age. And none of them were keen on letting Earth get eaten by the Devourer of Worlds, but they couldn’t fight him head-on. That’s when Uatu the Watcher let them know about something that could stop Galactus: the Ultimate Nullifer, AKA the ultimate universal delete button. This device was capable of deleting anything from existence, and I do mean anything: people, objects, even concepts and entire universes if the user had a strong enough will.
Not even Galactus was safe from its power, so he kept it secured on his ship. However, thanks to the other members and a now rebellious Surfer buying him time, the Human Torch was able to break into the Taa II and steal it. Now that he was armed with the ultimate deterrent, Reed was able to force Galactus to Earth alone and promise never to threaten it again. Thus, for one of the few times in his billions of years of existence, Galactus took an L. Though not before trapping the Surfer on Earth for a while.
Despite promising not to threaten Earth again, circumstances eventually forced Reed to release Galactus from his vow in order to receive his aid. He would attempt to devour Earth several more times, but by this point, its growing Metahuman population would send him packing. These days, he seems to think it’s not worth the effort and prefers to go after other planets instead. That, and when he almost died of starvation, Reed saved his life. He might have been a cosmic entity now, but Galactus still knew one good deed deserves another.
Galactus isn’t Truly Evil.
While it would be easy to call Galactus a villain, that’s not an accurate label for someone like him. In fact, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby themselves said that he’s so far above mortals, we can’t really hold him to our standards of morality. He’s not devouring worlds and killing trillions for the enjoyment, but simply to survive, like almost everything in existence does. That doesn’t make him evil, and indeed, when threats to all creation arise, he will often fight them alongside others.
What Galactus is is essentially a question to us as people: does killing things to survive truly make us evil? As much as I don’t like killing, I’d argue that sometimes, you need to kill in order to survive. It’s only when a being kills for the sake of killing that it could truly be considered evil. And while Galactus is a lot of things, he’s not evil.
Regardless, I’m glad that he’s finally getting the film appearance that he deserves. If Fantastic Four: First Steps aims to adapt the legendary Galactus Trilogy, then I’m hoping it does it justice for everyone’s sakes.
