Silver Surfer by Stan Lee & Moebius

After finishing a 5K race last Sunday morning I indulged in an hour of relaxation on my mattress on the floor. Nestled in clean sheets with a cup of strong coffee in hand, I fully enjoyed the Moebius and Stan Lee Silver Surfer. The comic book is a reissue of the two-part Silver Surfer: Parable from 1988. It tells the story of Galactus returning to earth for payback. The resulting fear and chaos is exploited by a New Age Jimmy Swaggert. But the Silver Surfer, who is living incognito as a homeless person at the beginning of the narrative, saves the day. The message is a complicated one. After besting Galactus, the Surfer is feted at the United Nations and implored by the general assembly to assume the role of divine leader. In thought bubbles the Surfer muses:

It is madness!

They thirst for leadership as a child thirsts for mother's milk.

Surely this is why they so often fall prey to tyrants and despots. 

Why cannot they realize that the truest faith is faith in oneself? What has made them so desperate to have others show them the way?

The Surfer sees that the only way to disabuse his audience of their lust to worship is to demand their total obeisance: "My every command has to be obeyed without question. My every whim gratified. My every desire fulfilled." This alienates the assembly. The people turn on the Surfer and reject him. The comic ends with the Silver Surfer on his board traveling the spaceways alone.

This is a beautiful comic book. In Moebius' comments contained in an afterword he explains how hard he worked on it, and it shows. The art is airy and spacious, and the pastel colors amplify this feeling of spaciousness; also, a sense of the late 1980s is conveyed: a post-war social compact is still vaguely intact but you can tell it's on its way out.

Below are scans of the first five pages of Silver Surfer to give you a taste of Moebius' mastery: