Issue(s): Fantastic Four #242, Fantastic Four #243, Fantastic Four #244
Cover Date: May-Jul 82
Title: "Terrax the Untamed" / "Shall Earth endure?" / "Beginnings and endings"
Credits:
John Byrne - Writer
John Byrne - Penciler
John Byrne - Inker
Lance Tooks - Assistant Editor
Jim Salicrup - Editor

Review/plot:
The classic "everybody fights Galactus" arc. Terrax arrives on Earth...

...and raises the island of Manhattan into space, holding it hostage in order to force the Fantastic Four to fight Galactus for him. He's once again trying to escape Galactus' servitude. I guess Dazzler's recent intervention didn't make much of a difference in the long run.

Sue, who is busy keeping the entire island of Manhattan in a forcefield so that it isn't sucked into space, is left behind. Frankie Raye is supposed to be watching over her but is instead getting all fan-girlish over finding out that Galactus is real (totally understandable).

The rest of the FF confront Galactus...

...but he just goes after Terrax and removes his powers.

Galactus then restores Manhattan. However, Galactus has expended a lot of energy chasing Terrax across the universe so he decides to eat the Earth.

The FF fight to stop him, aided by Captain America, Wasp, Thor and Iron Man, who had been roused during Terrax's attack, but unable to get into Manhattan until now.

Despite the awesomeness of it, this only happens on the cover.

Spider-Man and Daredevil also watch from the sidelines, feeling that their powers aren't of any use in such a cosmic fight.

Even with Thor on their side, the heroes don't make much headway against Galactus until Dr. Strange arrives. Strange causes Galactus to feel the pain of all the souls he's consumed. (In the 90s cartoon re-enactment of this, it's the Ghost Rider who shows up instead of Dr. Strange, which actually worked pretty well considering Strange's Images of Ikonn spell functions a lot like the Ghost Rider's penance stare.)

In the third reversal of the arc, now that Galactus is defeated and dying, Reed announces that they have to save his life.

Iron Man doesn't really agree, but they all pitch in and manage to feed Galactus energy from Thor's hammer. However, Galactus once again needs to feed more fully, so there appears to be a standoff. Reed can either let Galactus eat the Earth or let Galactus die. But then Frankie Raye, who has been acting strangely ever since Terrax arrived and Frankie found out that Galactus was more than a legend, volunteers to be Galactus' new herald.

Against Reed's protests and Johnny's anguished pleas, Galactus transforms Frankie Raye into Nova (although she is not called that in this story).

Reed has located an uninhabited planet that is nonetheless suitable for Galactus, but he cautions Frankie that she won't always be able to lead Galactus to uninhabited planets. Frankie says she doesn't really care if the universe has "a few less bug-eyed monsters".

Johnny is, of course, heart broken by Frankie's departure (this scene parallels the one from Fantastic Four #238).

Galactus labels the FF "friends" for their help this arc.

Byrne's writing is really excellent here. Awesome super-hero stuff, of course, with some cool guest appearances and some great cosmic happenings, but also a lot of good characterization. Byrne has been setting up Frankie Raye's moral ambiguity all along and this is the culmination. But Byrne's handling of the FF and even the guest characters is equally good.

There's a little bit of the old marital unrest when Reed reveals that the Christmas tree that has been on display in the Baxter Building is actually a high tech synthetic tree of his making.

Sue doesn't like that. But the spat is interrupted when Franklin uses his mutant powers to launch a toy rocket into the air.

At the end of this arc, Franklin's powers get cooking again.

The Baxter Building was badly damaged during the events of this issue.

In the aftermath of this arc, Reed buys the building outright from the current landlord Mr. Collins. Stark Industries helps Reed rebuild the building.

We also learn that the real Dr. Doom seems to be conscious and active. The FF arrange to deliver the body that they picked up at the end of the Liddleville story to the Latverian embassy.

When i see clothing like this, i never know if the problem was the 80s or comic book artists' interpretation of the 80s.

