SILVER SURFER

The Silver Surfer's first act of free will earned him a life sentence on the planet he had just rescued. In Fantastic Four #49 (1966) the herald crash-landed into the orbit of Alicia Masters, the blind sculptor whose appeal to his buried conscience — she could not see the monster, so she spoke to the man — turned him against Galactus at the precise moment Earth needed a traitor on the inside.

His revolt bought the Fantastic Four the minutes they needed to brandish the Ultimate Nullifier, and Galactus agreed to spare Earth. The mercy came with a receipt. In Fantastic Four #50 Galactus relieved his herald of duty and stripped away his space-time powers, raising a barrier around the planet attuned to the Surfer alone: every other being in creation could come and go, but the one who had defied him would watch the stars from inside the cage.

The exile lasted, in publishing terms, for roughly two decades of stories. The Surfer wandered Earth as its most homesick resident — philosopher, prisoner and occasional menace — until Silver Surfer vol. 3 #1 (1987), when, with Reed Richards' help, he finally pierced the barrier and rode for home. His reward for escaping was a second wound: he found Zenn-La devastated by a vengeful Galactus, the world he had sold himself to protect left barely able to support life.