GALACTUS

For fifty years the equation never changed: Galactus hungers, a world dies. Then the Ultimates decided to solve the Galactus problem at its root. In Al Ewing and Kenneth Rocafort's The Ultimates #2 (2015), the team located the cosmic incubator — the egg from which Galactus had hatched at the dawn of the universe — forced him back inside it, and reversed what came out.

What emerged in The Ultimates #3 (2016) wore white and gold instead of purple, and the hunger was gone. This was Galactus the Lifebringer: where the Devourer had consumed energy, the Lifebringer poured it out, seeding dead worlds with life. His first act in the new role was an apology written across the cosmos — he restored Archeopia, the very first planet he had ever devoured, and set its people back upon it.

The new job came with a release letter for an old servant. With no hunger left to serve, the Silver Surfer was freed from his herald's duty and left to wander the universe as his own man. Galactus, by every account, was happier than he had ever been: the force of nature who had apologized to no one was finally making good on his ancient promise to give back more than he took.

The cosmos, however, keeps its ledgers balanced by force. Cosmic powers hauled the Lifebringer before judgment for disturbing the order of things, and in Infinity Countdown #4 (2018) the end came by his own choice: to stop an Ultron virus spreading from the world of Saiph, Galactus willingly resumed the hunger and devoured the planet himself. The gold faded, the Devourer returned, and the Surfer took up the herald's burden once more — proof that even a god's retirement lasts only until the universe files an emergency.