Quality Rating: B+

Historical Significance Rating: 7 - Frankie Raye becomes Galactus' herald. Terrax is depowered. Reed saves Galactus's life. Reed Richards buys the Baxter Building.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Needs to take place either before or after Dr. Strange goes dimension hopping starting in Defenders #106 and returning in Defenders #112. According to Amazing Spider-Man #229, that issue, Fantastic Four #241, and Avengers #219 all happen at the same time.

References:

• The Thing is still distraught about losing the false life he was living with Alicia in Dr. Doom's Liddleville in Fantastic Four #236.
  
• The Fantastic Four effectively captured Terrax and forced him into Galactus' servitude in Fantastic Four #211.
  
• A reference that doesn't quite match its footnotes. Galactus says of Earth: "Again must I contend with the creatures of this tiny world. They, alone in all creation, have stymied my will. The footnote says "Most recently in Dazzler #10-11 and ROM #26-27". Now, those are Galactus' most recent appearances, but Dazzler didn't stymie his will, and ROM and his fellow Spaceknights are not Earthlings.
  
• Reed released Galactus from his pledge to not eat Earth in order to get his help fighting the Sphinx in Fantastic Four #212-213.
  
• Iron Man compares the Galactus dilemma with the Avengers' recent experience with the Molecule Man in Avengers #215-216.
  
• Reed apparently had a clause allowing him to buy the Baxter Building built into the contract when he sold the building when the FF went bankrupt in Fantastic Four #9.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The Baxter Building landlord briefly had a different name during the Roy Thomas/Gerry Conway issues.

If Daredevil and Spider-Man were going to show up just to talk about how lame they were, I wish Byrne hadn't bothered to use them. Hell, they could have been used for crowd control or something. But no, they just showed up to say "We're not even as tough as the Wasp".

If I had been more of a Spider-Man fanboy, I would have been offended on his behalf. What Matt says is more true for him than it is for a guy who has super-strength and other abilities that would make him a match for many in the Avengers and Fantastic Four. It would have made more sense to have Captain America be the guy on the sidelines with Daredevil, but of course, Cap was an Avenger in good standing, so he often got a pass on being relatively ineffectual in situations such as this one. I liked Byrne's Spidey/DD cameo here anyway, and I generally liked his attentiveness to the Marvel New York superhero community (e.g., DD helping out when Sue became Malice).

fnord: Alas, that exercise clothing on whatshername (Julie?) is documentary-level accurate for '82. Not that that completely acquits Byrne on charges of aggravated cheesecake and brandishing a fishnet.

Byrne's use of cheesecake and the occasional nude shot with say, strategically placed bubbles are not a bad thing of course, but he definitely pushed it farther than Lee and Kirby ever would have. This too is fine, but when current artists push it a little farther than Byrne and dwell on excessive cleavage or add too many butt shots, the followers on Byrne's website just start to froth at the mouth over how far this industry has sunk. Personally, I DO think there is a line, and that current comics have probably crossed it, but it's not as if standards had been exactly the same since 1961. Byrne and Claremont pushed the sexual content as far as they could in the early eighties, and there's no way they can claim that they were just upholding the spirit of Stan Lee.

I'll defend Claremont, as far as his inclusion in that. I think while he had his various fetishistic stuff that sometimes made its way (albeit not obviously) into his stories, I don't think CC was ever explicitly "sexual" in a bad way in his stories. He treated romance romantically and I think tried to be honest and grown-up about it, but it never crossed a line. And certain sexed-up designs (the hellfire women, ninja Psylocke) were the responsibility of his artists.

Claremont was definitely guilty of depicting scantily-clad minors at some points. According to some versions of the story, ninja Psylocke was more Claremont's fault that Lee's, although according to most accounts it was originally supposed to be temporary. What's more disturbing is that many of his female characters (Tyger Tiger, Psylocke, Jean, Maddie) are basically turned into bad girls by men entering their minds without permission, with the implication that that's what they secretly want.

It's unfair to conclude that (in Claremont's mind) "they secretly want it".
I think most readers have concluded by now that Claremont has a mind-control fetish.
Look at the Dark Phoenix though. Mastermind ended up being destroyed by his actions.
So, while I agree that there's something unnerving about all the mind control implications, it's going too far to assume that Claremont feels "they might want it".

