It’s sad, as someone who still gets a certain endorphin rush from seeing ‘70s or ‘80s comic book covers, that the ubiquitousness of the dreaded “Marvel Cinematic Universe” makes me loathe to even think of the comic publisher. This wariness was prophetically articulated by Seth Cohen on The O.C., when the already-cynic remarks that the (admittedly still pretty good) X2: X-Men United “sucked”. A kind of fatigue from the initial hardcore geek fanbase was already looming over the upcoming comic book movie monopoly.
Similarly, Quentin Tarantino—who likely made the Seth Cohen archetype possible (though with differing heartthrob levels) and is an overall friend to all things geeky—became one of the many A-list directors to speak out against Marvel Studio’s seeming chokehold on popular cinema (a grip which seem to loosening). This means something coming from Tarantino, someone who’s expressed admiration for multiple Marvel titles he read in his youth—one of which being The Silver Surfer, otherwise known as Norinn Radd, or The Herald of Galactus.
1980s
The Silver Surfer first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four during the iconic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. In 1968, the character was given his own title and an ambitious format, with issues running double the page count of a typical Marvel title. Norrin Radd is a resident of the world Zenn-La who pledges service to the planet-devourer, Galactus, in order that he spare his people (a dynamic recreated in one-time-Marvel-employee Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn). Having to stay on earth after refusing to let Galactus consume it, most of his adventures in the initial run had him battling the kind of earthbound alien baddies that the Fantastic Four also encountered. Cancelled after 18 issues, the character was later resurrected in the early ‘80s, now no longer in exile on Earth and finally able to explore the far reaches of the galaxy.
"The Surfer wasn’t quite a figure of the counterculture, but he seemed that way to guys who think of themselves as counter-culture."
The ‘80s run remains the defining version of the character. After all, Richard Gere’s rockabilly update of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s hipster doofus in 1983's highly idiosyncratic Hollywood remake of Godard's Breathless (a favourite of Tarantino) found himself pouring over these issues, seeing the mysteries of the universe pondered in their pages. At peak sex symbol, Gere certainly didn’t look like the kind of guy who reads comics (but due to Gere’s high-strung performance, he was probably just as annoying), but his fixation on the Silver Surfer was a replacement for Belmondo's idolization of Humphrey Bogart in the Godard film. At this point in time, it’s difficult to associate comic books with hipsterism, but the initial limited 18-issue run gave the Surfer brand a sort of cult-item cache. The Surfer wasn’t quite a figure of the counterculture, but he seemed that way to guys who think of themselves as counter-culture.
1990s
As we entered the ‘90s and the tastes of geek culture slowly slipped more into the official mainstream (helped by the end-of-decade success of Tim Burton’s Batman), two USC students attempted their own Silver Surfer fan film as a kind of Hollywood calling card, with the liquid skeleton in Terminator 2 a new model for how to pull off the character. Unfortunately, they employed a rather lame scenario for the technical showcase—using the character to defend a small child in the American suburbs from bullies—one that gives little idea why anyone would want to watch a film about the Silver Surfer in the first place.
But there was another onscreen iteration of the character cooking at the time by a name already mentioned: Tarantino. The rumoured 500-page script he wrote for an unmade Silver Surfer movie is a kind of Holy Grail amongst fans. We know of his admiration for the character from two direct nods: a Surfer poster in Tim Roth’s apartment in Reservoir Dogs, and a scene from the script he polished for Crimson Tide in which a fight breaks out as to who drew the Silver Surfer best (classicist Jack Kirby or hoity-toity French illustrator Moebius.) Surfer wasn’t the only character Tarantino was attached to either: imagine the alternate universe where his planned Luke Cage adaptation starring Laurence Fishburne was his Reservoir Dogs follow-up instead of Pulp Fiction. This suggests an entirely different course of cinema history, one where the Marvel monopoly might have blew up too early or flat-out never happened.
2000s
The Silver Surfer finally did have his chance in cinemas in 2007, when Laurence Fishburne voiced the character in the poorly received Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The film was lamer than other superhero films (it got a PG rating instead of the expected PG-13), but to its credit, it conjures up memories of titles like the classic New Line Ninja Turtles flicks. It’s wholly possible the two recent kiddie-friendly Shazam films carry this torch, but at this point in my life, I don’t really feel like watching them to find out, so I’ll stick to damning with faint praise this forgotten sequel.
