Monthly comics is a realm filled with the dead and the continually undying. Every major character death is a sabbatical from which they come back with a new direction and tone or the same direction, but at a different angle. There’s rarely a death so much as there is a passing of the torch. But sometimes the torch pass is the point—a death without is simply waiting for a return. When the intention is to let someone else take the mantle, we have an opportunity. And that opportunity is where Greg Pak, Sumit Kumar, Frank D’Armata, and Joe Sabino lead us with Death of the Silver Surfer.

While I had covered the first issue in this series months ago, that was very much an introduction to what we would be working with through this five-issue series. With the thematic points of death, the power to enact change, grief, regret, boundless greed, alien racism, and the desire to do right regardless of morality set up, the story unfolds further. While Kelly Koh fails in her mission to capture the Silver Surfer, Director Harmon of Eaglestar pivots. If one alien harboring the power cosmic can’t be trapped, then others likely can be. But this is all part of the ruse—those with the power cosmic are connected and know when another is in danger. If one is distracted, others will come to their aid and not notice someone like Harmon looking to harvest the Blood of Galactus for fun and profit. And this, of course, is where the disaster begins.

From this impetus do we see the story spiral deeper into how rampant capitalistic and xenophobic greed can only ruin whatever it touches. But it’s here too where we see disparate characters coming together to prevent a great harm from becoming worse. It’s something that you can see in much of Pak’s work where that communal aspect becomes what wins in the end, even if someone has to make a sacrifice to ensure their success. And while we don’t need to see the Surfer suffer for his ending, we do see why he would choose to end things how he did by sending his power to Kelly Koh. She wasn’t simply a convenient vessel in the moment, she was someone who was changed by the story and by the suffering inflicted by someone like Harmon. The Surfer knows what she can do in the face of power and chooses to ensure she is able to fight against it, just as he had tried for so many years.

With Norrin Radd gone—locked behind a rift in space and time—he is effectively “dead” for the greater Marvel canon. But now we do have a Silver Surfer still in this universe in Kelly Koh and the opportunity for more stories to take place. She acknowledges herself that she isn’t going to be like Radd, but that is what we would need for a character taking the name for a time. A character “dies” so another can have their spotlight, and the universe feels a bit more full for all the people in it. 

Get excited. Get alive. 

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.