(There’s a good deal of confusion in the early days. In the original Galactus story it is stated explicitly that Earth is the first inhabited world Galactus has visited. That went out the window with the origin of the Silver Surfer—along with a lot of the Surfer’s implied backstory.)

As many of you know, when I became writer/artist on FANTASTIC FOUR Shooter challenged me to “restore Galactus”. I spent a couple of years doing so, with the additional self-imposed challenged that I would not contradict what had been established. (The closest I came there was “revealing” that the deadly “disease” seen destroying life in Stan and Jack’s origin story was actually the terminal entropy of a prior universe, out of which Galactus was “born”.)

I created Terminus to take up the cosmic thug role, but unfortunately he was gutted about as fast as the Ferengi.

When the FF editor and I complained to Shooter about this he said we should “answer” in the FF. (I wanted that answer to be the FF beating the crap out of the Sh’ar and Lilandra—a character for whom I had no great love—but Shooter would not allow that.) So we did.

Over his time on the book he gave us more demons, vampires, aliens and whatever else caught his fancy. Stories more appropriate to “open format” books like FF or THE AVENGERS.

Still, the fans certainly didn’t seem to mind!