This book is the rare example of a Stan Lee joint created after 1980 that’s actually pretty good.
The story involves Silver Surfer finally being able to get through the barrier that Galactus put in place to imprison him on Earth. It was published as a $1, giant-size floppy book, but could just as easily have been a graphic novel (and if it were released today, probably would have been).
After a recap of his origin and the reason the big G put him on Earth, we see Surfer get Reed Richards’ help to escape, and quickly fly to Zenna La only to find it in ruins because Galactus ate it after Surfer betrayed him to save Earth. It’s a bit strange that G allowed the residents of the planet to evacuate and return after his life-sucking process had run its course. Seems out of character.
We also learn that Mephisto snatched up Shalla Bal, Surfer’s one true love, apparently because he recognized the value of having her as a hostage.
He’s keeping her on Earth, having wiped her memories, which basically means Surfer has to return to Earth—and once he does, the barrier will imprison him again. He does, he fights Mephisto, and Mephisto tricks him by sending Shalla Bal back to Zenn-La, so Surfer can’t get back to her.
At the end, we see that Shalla Bal now has the power to bring back life to her planet. As she returns, things start growing again.
A nice story that doesn’t change the status quo at all, despite the fact that it seems about to change it several times throughout.
At some points, the art looks definitely like Byrne, but at others he was clearly just doing breakdowns for Tom Palmer. Hence, I’m giving Palmer some art credits.
A “C+” – really-???-!!! You are hard-core! This one-shot was actually pretty awesome! At the time, ( 41 years ago!!! Phew!!!! ) I took this as an indication that Stan Lee wanted to team up with John Byrne to relaunch the legendary ‘Silver Surfer’ series- seemed like a great idea to me!! Too bad I was wrong- or maybe the sales figures on this issue were too weak to warrant returning to series. It’s impossible for me to imagine anything written by Lee and drawn/written by John Byrne not selling like hotcakes. My only problem with this story was the Surfer’s fatal lapse of logic in not realizing that if he returns to Earth, ( and reimprisoning himself back behind the Barrier again ) that Mephisto- you know, that old Devil himself- will simply re-whisk professional damsel in distress Shalla Bal back to Zenn-La- or even somewhere else in the cosmos, altogether! The Surfer is more than intelligent enough to reason this out- hell, I’M half-retarded, and even I could see THAT coming!!! This development does raise the question as to why the Barrier was able to reimprison him again upon his return to Earth, when that has certainly not been the case in the past thirty-six years, as the Surfer certainly has not had any trouble whatsoever coming and going from ol’ Terra-Firma at his leisure!! So, which is it-?? Is the Barrier still there, or NOT-??? ( yes, it is ) This type of shit keeps me up at night! Nevertheless- I would bestow this great issue with a solid “B+”!!! Yeah, baby!