If you remember, the early fan controversy over the 2007 film is that the comics’ big bad Galactus was turned into a cloud, as if a giant wearing a purple helmet was too goofy or something. Yet the film serves its source material at least partly right by leaning into the monster movie element, with Sue Storm the sympathetic observer to the Surfer’s misunderstood extraterrestrial being. The Surfer remains a stoic presence (certainly aided by Fishburne’s solid voice work) within a disposable Saturday morning cartoon, and it’s kind of refreshing that the character isn’t undercut with winking or lame jokes, even if every person involved in the making of the film probably knew they weren’t making something great.
"...it’s kind of refreshing that the character isn’t undercut with winking or lame jokes, even if every person involved in the making of the film knew they probably weren’t making something great."
After all, he is fundamentally a serious character and even a bit of a scold; in the earliest issues of the comic, he frets again and again at the barbarism of our planet (e.g. war, greed, the environment, *Whoopi Goldberg voice* man’s inhumanity towards man, etc.)
As a product of ‘60s and even lingering ‘50s anxieties (take Galactus as the nuclear bomb), one can envision the character being perfectly adapted to our current age of doom. Though maybe that’s not the tone one will find when checking out the first volume of Dan Slott's comic incarnation of the Surfer from 2019. Containing a few eye-popping panels and some clever cosmic concepts, it was nonetheless a little disheartening to see the famously stoic character uttering a number of variations on “so that just happened”-esque soy banter ubiquitous within the current Marvel movies.
While Rise of the Silver Surfer was intended to be a launching pad that would give the character his own spin-off, the lacklustre reception to the sequel quickly decimated that plan, and left the character to languish in the arena of Fox-owned Marvel properties. The last time I heard the Surfer mentioned in media was in the form of a female-fronted reboot offered to Mira, the Hollywood star played by Alicia Vikander, in Irma Vep (2022). Her agent tries to sell her on yet another superhero franchise by using the “representation matters” tactic of Hollywood’s most corporatized era. Tired of being the lead in one-too many CGI spectacles, Mira scoffs at the offer.
Yes, a MCU iteration of the character has been in the works since 2018, but the lack of movement points the fate the character may deserve: that he can remain lodged in the pages of comics rather than animated into the lifeless green screen of the MCU feels like a minor victory. Essentially, he still belongs to the Tarantinos and Seth Cohens of the world.
It’s sad, as someone who still gets a certain endorphin rush from seeing ‘70s or ‘80s comic book covers, that the ubiquitousness of the dreaded “Marvel Cinematic Universe” makes me loathe to even think of the comic publisher. This wariness was prophetically articulated by Seth Cohen on The O.C., when the already-cynic remarks that the (admittedly still pretty good) X2: X-Men United “sucked”. A kind of fatigue from the initial hardcore geek fanbase was already looming over the upcoming comic book movie monopoly.
Similarly, Quentin Tarantino—who likely made the Seth Cohen archetype possible (though with differing heartthrob levels) and is an overall friend to all things geeky—became one of the many A-list directors to speak out against Marvel Studio’s seeming chokehold on popular cinema (a grip which seem to loosening). This means something coming from Tarantino, someone who’s expressed admiration for multiple Marvel titles he read in his youth—one of which being The Silver Surfer, otherwise known as Norinn Radd, or The Herald of Galactus.
1980s
The Silver Surfer first appeared in the pages of Fantastic Four during the iconic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby run. In 1968, the character was given his own title and an ambitious format, with issues running double the page count of a typical Marvel title. Norrin Radd is a resident of the world Zenn-La who pledges service to the planet-devourer, Galactus, in order that he spare his people (a dynamic recreated in one-time-Marvel-employee Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn). Having to stay on earth after refusing to let Galactus consume it, most of his adventures in the initial run had him battling the kind of earthbound alien baddies that the Fantastic Four also encountered. Cancelled after 18 issues, the character was later resurrected in the early ‘80s, now no longer in exile on Earth and finally able to explore the far reaches of the galaxy.
"The Surfer wasn’t quite a figure of the counterculture, but he seemed that way to guys who think of themselves as counter-culture."
The ‘80s run remains the defining version of the character. After all, Richard Gere’s rockabilly update of Jean-Paul Belmondo’s hipster doofus in 1983's highly idiosyncratic Hollywood remake of Godard's Breathless (a favourite of Tarantino) found himself pouring over these issues, seeing the mysteries of the universe pondered in their pages. At peak sex symbol, Gere certainly didn’t look like the kind of guy who reads comics (but due to Gere’s high-strung performance, he was probably just as annoying), but his fixation on the Silver Surfer was a replacement for Belmondo's idolization of Humphrey Bogart in the Godard film. At this point in time, it’s difficult to associate comic books with hipsterism, but the initial limited 18-issue run gave the Surfer brand a sort of cult-item cache. The Surfer wasn’t quite a figure of the counterculture, but he seemed that way to guys who think of themselves as counter-culture.