While I don't agree with every example Michael gives--Psylocke was written years before the ninja stuff as desiring to become a warrior; see the '87 annual for example--there are too many examples in the Claremont canon to ignore of women whose wild side is unleashed by a man's violation, a wild side the character subsequently embraces. And Fnord has given us a clear-cut "she wanted it" example with Evil Xavier's abuse of Dani Moonstar in the X-Men/Micronauts series.

I do think Claremont intends this sort of thing as a metaphor for temptation rather than sexual assault, but it's all rather questionable.

CC could write good superhero romance, but the sheer quantity of fetish and lesbian innuendo is hard to miss once the reader is past puberty. The Hellfire Club, Callisto's Morlock fetish fashions (Romita Jr says Claremont asked for more than just Cal kitting out Xavier in leather in that story where she saves him after a mugging), Rachel's "hound" get up, Belasco...it's not coming from the artists.

OK, now I'm VERY curious. What did Romita say Claremont asked for in that Xavier/Callisto scene? Nudity? Sex? Whips and chains? How far was he trying to push it?

Claremont's fetishes are not hidden very subtly at all, but the books are very rarely overtly sexual. Most of them are thematically sexual and even then it's the kind of sophisticated "more mental than physical" kind of sexuality fetishists get into.

If we're talking here more about what's actually shown on the page, I think it's as I said and he's not that guilty of anything. A few people in leather over the years is a lot different from every girl having huge breasts, or Susan Storm having a costume where the there's bare breast exposed in the shape of a 4 on her chest (as I think happened during DeFalco's 90s).

It's a shame superhero comics ever had to involve sexuality at all, but that's part of the genre catering to older audiences. I think Claremont's style (where thoughtful, sincere romance co-exists with an undercurrent of weird power fantasies) is actually way more sophisticated than what we've gotten since as far as sexuality in comics.

Jay, it's in Sean Howe's book, but I was mistaken: it's Shooter, not Romita, who says Claremont wanted to put Xavier in "transvestite gear." Ann Nocenti seems to confirm that, although her quote in the footnote is oddly edited. Romita may have alluded to this elsewhere, or maybe I was just mixing him up with the Shooter quote Howe provides.

I agree with Paul that there usually wasn't mindless T&A in Claremont books, but I'd concur with Jay that he and Byrne definitely went further than Lee and Kirby. There's a scene around X-Men 100, drawn by Cockrum,, where Scott and Jean are just kissing and Stan and Jack, actually drawn in the story, say that the characters never did that when they were in charge.

Thanks, Walter. I wonder how hard Claremont fought for the "transvestite gear".
And yeah, that thing about Lee and Kirby illustrates my point. I DO personally think that Marvel and DC are aiming their characters at way too old an audience these days, but I also think wherever the line is it's blurry.

And again, Byrne's generation knowingly pushed things as social standards changed. Maybe the Lee's and Ditko's and Kirby's of the world thought what these young punks were doing was excessively crude but just shrugged and and admitted "times change". Now that those same young punks are the old timers they seem to be less tolerant.

This discussion of Claremont's fetishes has its place in one of his X-Men issues, but it has gotten very off topic for this FF Galactus story.

As both a Spider-Man and DD fan, I am not offended at all by their comments, nor do I think it makes them lame. I think it just acknowledges the limits of their powers, and puts the cosmic spanning FF and Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the spot where they should be. Personally, I never liked it when characters that should be out of their element are casually inserted into stories that are not thematically appropriate.

Chris, the "limits of both their powers" are way higher than the limits of Captain America's and the Wasp's. The notion that Spider-Man is underpwered compared to the Avengers has always been silly. It's fine that Spider-Man and Daredevil stories are typically "more group dee" (despite the fact that Spider-Man can lift up a forklift and Captain America can have trouble fighting a French guy who kicks a lot) but if stylistically they're out of place in a Galactus story then don't put them in a freaking Galactus story. And if you do, don't have them talk about how they're too weak and useless to get involved, but the guy with no powers and the tiny girl with the wings have it handled. It doesn't even make internal sense. It's just ranking characters and it's unnecassary.

