Remember when Galactus ate all the elders of the universe? Well, it made him sick, so it’s time to vomit.
What follows is a pretty rad adventure through the cosmos to track down the gem and do Reed’s original plan. At one point, Sue Richards becomes “Malice” again and shoots Silver Surfer in the face.
That’s cool.
Surfer is still helping Galactus (and I don’t understand why), and he gets Reed, Susan, and Franklin (?) to go out in space and see if they can relieve the big purple guy’s indigestion. But they’re not going to invent cosmic Tums. Instead, they’re going to find the soul gem and use it to yank the Elders’ souls out of Galactus, and restore them to life.
Franklin’s precognitive powers are used to see if anything bad will happen. He sees himself using the ultimate nullifier at one point and gets scolded by his mom.
Nova and Franklin try to do the anorexia thing on Galactus by going down his throat.
Eventually, it all comes down to In-Betweener wanting Galactus to die (I don’t really understand why, but as I read this issues it all seemed to make sense anyway).
We get a big fight between the two of them.
Grandmaster bets on the fight. Which is pretty funny.
I think In-Betweener wants the Elders to be permanently dead, so what he’s really trying to do is kill off the Elders while they’re in Galactus’ belly. But when he realizes he can’t kill Galactus, he asks Death to kill the Elders, and she kills some but not all.
By the end, most of the Elders are restored, and Galactus isn’t nauseous anymore. At least I think that’s what happens. This is one of those stories you really just have to read and enjoy—summarizing it feels stupid and reductive. It’s great cosmic comics.