1990s
As we entered the ‘90s and the tastes of geek culture slowly slipped more into the official mainstream (helped by the end-of-decade success of Tim Burton’s Batman), two USC students attempted their own Silver Surfer fan film as a kind of Hollywood calling card, with the liquid skeleton in Terminator 2 a new model for how to pull off the character. Unfortunately, they employed a rather lame scenario for the technical showcase—using the character to defend a small child in the American suburbs from bullies—one that gives little idea why anyone would want to watch a film about the Silver Surfer in the first place.
But there was another onscreen iteration of the character cooking at the time by a name already mentioned: Tarantino. The rumoured 500-page script he wrote for an unmade Silver Surfer movie is a kind of Holy Grail amongst fans. We know of his admiration for the character from two direct nods: a Surfer poster in Tim Roth’s apartment in Reservoir Dogs, and a scene from the script he polished for Crimson Tide in which a fight breaks out as to who drew the Silver Surfer best (classicist Jack Kirby or hoity-toity French illustrator Moebius.) Surfer wasn’t the only character Tarantino was attached to either: imagine the alternate universe where his planned Luke Cage adaptation starring Laurence Fishburne was his Reservoir Dogs follow-up instead of Pulp Fiction. This suggests an entirely different course of cinema history, one where the Marvel monopoly might have blew up too early or flat-out never happened.
2000s
The Silver Surfer finally did have his chance in cinemas in 2007, when Laurence Fishburne voiced the character in the poorly received Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The film was lamer than other superhero films (it got a PG rating instead of the expected PG-13), but to its credit, it conjures up memories of titles like the classic New Line Ninja Turtles flicks. It’s wholly possible the two recent kiddie-friendly Shazam films carry this torch, but at this point in my life, I don’t really feel like watching them to find out, so I’ll stick to damning with faint praise this forgotten sequel.
If you remember, the early fan controversy over the 2007 film is that the comics’ big bad Galactus was turned into a cloud, as if a giant wearing a purple helmet was too goofy or something. Yet the film serves its source material at least partly right by leaning into the monster movie element, with Sue Storm the sympathetic observer to the Surfer’s misunderstood extraterrestrial being. The Surfer remains a stoic presence (certainly aided by Fishburne’s solid voice work) within a disposable Saturday morning cartoon, and it’s kind of refreshing that the character isn’t undercut with winking or lame jokes, even if every person involved in the making of the film probably knew they weren’t making something great.
"...it’s kind of refreshing that the character isn’t undercut with winking or lame jokes, even if every person involved in the making of the film knew they probably weren’t making something great."
After all, he is fundamentally a serious character and even a bit of a scold; in the earliest issues of the comic, he frets again and again at the barbarism of our planet (e.g. war, greed, the environment, *Whoopi Goldberg voice* man’s inhumanity towards man, etc.)
As a product of ‘60s and even lingering ‘50s anxieties (take Galactus as the nuclear bomb), one can envision the character being perfectly adapted to our current age of doom. Though maybe that’s not the tone one will find when checking out the first volume of Dan Slott's comic incarnation of the Surfer from 2019. Containing a few eye-popping panels and some clever cosmic concepts, it was nonetheless a little disheartening to see the famously stoic character uttering a number of variations on “so that just happened”-esque soy banter ubiquitous within the current Marvel movies.
While Rise of the Silver Surfer was intended to be a launching pad that would give the character his own spin-off, the lacklustre reception to the sequel quickly decimated that plan, and left the character to languish in the arena of Fox-owned Marvel properties. The last time I heard the Surfer mentioned in media was in the form of a female-fronted reboot offered to Mira, the Hollywood star played by Alicia Vikander, in Irma Vep (2022). Her agent tries to sell her on yet another superhero franchise by using the “representation matters” tactic of Hollywood’s most corporatized era. Tired of being the lead in one-too many CGI spectacles, Mira scoffs at the offer.
Yes, a MCU iteration of the character has been in the works since 2018, but the lack of movement points the fate the character may deserve: that he can remain lodged in the pages of comics rather than animated into the lifeless green screen of the MCU feels like a minor victory. Essentially, he still belongs to the Tarantinos and Seth Cohens of the world.