The Silver Surfer is a character who was absolutely brilliant in conception. Stan Lee was super attached to the Surfer, and I get why. The Surfer speaks to all of us. I think The Silver Surfer can really speak to me, because he doesn't dislike humanity and he really loves earth, but he does feel a certain annoyance and frustration with humanity at times. Norrin Radd, the one man on Zenn-La who desired more than the peaceful life of his contemporaries. Norrin Radd wanted to travel and explore. He was a restless soul, and nobody on his planet understood him. He was the only man brave enough to make a deal with Galactus to save Zenn-La, though. The others were willing to give up. But Norrin Radd sacrificed his average life so that everyone else on Zenn-La could continue to know peace. He was an unsung hero, and yet he earned a reputation as an emotionless herald of Galactus.
This is a bit of an aside, but I feel like the only character in Watchman that works is Doctor Manhattan. That's because Doctor Manhattan was basically just The Silver Surfer but edgier. Alan Moore sucked the life out of the concept of an ordinary man from a planet (be it earth or zenn-la) who receives nearly divine power and ends up outcast and adrift from almost everyone else in the galaxy. Doctor Manhattan is exactly like Norrin Radd in many ways, but Alan Moore can't let his books have nice things, which is why I hate him. Burn Watchmen to the ground, and let me save Doctor Manhattan from that piece of shit narrative. He could've been so much more.
Anyways, Norrin Radd is seen as emotionless by some. I lean into that when I read for him by giving him the softest, most monotone voice I can muster. Not robotic, but more like the voice of a really soft spoken monk or something. The Silver Surfer has many emotions, and he did his best to make sure Galactus never had to feed on planets with people there. He might've made slip ups, but he tried his best. He cares about life, and he finds all of the galaxy beautiful. He's seen life created and destroyed. He's seen stars be born and planets dying. He's been traveling for god knows how long, because the life of the Surfer is the life of a traveller. He's never allowed to know peace, no matter where he lands.
This is why Galactus traps him on earth. Galactus is angry at his faithful herald for betraying him and refusing to let him eat earth after everything they'd been through together, so he punishes him by making it so he can never escape earth's atmosphere. Norrin Radd is a man born to travel, but now he's stuck on this infinitesimally small rock floating around a sun. Not only that, but earth is a land of madness!
The earth itself is beautiful. It's got everything you'd need for life. It's got soil for growing food and a beautiful sun that gives us all life. Earth is a paradise. Earth is amazing. It's got nice weather, many beautiful animals, beautiful scenery, it's truly a marvelous land. But these people who live and walk on it…these humans…they're truly insane. Violent monsters who destroy the land in their quest to make their fellow humans suffer.
Everywhere the Surfer goes, it's all the same. Fear, hatred, pain and suffering. Mankind loves to oppress itself. They could have so much if they worked together. But no. No, they'd rather fight amongst each other! There's genocide and violence everywhere on this planet, and the beauty of the land is being destroyed by the incessant need to build more and more to prove the technological might of one society over another. Race hatred, gender hatred, sexuality hatred, hatred is truly all these humans know. It's madness. The Surfer has been punished by Galactus most severely. He's stuck on a planet of beauty, forced to watch the idiotic citizens of the planet destroy everything beautiful about their home.
The Surfer tries to help humanity constantly. He saves people from being killed. He uses his power cosmic to heal people and make the land a better place. He genuinely just wants to help people, because he's incapable of detecting the duplicity of those around him. This makes him such an easy target for evil villians on earth, like Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom stole The Surfer's powers, but The Surfer never suspected it. He really thought that Doom was a good man. The Surfer is an idealist who sees good in everyone, but humanity keeps burning him.
This is what I love about Stan Lee's Silver Surfer. The stories all carry these same themes. The Surfer hates it here on earth, because he's forced to watch as mankind destroys itself. The smog of the cities and the blight of capitalism and human barbarism are the real enemies of the Surfer, and he just wants to escape back to space. But he can't do it. He's stuck here with us, trapped on this maddening rock with people who all fear him. The Surfer is kind to all those he meets, but we repay him with suspicion and fear.
The Silver Surfer was Stan Lee's chance to wax philosophical, and he does it so well. I don't think anybody else has understood the Surfer as well since. When Steve Englehart frees the Surfer of his earthly exile in 1987, he ruined the character. Because The Surfer is not…he does not belong back out in space. He's the perfect character for stories of mankind's cruelty through the sadly objective eyes of a man who's seen cruelty on planets through the entire universe. Norrin Radd has seen so much, and yet humanity is the race that baffles him most. We have it all, but we choose to ruin it for ourselves. It's madness, and he feels like he's living in some kind of planetary insane asylum whenever he's forced to deal with us.
The Silver Surfer only had one main villian under Stan Lee, and that was Mephisto. Mephisto wants to steal The Surfer's soul. Mephisto is the king of mankind, though we all know it not. He has ruled man's mind since prehistory. The first murder was the day Mephisto crawled into earthly power. Since then, he's been the evil chess master responsible for giving mankind all it's worst impulses. He keeps mankind from reaching it's true potential. Every atrocity perpetrated by mankind is because Mephisto is whispering in our ears, telling us to give in to evil and see our fellow brethren as lesser beings. Mephisto will never die so long as mankind feels hatred for it's fellow man, and so The Surfer is a threat to him.
The Silver Surfer is the eternal idealist. He feels no hatred, or he always learns to move on from whatever hatred he may feel. He's almost too pure for earth, and that's exactly why Mephisto hates him. If The Surfer keeps doing as he's doing, he'll free mankind form Mephisto's control. And that can't happen! It mustn't happen! Thus begins the hidden battle for mankind's eternal soul. The Surfer and Mephisto battled it out all through the 60s, 70s and 80s. They should still be mortal enemies, but modern comics no longer seem to understand the beauty of Stan Lee's original Silver Surfer run.
I'm only now realizing that I've written nearly 1,000+ words about The Silver Surfer. But that's because he's a beautiful character who hasn't gotten what he deserves since the awful ruin that was Silver Surfer being allowed to return to space. The Surfer is needed on earth, damn it! We need him to free us from the control of Mephisto's evil, and he's been made to forsake us! For shame, Marvel! For shame! If it were up to me, Silver Surfer would have gotten a 100 issue book focused on the philosophical and metaphysical battles of The Surfer vs Mephisto and other embodiments of mankind's ills. The Surfer is our hero, the man who'll save us from ourselves. We need him. We need him…