My unholy bastard of an autocorrect changed "more grounded" into "more group dee" but you get the idea...

Agree w/ Jay. Spidey and DD are definitely out of their league (though I also agree with Jay that we don't need to see them say it - why not let us just assume it?), but then so are various Avengers, and really, most Marvel heroes.

That can be the problem with team books where there are huge power disparities, and it's also the problem with real life character popularity influencing storytelling. It was nice when Wolverine got flicked into orbit by the guardian of the M'Kraan crystal. That's about how it ought to play out with someone of his power level. But it usually doesn't.

Cap, Wasp, Pym, and maybe Iron Man (what is Iron Man's power level? I never read him - the movies obviously way overpowered him due to the film being a hit, they even had him fight Thor to a standstill), are outclassed and should be of no use against Galactus. But then really hardly any Marvel heroes should be of any use against him. Really only some of the cosmic and some of the mystical ones. The geniuses are useful against him because they can come up with stratagems and weapons that can help make up for the huge power deficit.

NOBODY'S going to be "useful" against Galactus by punching him. Wonder Man won't do much better than Spider-Man. This story did not end with somebody standing toe to toe with Galactus and duking it out with him. The good guys came up with a different kind of plan, which is the way it should be. There were also other plot elements at work here, like Terrax stealing Manhattan and the panicking crowds. Spider-Man and Daredevil, if they were going to be used at all, could have been shown being effective in those situations. But no, they had to show up and admit how weak they are because they can't beat up Galactus. Even though Thor can't either. It probably wasn't Byrne's intention but it just comes across as the writer reminding us which characters are "A-list" and which characters aren't. And that doesn't do the characters OR the readers who like them any good.

Plus he got the A-list wrong.

Iron Man has gone toe to toe with people like Wonder Man and Thor on a couple of occasions- he's at least as powerful as the Thing. If he shouldn't be there, then neither should Ben.

I think that yes, while Spider-Man is more physically powerful than Captain America (i would quibble about the Wasp, at least after Roger Stern was done with her), he's been shown and will continue to be shown to not be a team player. He can't follow orders or work in a team situation and stories with him working with the Avengers often have him screwing up. Even though Spidey's super-powers put him in the Avengers' league, as Jay says, he's meant to be a "group dee" crime-fighting character. ;-) It's like in Secret Wars when the Torch says "Hey, are you sure you want to go fight the X-Men? You're used to fighting muggers." But then he does more than hold his own against the X-Men, but notably, does it alone.

I think the real reason John Byrne included him and Daredevil in this story is because whenever you have a big bad guy attacking New York, the letters start pouring in asking why every hero that lives in New York didn't help. In different eras that's been handled in different ways, but at this point the shared universe was pretty tight so the stories usually answer that question directly. So this is Byrne's way of acknowledging that yes, those characters are here, but they're not getting involved. I get why some of you feel it's disparaging Spidey and DD but i see it more like an acknowledgement of their thematic areas.

If you want to see this same type of thing handled better, though, check out Hulk #300, where Spidey and DD similarly decide that they're not going to go up against the super-enraged mindless Hulk but they still find useful things to do.

P.S. Chris - thanks for bringing this back on topic! ;-)

I remember there being a guy showing up once(in "the Other" I think) with video footage of Spider-Man pitching in on a Galactus battle, possibly this one. All we saw was Spider-Man clinging to his foot though, freaking out.

I read the commentary and all the comments and I was surprised that the following was at least made explicit once:
The only reason that the heroes won at all was because Galactus was in a weakened state. The talk of power levels is really a moot point at best since a full power Galactus makes mince meat out of them all and then some.

correction: 'the following was not'

Movie Thor and Iron Man were not as evenly matched as it looked. I'd say Thor was holding back plus that dark energy to get him to Earth might have weakened him some. Iron Man was holding out I'd say.

Anyway I better cease talking since I haven't read these.

Hmm... In my earlier post, I meant "Sin's Past."

