Sterling Starways: Silver Surfer #2 Review
The Surfer's second issue utilizes irony to great extent when it isn't bogged down by endless exposition
—by Nathan on June 15, 2025—
The last Incredible Hulk issue I reviewed, the big green guy fought aliens–the Toad Men. The last Fantastic Four issue I reviewed, Marvel's first family fought aliens–the shape-shifting Skrulls. Guess who the Silver Surfer goes up against in his second-ever solo adventure?
If you guessed "aliens"...you're right, actually. This isn't a trick. The shiny surfer bro battles the Brotherhood of the Badoon this ish.
Stan Lee and John Buscema set a standard pretty quickly in the Surfer's first issue: Norrin Radd, the tragic Silver Surfer, is stranded on Earth (or within a certain perimeter around Earth's atmosphere) after betraying the purple plant pulverizer known as Galactus. He waxes poetic about his fate, longing for the stars while trying to, seemingly hopelessly, integrate himself into a world where he is feared and hated for being different and powerful.
Kinda like almost every other Marvel hero in existence.
I came into this second issue expecting much of the same, and to be honest, that's what I ended up getting. But, like flashes of a silver man on a surfboard speeding across the stars against the all-encompassing black backdrop of space, glimmers of a different sheen pop up now and again in this installment, bits and pieces of narrative which create hope that maybe, just maybe, we're not getting a complete repeat of the Surfer's inaugural issue.
"When Lands the Saucer"/"The Coming of the Krills"
Writer: Stan Lee
Pencilers: John Buscema, Gene Colan
Inkers: Joe Sinnot, Paul Reinman
Colorist: Bill Everett
Letterers: Sam Rosen
Issue: Silver Surfer #2
Issue Publication Date: October 1968
The Silver Surfer's first solo sail outside a Fantastic Four comic was filled to bursting with as much overly dramatic bravado as Stan Lee could wring out of his chrome-colored character, the Surfer an outsider trapped in a world he cannot hope to escape…nor understand. In Norrin Radd, Lee created a sympathetic hero, not because he was a young New Yorker who lost his uncle because of his own lapse in judgment, nor because he was an American scientist whose greatest act of selflessness cursed his life forever. Norrin Radd is an alien, forced to wander aimlessly in a pretty enclosed space, especially when you consider all the cosmic cavorting he'd done previously.
The Surfer is an outsider locked inside with us, often peering inside of us, and the result is intended to be poignant. Through pontification, the alien gazes into the hearts of people and notes humanity's foibles, and the reader is suppposed to be touched by his soliloquies. If the Surfer can understand so much about humanity, shouldn't humanity come to a similar understanding about itself? You're supposed to forget that the guy writing the preachy pariah is human himself. Lose yourself in the fiction, and you can start to believe the Surfer has the upper hand on people.
I don't necessarily begrudge Lee making the Surfer his cosmic mouthpiece. Parables are lessons in narrative form–there's a darn good reason, I think, that Lee and artist Moebius' late 80s Silver Surfer limited series used the world in its title–so we're meant to draw real world messages and parallels from the Surfer's experiences. Through the Surfer's actions, we are meant to aspire to his level of understanding. This is the same reason why Superman works as a symbol for humanity's potential, that even though he's an alien, he's human enough and understands humanity enough to want to inspire us to do and be better...and having incredible strength and invulnerability doesn't hurt in helping that message along. With the Surfer, it's through how humanity responds to him, and even through how the Badoon behave, that we are meant to discern how not to act. Scenes where people run the Surfer off, whether they live in a small Alpine village or an American metropolis, or where the Army tries to kill the Surfer showcase a level of ignorance and hatred we're meant to discard ourselves. "I wouldn't hate the Surfer," you're meant to say. "I wouldn't shoot at him or shun him."
The bits where this is shown–a scene in the Alps where suspicious villagers drive the Surfer off, a sequence where American men dogpile and help arrest the Surfer, a bit where the Army believes he's hurting someone and fire indiscriminately upon him–work far better than the dialogue. Lee and Buscema pile on the hero's misfortune like those men jump on the Surfer, whether the former servant of Galactus is just walking among people or actively helping them, and the bitter situational ironies are compounded across the issue. When the duo injects those ironies through action, the issue works well. It's the old "show, don't tell" adage, and Lee and Buscema weaponize situational irony against the hero nicely.
You see the Surfer save a young woman only for the Army to believe he will hurt her, driving him away. You watch the Surfer fight an invisible foe only he can see, regular folk assuming he's attacking a city (and it doesn't help that he was the herald of Galactus and, as the Surfer himself notes, once actually attacked a city as part of a ruse in a different Fantastic Four issue…which I guess only compounds the bitterness of this issue). Though the Surfer toys with irony himself, using the Badoon's invisibility against them late in the issue, the tactic is often utilized against him. Through these actions, Lee and Buscema capably cast the Surfer in the mold of the tragic hero, the victim, as many of his Marvel brethren often are. The twist is that the Surfer really is an alien, unknowable for reasons other than climbing walls or shooting lasers from his eyes. He's not human, so the fear feels much greater. And, as I noted in the parenthetical, people have a genuine reason to fear him–they still remember when he was buddies with that purple Devourer of Worlds fella. Kinda hard to rid yourself of the stench of discrimination afer you've hung out with a dude with that epithet.
