Warning! Spoilers for Defenders #2 ahead!
The Marvel Universe is filled with many historic firsts, but the mightiest and grossest involves the Defenders witnessing the dirty diaper of baby Galactus. Other major events include Captain America punching Hitler in 1941, the formation of the Avengers in 1961, or Reed Richards overcoming Doctor Doom in the Secret Wars event of 2015. Still, there is nothing quite like witnessing the first soiled garment of Galen, the baby that would one day eat worlds.
First introduced in Fantastic Four #48 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Galactus was the creators' attempt to make a villain that was beyond good and evil. In an interview with Wizard Magazine, Kirby said, "Galactus in actuality is a sort of god. He is beyond reproach, beyond anyone's opinion.” Motivated solely by hunger, Galactus creates heralds like the Silver Surfer to travel the cosmos and find worlds he can devour. Galactus is the Marvel Universe's perennial existential threat. Planets that seem him abandon their home-planets or get devoured. Yet, we have never seen Galactus as a rugrat with a world-saving, science-hero mother.
In Defenders #2 by storytellers Al Ewing and Javier Rodriguez, the Masked Raider bids Doctor Strange to assemble a new team to stop a time-traveling wizard. The wild magic Strange unleashes becomes unstable and blasts the new Defenders into a different reality. There have been seven versions of the Marvel Universe prior to the current reality. Strange's magic sends his team from the eighth to the sixth Marvel reality. The Defenders help a strange woman named Taaia of Taa save her evacuees from a world eater of their own named Omnimax. It's when she invites them into her Science Fortress that Harpy senses that “something smells.” That terrible scent is Taaia’s infant son, Galen, who has now filled Marvel's first dirty diaper. The child is better known to the Silver Surfer as his former master, Galactus, Devourer of Worlds.
Galen is destined to survive the last gasp of the sixth reality and be reborn at the Big Bang of the next as Galactus, Eater of Worlds. Rather than enjoy this beautiful, smelly baby moment, the Silver Surfer uses it to affect the future of his former master. While he could attempt to murder the would-be devourer in his crib, the Surfer offers the child the beauty, sorrow, and joy of the world to come. It is his way of arming Galactus in the long fight against his hunger. He seeks to end Galen's chance to become an uncaring force of nature in the future realities in which he plays a voracious part.
As Doctor Strange begins to fall for Galactus' mom, the Defenders use their combined powers to battle Omnimax and save Taa. Unfortunately, the wild magic shifts the Defenders and Taaia to a new location, but without the power cosmic of the Silver Surfer. It’s a good thing that baby Galen’s “techno-cot” will tend to his every need and change every historic diaper. His mother, Taaia could be gone with the Defenders a while, though Galen could have a historic new sibling if she and Doctor Strange keep it up. Defenders #2 is on sale now.
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September 21, 2021 at 02:06AM