The Doc Strange spell was a cool Byrne touch, but it's still just not in the least plausible that the good guys physically trash Galactus here. It lacks all internal logic. The Big G still ends up having the power to turn Frankie *permanently* into a being on a par with Thor! (as heralds of G are). He can do that but not prevail here? Also, compare what happens in this run with events in FF #257, when a still-weakened Big G very easily destroys the Skrull Throneworld (and Frankie, with just a teeny bit of his power, wipes out the whole Skrull armada in an instant!). Having characters such as Iron Man, The Wasp, and The Thing give Galactus a hard time and even bring him down is just utterly preposterous. G could have vaporized the lot of them in an instant and would have, given that his very life was on the line. Clearly, Byrne indulged big-time in a little sentimental Earth bias here and applied completely different standards than he did later for the hapless, unloved Skrulls. Also, why would Big G, who is *billions* of years old (and wise) and has all the time in the Universe on his side risk coming to Earth in a depleted state anyway? He could easily have devoured a planet or two on his way to get Terrax. What was the big rush? The plot supplies no answer to that question. All this has bugged me for years, and I'm finally saying so! (Even so, these books are way, way better than most. They're good enough that I actually care about the internal inconsistencies and merely "convenient" aspects of the plot.)

p.s. What's with all the bizarre prudish comments here? Sex is part of life, hardly the worst, too, and Byrne helped the comics grow up a little.

Some thoughts about the issues that have been raised here, concerning this arc:

- Spider-Man/Daredevil: In my mind, even though it is true that Spider-Man may be as powerful (or more) as Captain America, it is also true that Captain America is a genius strategist with precise knowledge of his fellow Avengers' capabilities and how best to deploy them. This leads to another fact: The Avengers, as a finely honed fighting team, could be thought of as a unit, particularly when fighting someone as powerful as Galactus. That is, when the bad guy is big or "cosmic" enough, you should call the FF or the Avengers to deal with it, not Daredevil or Spider-Man. And the Avengers is a team, where every member makes a specific contribution to the team in order for it to be mighty as a whole. Captain America in particular makes one of the greatest contributions, which is battle strategy, even if it was not shown in this arc. This could well be what Daredevil was thinking when he says to Spider-Man that they would just "get in the way", meaning that they might get in the way of an orchestrated, practiced attack from either super team already engaged in battle. With the stakes so high, they just couldn't risk that.

- Depowered Galactus being able to power up Frankie: I believe this is mostly explained in the story, since Galactus first declines Frankie's offer precisely due to his own current weakness. But then Frankie reveals that she is already powerful, and this makes enough of a difference for Galactus to be able to give her the power cosmic. The reasoning in my mind is that Frankie already having superpowers means that her genetic structured had already been improved from a regular human being's. This might make it easier for Galactus to make further improvements, since she's already "half-there", so to speak. It's reasonable to assume that it might take less of an effort to enhance superpowers that are already there, than create them from scratch.

- Galactus risking coming to Earth in a depleted state: I believe we should try to see things from Galactus' perspective to explain this one. To Galactus, planets are meals and superheroes are troublesome distractions at the most. Even though the FF have thwarted his plans in the past, this is like saying ants thwarted your picnic plans last weekend. You just went somewhere else to have lunch. So yeah, Terrax betrays Galactus and Galactus has to run after him across half the universe because Terrax "belongs" to him. You might run after your dog halfway across your neighborhood if he went off the leash, too, even if you'd already decided to give him away or something. And after you caught up with it, you might feel quite tired and hungry/thirsty, too. Oh, look, it turns out that you caught the dog exactly at the same spot where ants ruined your picnic plans the other day. Well, you just don't have the energy to walk back to your house without at least something to drink, so you buy a coke from a nearby machine and sit on the grass to rest a little and hope that the ants won't bother you too much this time around because you're about to faint from exhaustion. Well, that's the way I explain it, anyway. Does it make sense?