It takes a while to reach this point, however, and there is where the issue slogs. The interesting themes within the aforementioned scenes come at the cost of a whole lotta Shakespearean dialogue from Lee, page after page of the Silver bemoaning his current lot. Ever get into a conversation where someone says the same thing multiple ways? Ever talk to somebody who repeats themself? Ever chat with a comrade whose speech feels repetitive? You get the picture. A lot of Surfer's dialogue bludgeons the same ideas–he's trapped, he can't escape, people don't understand him, woe is he–and it's only in a few moments where Lee pulls back the hammering to allow Surfer to feel human.
A moment where Norrin falls back on his board and wishes for life when he loved Shalla Bal gives us that glimpse, however fleeting. Though the Surfer's emotions are human in nature, Lee adds so much garnish you forget what you're supposed to be tasting. Norrin missing Shalla Bal is a tangible connection to his humanity, an internal ache to be with someone he loves. Unfortunately, Lee uses the moment as a transition, switching over to Shalla Bal on her home planet of Zenn-La, waiting for Norrin's return. Her scene is interesting to include–I actually wasn't expecting her to make an appearance–and it makes me wonder how often early Surfer stories switched between Norrin and Shalla Bal. We get her perspective and her own wishing for Norrin; this actually adds to those ironies I mentioned before, as we know what she doesn't: Norrin can't return, not in his current captive state. The scene, though necessary, just comes at a poor moment, right when Lee chips through the Surfer's silver surface to let us see his human side. I like the idea of it; I just wish it had come elsewhere, maybe somewhere else in the middle of Norrin's blustering.
The villains of the piece, the Badoon, don't come across more highly threatening than any other alien menace you've seen in a standard Marvel comic, particularly those where the threat is driven off by issue's end. They don't possess any unique features, such as the Skrulls' shapeshifting. They do have invisibility technology, creating some of that irony, and using it in a surprisingly cruel way in the middle of the issue. Otherwise, they're not terribly memorable here–they've got a spaceship and advanced technology, and they use the whole "We're actually here to benefit Earth–SURPRISE! Not really!" twist we've seen from aliens in fiction before. For those interested in the Badoon, I suggest reading the earliest appearances of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, where these green-skinned meanies were made to be intergalactic conquerors in the far-flung future. Much more interesting plots found there.
Like with the first issue, Lee presents a sci-fi narrative as a back-up, paired with Gene Colan as before. What I hadn't realized from the first issue is these backups are reproductions of sci-fi stories Lee originally wrote for Amazing Fantasy (the same series which birthed that amazing Spider-Man guy). I had thought they were new, original stories and actually enjoyed the thematic qualities of the back-up tale in the first Silver Surfer issue, especially as they seemed pertinent to the mounting Cold War (possessing more of that parable quality I noted earlier in this post). Maybe it's not a fair judgment to make but knowing these are republished Stan Lee stories with just a change in art–in this case, Colan redoing work originally created by Ditko–seems a little pretentious on Lee's part. A narration bubble on this tale's splash page specifically stating this is a reprint of one of "the most imaginative science-fiction tales of Stan Lee, acclaimed as one of the greatest fantasy writers of our time" just elevates that inflated quality…though, if the statement is true, fans were hoping to see these reprinted. Is that true? I have no idea.
This particular "now-classic [work] of wonder" features aliens called the Krills invading an Earth radar outpost, taking two employees hostage and hoping to bribe them with wealth and love to betray the human race. The story is constructed upon the personas of the employees, one a selfish sellout, the other brave in the face of these would-be-world-conquerors. Like with the Surfer, you're meant to applaud the one man's bravery and throw a "Boo!" or "Hiss!" at the other guy. That's really the crux of the narrative. It's short, well-drawn by Colan but offering little else, though I am left wondering why Colon was tasked with updating Ditko's work when the original material could have just been reprinted. Maybe because Lee and Ditko's acrimonious relationship had led Ditko to leave Marvel two years prior? The tale's ending feels incredibly rushed, a summary neatly sewing everything up following a dramatic revelation. I don't know if the original Amazing Fantasy story ended the same way or if Lee ran out of space to provide a satisfying conclusion. In any case, the tale is nowhere near as adroit as its predecessor, even if it touts itself as a "classic."
Not as much polish on the Silver Surfer with this issue. Everything just fits within the parameter of "Okay." The plot? Okay. The villains? Okay. The back-up strip? Okay. Some moments stand out well, such as when Lee and Buscema allow us to see the Surfer trying to cope with a bitter world. Those moments are much better than when the Surfer is talking about it to nobody but himself, languishing in an exile forced upon him while also drowning in a misery he creates. It's not that I don't care for the Surfer, nor is it that Lee and Buscema fail to make you wish something would go right for Norrin. His downbeat demeanor can just get overwhelming at moments, especially when his pain feels self-inflicted.