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In Silver Surfer Black, Norrin time travels in order to create life across the universe. He’s done this before in an underappreciated storyline.
Silver Surfer: Black, by writer Donny Cates and artist Trad Moore, depicts a tear-jerking story that takes Norrin Rad back to the beginning of time in a fatalistic plot that leads to him creating a fundamental piece of the universe. As original as the jaw-dropping artwork from Moore is, however, the story is actually something the Surfer has been through once before, quite recently, in fact. The 2016 Silver Surfer run by the creative team of Dan Slott and Michael Allred (with colors from Laura Allred) features a very similar plotline, in more ways than one.
Both stories incorporate Galan, the man who would become Galactus. In most versions of his origin, Galan was a scientist who lived in a prior universe, one who saw an approaching big bang that would destroy his reality and create the next. This leads him to hide in an incubation chamber that would eventually turn him into the devourer Galactus. Both stories grapple with this dramatic origin.
In Slott’s run, the Surfer learns that Galactus will eventually become a reformed life-bringer, and he spares Galan so that this development will come to pass. In the Cates run, however, the reasoning is far more emotionally grounded. The Slott run has Surfer meeting Galan in the cosmos before our own, completely oblivious to what he will one day become. Silver Surfer: Black has him meeting Galan in our reality, trapped in the confines of his incubator. It might seem that this form of Galan is more responsible for his eventual crimes, but Cates portrays him in a way that is heart-wrenchingly sympathetic.
Indeed, the Surfer tells a remorseful Galan that he will kill him for his future actions. The future Galactus admits that he feels a great hunger growing within him and fears what he will become. Galan tells Norrin: “You cannot defeat the dark… with darkness.” The words move the Surfer so much that he willingly spares Galactus and sets in motion a timeline that will eventually destroy his own home world. This is because the Surfer knows that the true fight against darkness is not quelling it, but to bring it light.
The most fundamental difference between the two tales comes in Norrin’s love life. The 2016 run has the Surfer journeying the cosmos with a woman from Earth, Dawn Greenwood. The two share a lifetime in the pre-big bang universe, growing old together. When Dawn is at her deathbed, it is revealed Norrin has used the power cosmic to simulate the aging process in his physical appearance. Dawn always knew it was an illusion and wants to see him a final time before she dies. Black disregards this plotline entirely, instead having the Surfer in an eternal cosmic loneliness, longing only for his first wife Shalla from his desecrated homeworld of Zenn-La.
Light and life are recurring themes in Silver Surfer stories, and their function in the plot is nearly identical. In Slott’s, Norrin creates not just light, but the power cosmic itself, and he alters the power signature in the new universe to resemble Dawn’s favorite ladybug dress: red with black dots. This force goes on to create all light in the galaxy, and every race across the universe would come to say its name: Dawn. In Silver Surfer: Black, Norrin’s universal impact is smaller, but arguably more emotional. Rather than fight darkness, he seeds life for all the worlds he will someday watch die, all from a tiny flower which he names Zenn-La.
While somewhat a retread of an older story, the beautiful prose and surreal art style are insurmountable. The sense of peace in the face of oblivion makes the story a worthy read in and of itself.
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