Issue(s): Silver Surfer #2
Cover Date: Oct 68
Title: "When lands the saucer!" / "Let Earth be the prize!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
John Buscema - Penciler
Joe Sinnott - Inker

Review/plot:
While the Silver Surfer is chilling in the earth's upper atmosphere, a spacecraft comes to earth. It is invisible to humans, but the Surfer can see it. The ship is piloted by the Badoon.

They first try to convince the Surfer that they are benevolent but eventually the truth comes out and they attack him with a giant robot that, like the ship, only he can see. He defeats the robot and drives off the Badoon but to the people of Earth it looks like he went on a mindless rampage.

I certainly enjoy Buscema's art...

...but the Surfer is a little too... introspective for me. It would be fine if his philosophizing was actually interesting, but he's basically been on the same trip since his FF appearances.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Badoon (the Badoon are a minor alien race in the mainstream Marvel Universe but are a significant factor in the alternate future of the Guardians of the Galaxy).

Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Fantasy Masterpieces #2

I could never look at Surfer the same way after seeing him revealed as a bald pink human with chrome plating. All respect to John but a oke at the time was that Buscema put the underpants on the Silver Surfer. He didn't originally need pants for all we knew, for all we knew he was silver to the core with no bones or flesh. Lee's openly over-the-top philosophizing and deliberate near-parody of Jesus crucified the Silver Surfer of the Sixties as we knew him from the posters and top-of-the-pops Fantastic Four stories of the time. RIP SS

At the time Lee said it was of this work that he was the most proud.

Who is the girl that the Surfer is carrying in that splash?

Generic blond female was captured by the Badoon and was forced to teach them human language and customs via a "strange telepathy ray." The Badoon are explaining to the Surfer that they are a gentle race that can be trusted when she runs into their midst (the Badoon being, apparently, unable to simply lock her in another room) to warn him of their nefarious plans. They shoot her in the back, and the Surfer spends the rest of the book trying to heal her while simultaneously fighting off the Badoon and the US army. He's still trying at the beginning of the next issue, and it's the recalcitrance of the hospital staff and security guards that inspires his global tantrum, which in turn attracts the attention of Mephisto.

Ah, thanks.

Is it just me, or does the Monster of Badoon look a lot like a Galactus knock-off?