Hi Ricardo, I see where you're coming from. Byrne certainly does try to use that idea that Frankie is already powerful. But it's still quite a long way from Human Torch level to Silver Surfer level, as is demonstrated when Johnny tries to keep up with Frankie as she first flies into outer space and then when she annihilates the Skrull star fleet in an instant. My point is just that if Galactus can raise her up that much on a permanent basis, he'd easily be able to wipe out Iron Man, etc. (And another thing he does while weakened is materialize his planet-devouring equipment out of pollution in Earth's air, again demonstrating himself capable of feats seemingly requiring much more power than defeating a few superheroes, mostly of the middle rank.)

And I like your analogies, but if you chase your dog into a dangerous neighborhood, you'll likely enter prepared. At least if you're smart! And this is Galactus, a supra-genius cosmic entity, not a random guy off the street. The ants analogy does strike me as apt, but not entirely for the reason you probably intend. :-) I'd say that the superheroes would have had about the same chance of taking down even a weakened Galactus as the ants would have of taking you or me down, even if we were a little weary from pursuing the dog. :-)

I just have a very grand conception of Galactus, and it's rooted in the canon of Marvel Comics. I think many later writers, including even the great Byrne (and I mean that completely sincerely), haven't done justice to the original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby conception of Galactus. Way back in Thor #134 (1966!), for instance, in the Big G's second appearance, Stan the Man unequivocally wrote that Galactus is "the most awesome living being in the cosmos." *That's* what the later writers have often forgotten and failed to do justice to.

Thanks for the conversation.

Just quickly want to add that I've always liked that bit about Galactus materializing his equipment out of pollution, a quick but very pointed moment that every environmentally conscious person should appreciate.

I think the DD/Spidey thing distracted your readers from noticing "it's Ghost Rider who shows up instead of Galactus" in the '90s cartoon, because from context, I believe you mean "i/o Dr. Strange." The costuming debate's very much on my mind as I design Not Another Comic Book and settle on where it should draw the line for the sake of good storytelling and still reflect an enlightened sexual viewpoint AND its unconventional cast. Greatly enjoy your cyber-comics boxes, Fnord.

Thanks, Cecil. Yeah, if Ghost Rider showed up instead of Galactus in the cartoon that would have been a different story entirely.

"The Infinity Spoon", anyone? Johnny would need a lot of help to eat a whole planet. Not to belittle him, but he would.

What I think this story really does is help show the connection between the two teams - the Avengers and the FF. This really grows during Byrne's run (who, of course, had worked on Avengers). They really consider each other part of the extended family. Over the course of Byrne's run we have this story (a magnificent story with fantastic art), we have the Annihlus (f**k it - I can't spell his name) story, then She-Hulk joins the FF, they meet each other fighting Nebula and the Skrulls and then the FF come live at Avengers Mansion. Neither team exactly is calling in the Defenders (though, yes Dr. Strange does show up here) or X-Men or Spider-Man or Daredevil. It's keeping it all in the family.

I do agree with fnord that this was probably at least an attempt to show that Spider-Man and Daredevil are at least around when so often a big story like this just ignores the other heroes in New York.

This was also a very good use of a character with Frankie. She had already shown that she had no hesitation in terms of killing and making her the herald is a good resolution of where her character was headed.

In the opening pages of issue 242 there's a scene where Johnny shows up at Julie's play practice. She's running lines that are pulled from an early issue of Elfquest, and the director interrupts to criticize the delivery. It's actually pretty funny, but at the time I wondered why Byrne would go out of his way to bad mouth an independent creator like Wendy Pini. Since then I've learned that Claremont was a major Elfquest fan, so I guess this was just another jab in their ongoing feud.

I think you're misreading Byrne's intentions with that Elfquest reference. I don't believe he was badmouthing it at all.

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=29765

Where was Surfer during this time? Wouldn't he have assisted?

Good questions. Believe he was still with The Defenders at this time? At the beginning of "Escape--To Terror" (Silver Surfer one-shot, Lee/Byrne) which occurs shortly after this trilogy but is cover-dated the same month as FF #243, he's wallowing in self-pity in the Himalayas. He hooks up with the FF after he sees a beam that Reed fires into the sky, hoping to attract his attention. But you might think that Terrax and Galactus would do that too.

