This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures,

ideas, and monsters in time.

If you've seen the new MCU film The Fantastic Four First Steps, then you've finally experienced

a proper cinematic treatment of Galactus, the iconic devourer

of worlds for Marvel Comics. Created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, this Titanic

space god predates the Big Bang. He survived the great collapse of the previous universe

and entered into our own hatching from the cosmic egg.

His godlike abilities come via the power cosmic, which he sustains through the consumption of entire worlds.

And yet, Galactus is a lot more complex than your typical Earth-destroying Elder God.

While definitely an existential threat and a perpetrator of untold mega-deaths,

Galactus does not consume worlds with malice.

As the latest MCU film accurately depicts, he himself is a slave to his own insatiable hunger,

but is lawful and honorable, standing by the letter of pacts made for the survival

of various planets. And such, while he's certainly a villain and a monster by many measurements,

he is also beyond good and evil, a natural force that dwarfs everything he encounters.

Sometimes he even acts in ways that might cast him as an anti-hero.

In the Fantastic Four First Steps, Galactus is as close to his silver age glory as we could

hope for, a giant humanoid being in purple armor and a great hat that might best be described

as a papal mitre with cosmic horns.

English character actor Ralph Inneson provides his voice and likeness.

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