Marvel is collapsing under its own weight, and to try to sell Silver Surfer comics they bring him back to Earth for Rick and Marlo’s wedding–connecting to the Incredible Hulk series.
Then, Surfer and some buddies go to Monster Island for a little adventure that connects to the Warlock and Infinity Watch storyline with Mole Man.
The end up at the site of Atlantis–recently destroyed in the pages of Fantastic Four–and they find out that Frankie Raye is still alive. This adds momentum as we build to issue #100.
Silver Surfer for years has been a cosmic book operating relatively independent of all the other Marvel books. I’m assuming sales were lagging and these issues were an attempt to push readers towards a book they saw as nonessential/unconnected to the greater 616 universe. It works okay though. These are good stories. I know I’m jamming two arcs into one post, but they overlap. Not a lot happens in them that’s worth writing about but, again, they are a lot of fun. And the importance of a fun comic in 1994 cannot be underestimated.
In the background, Thanos and some cosmic characters are up to all kinds of Infinity Gem stuff that leads Surfer back to outer space, with Frankie, for the “temptation” arc, where Surfer is tempted to power, lust, etc., away from his moral code. Frankie is the agitator in these various explorations into temptation/sin, until we finally learn she’s not Frankie at all.
Of course. Mephisto. He crashed Rick Jones’ wedding, and now we understand this was all about Silver Surfer–one of Mephisto’s main foils.
Mephisto, through the temptations, took Surfer’s soul and beats him up for most of issue #100. He gets free but is shaken, and decides to go see his true love Shalla Bal for comfort only to find…
…She now loves someone else. That’s the cliffhanger, but it’s a good place to stop. This post covered a lot of issues.