Silver Surfer is perhaps the most misunderstood and tormented superhero to have ever been created. When Silver Surfer made his first appearance in Marvel’s Fantastic Four Issue #48 (released in 1966), he was presented as a villain doing the dirty work of searching for energy-rich planets for the galactic humanoid invader Galactus. The recent Fantastic Four movie tipped its hat to this original villainous status of the Silver Surfer.
The Silver Surfer’s villain status, however, was not by his active choice. He had offered himself to become Galactus’ minion in order to save his own planet from annihilation. Galactus consumes the elemental energies of planets, leaving them as dried husks devoid of life. He initially intended to consume the Surfer’s own planet, Zenn-La. However, wanting to save Zenn-La, the Surfer (known then as the Zen-Lavian Norrin Radd) offered to become Galactus’ herald in exchange for the sparing of his home planet. Norrin Radd’s main responsibility as Galactus’ herald was to seek out energy-rich planets for the humanoid’s consumption. Galactus transformed Radd into a silver-skinned entity endowed with cosmic powers. From then on, traveling across galaxies on a silver surfboard, Norrin Radd was known as the Silver Surfer.
Galactus eventually manipulated the Surfer’s mind — repressing his memories and his noble personality. This caused the Surfer to seek out inhabited planets, eventually leading Galactus to Earth. In Fantastic Four Issue # 49, the FF were set to defend their own planet and battled the Surfer and his master Galactus. In this issue, Alicia Masters also made her first appearance. She was the one who sensed the noble spirit that lay dormant within the Surfer, awakened this dormant spirit, and appealed to him to turn against Galactus. In the end, the Silver Surfer did turn against Galactus and fought side by side with the Fantastic Four to defeat the cosmic invader. Although Galactus was defeated, he punished the Surfer by trapping him on Earth with the use of an energy barrier. This barrier was exclusively attuned to prevent the Silver Surfer from ever flying out from the planet, thereby also preventing his return to Zenn-La.
All the while that the Silver Surfer was trapped on Earth, his role vacillated between being a defender of Earth’s inhabitants and being a feared villain. He temporarily teamed up with another outcast superhero, the Incredible Hulk, to save the Earth from the threat of a weather-altering technology. With his seeming half-hearted cooperation at defending the world in which he was trapped, the Silver Surfer becomes the reluctant superhero. In time, however, he came to grudging acceptance of his role as a defender of the Earth and its inhabitants.