A little trick: this story is in the 1982 category on my site. So you can go to the 1982 page and click the little box next to this entry. Then you can use the filter at the bottom of the page to just show the Silver Surfer's appearances, and you can check the boxes next to all of those entries. Then you can clear the filter, and the boxes that you've checked will remain checked. In this case you will see that he does indeed seem to be doing some dimension hopping with the Defenders around the time of this story.

That is of course just based on my somewhat arbitrary placement and doesn't have anything to do with what the creators intended, but it's a decent way to check where characters might be in relation to other stories that they don't appear in.

Thanks, fnord. When I have a freer moment, I may well see whether I'm clever enough to follow those instructions. Don't recall: was Strange dimension hopping also? Because he (famously) does show up here. Of course, at a purely personal level, I've never accepted that this is Galactus. Clearly, it's an impostor! ;-)

That's a good point. Strange is in that Defenders story as well. But Silver Surfer seems to disappear midway through Defenders #115 (when the majority of the group, including Strange and Surfer, get home but the rest gets stuck in Dr. Seuss-ville), so maybe he had enough being around other people and flew away, leaving Strange behind to deal with the Galactus situation.

Did it, the trick you mentioned above. Yes, very nice tool for tracking characters chronologically. Will keep in mind.

As for Strange's spell here (for further friendly argument's sake), although a nifty idea, it shouldn't really affect Galactus any more than a spell that suddenly revealed to one of us all the insects we had deliberately or inadvertently killed during our lifetimes. Now, that might possibly be more impressive than you'd think, but unless you were afraid of bugs or a Jainist, would you scream out or be staggered and weakened by it?

G's attitude toward the destructive effects of his appetite seemed well-established, e.g., "If petty creatures are wiped out when I drain a planet, it is regrettable ... but UNAVOIDABLE!" (FF #49). Not sure why it would change here. (And that's just one of several objections I have to events here. But no doubt this is just my issue, as a longtime Galactus fan.)

Strange's spell doesn't bother me, any more than Ghost Rider's penance stare affecting people like Flag Smasher and Leader who never show remorse for their crimes does. It's magic- it affects the subconscious. Besides, Galactus was human once.

Yeah, "It's magic" ... always a vague fantasy concept that writers can do anything they want with.

Galactus was once Galan of Taa in a different universe that might well have had different laws of physics than our own. Hard to imagine it would have had the same species (unless, say, maybe the Celestials had something to do with that).

I realize the depiction of Galan in the origin story is human-like, but I've always taken that as "convenient" to help the reader identify with the story. And that falls in line with the idea that G appears in the form of whatever race views him. His true form is pure energy, and his original life in that other universe probably transcends anything we could imagine. (I like to at least entertain that kind of scientific realism.) He's had 15 billion or so years to get used to being a star-god. Who knows what his mind would be like -- hugely alien and unfathomable, I imagine.

As an idea, Galactus appeals to me in large part because the more you consider him, the stranger and more awesome he becomes. My take at least.

Daredevil has a line in 243 about his radar sense being "not nearly as strong as it once was" - is that a reference to some current plot point in Daredevil's comic? I don't remember that being a thing.

S, if memory serves Miller had Daredevil's radar sense weakened or lost in his run around this time. In the 170s, I believe.

Per http://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/daredevil_168-182.shtml -

"#176-177 - Daredevil has been having trouble with his radar sense and it's getting worse. He decides to seek out his old mentor, Stick. Elektra also has the same idea. And Turk has acquired the MAULER armor from Cord Industries. There's a comical scene where Daredevil, Elektra, Heather Glenn, and Turk all show up at a local stool pigeon's place one by one, each demanding to know where to find Stick."

Missed listing Dr. Doom in the character appearances.

That’s because it’s just a Doombot. Doom is still trapped in Liddleville, though he will be restored to normal shortly. You can tell it’s an imposter by the over-the-top dialogue. Byrne may not write the best dialogue, but he knows Doom better than that.

Poor Johnny. His luck with women is all bad, he makes terrible choices, and everybody hates him. Everyone ignores him and just treats him like a kid. He never gets any sympathy from anybody.