Silver Surfer - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

Norrin Radd is from the utopian planet Zenn-La, in the Deneb star system of the Milky Way galaxy. He is the son of Jartan and Elmar Radd, and he has a half-brother, Fennan Radd. Zenn-La's ancient and significantly advanced civilization has lost the will to strive or explore, leaving the young scholar Norrin Radd restless and yearning for adventure. Facing the destruction of his world by planet-consuming Galactus, Radd bargains with the cosmic being. In return for the safety of Zenn-La and his lover, Shalla-Bal, Radd pledges to seek out planets for the world devourer to consume as his herald. Galactus imbues him with a portion of the Power Cosmic, transforming him into the Silver Surfer. Radd had intended to lead Galactus to uninhabited planets, but Galactus tampers with his soul to prevent this.

Radd serves Galactus for an unspecified amount of time. Eventually, the Surfer summons his master to Earth. Here the Surfer meets the Fantastic Four and Alicia Masters. Touched by their nobility, he rebels against Galactus, who is eventually driven off. Before he leaves, he confines the Surfer to Earth with an invisible barrier that affects only him.

During his exile, the Surfer fights numerous villains, including Doctor Doom, who wants his Power Cosmic, and Mephisto, who wants his soul. The Surfer's only ally during these trials is a physicist by the name of Al B. Harper, who eventually sacrifices himself to save the world from the Stranger.

Banding together with the Hulk and Namor the Sub-Mariner during these wanderings, the Surfer forms the "Titans Three," a group dedicated to battling evil on Earth. Soon, Doctor Strange joins the group and it becomes "The Defenders." Surfer stays with them for a while, but his overwhelming desire to be free of Earth and his frequent collisions with Galactus' energy-draining barrier eventually drives him to leave the group.

The Surfer finally pierces Galactus' barrier with the aid of Reed Richards and temporarily escapes Earth. He discovers, though, that his homeworld has been ravaged by Galactus and Shalla-Bal has been abducted by Mephisto and taken to Earth. Even though it means trapping himself once more, the Surfer returns to Earth to battle and defeat Mephisto. Before being vanquished, Mephisto sends Shalla-Bal back to Zenn-La, but the Surfer manages to endow her with a portion of his Power Cosmic, which she uses to revitalize the plant life of their ravaged homeworld.

After the Surfer aids the Fantastic Four against Galactus' latest herald, Terrax, Surfer finally manages to pierce Galactus' barrier by acting on the Thing's suggestion of trying to pass through on a spaceship instead of via his own power on his surfboard. He also manages to make peace with Galactus by rescuing his current herald, Nova (Frankie Raye), from the Skrulls and encounters the Champion, after which Galactus finally declares the Surfer's long exile ended. He immediately revisits his homeworld, but Shalla-Bal, in his absence, had become empress of the rejuvenated Zenn-La and hence unable to renew their romance.

Embroiled in fresh hostilities between the interstellar Kree and Skrull empires, the Surfer also intervenes in a series of plots by the Elders of the Universe, who plan to become supremely powerful by destroying Galactus and the universe with him. The Surfer thwarts this plot with the aid of his new love interest, Mantis, the Earth-born cosmic heroine also known as the "Celestial Madonna". She seems to die in the process, and although she eventually returns, she never fully renews their romances. After this loss, a grief-stricken Surfer turns to Nova and romantic feelings begin to develop between them. The Surfer's influence gradually leads Nova to question the morality of her role as herald to Galactus. Eventually replaced by the far more ruthless Morg, Nova dies in a conflict between the new herald and the Surfer and the other ex-heralds.

The Surfer repeatedly battles space-born menaces, the chief of whom is Thanos, who attempts to kill half the life in the universe using the omnipotent Infinity Gauntlet. Through Thanos, the Surfer learns how Galactus had altered his soul. He convinces Galactus to restore it, but once Galactus has done so, the Surfer is overcome with grief until he is able to forgive himself. The Surfer finds interstellar allies in Adam Warlock's Infinity Watch and the "Star Masters" team, and he begins attending occasional Defenders reunions.

The Surfer returns home to Zenn-La to find that the planet has vanished, and learns it was actually destroyed in the 1940s (Earth time) by the entity known as the Other. Zenn-La and its people which the Surfer repeatedly encountered since leaving Galactus' service were actually reproductions, created by Galactus so that the Surfer would have a home to return to. Losing his capacity for emotion again, the Surfer returns to Earth. He later regains his personality during a time-travel adventure and sharing a romance with Alicia Masters. The two ultimately part as friends after many adventures together.

Later, the Surfer works with the alien Annunaki race to gather and protect some of Earth's most extraordinarily gifted children. In the end, one of these children, Ellie Waters, saves Earth from the godlike Marduk entity, preventing the apocalypse and reordering reality as if the Marduk crisis had never happened (though Ellie alone apparently retains her memories of these events). The Surfer resumes his interstellar wanderings, but promises to be ready to aid his adopted homeworld should Earth ever need him.

During his travels, the Surfer is captured by a portal of the Planet Sakaar Empire. Left weakened and vulnerable by his trip through the portal, the Surfer is subdued and implanted with an obedience disk to ensure he remains loyal to them. Fighting as a gladiator (and believed to be the fabled 'Sakaarson' due to his appearance), the Surfer is finally forced to face the Hulk along with his Warbound. Through teamwork and distraction, the Hulk is eventually able to destroy the Surfer's obedience disk. The Hulk and several other slaves and gladiators are freed when the Surfer uses the Power Cosmic to remove their own obedience disks and give them a way out of the arena, although the Hulk declines the Surfer's offer to take him back to Earth.

During the Annihilation war, the Silver Surfer again becomes Galactus' herald to help save the universe from the despot Annihilus. Annihilus captures them and gives them to Thanos for experimentation. Drax the Destroyer frees the Surfer, who in turn frees Galactus. An enraged Galactus destroys more than half the Annihilation Wave, and Annihilus is defeated. Later, the Surfer is joined as herald by Stardust, a former herald the Surfer had replaced.

The Surfer leads the world devourer to the populated planet Orbucen, which brings him into conflict with Richard Rider. He delays the planetary destruction to give the inhabitants more time to evacuate.

The Silver Surfer returns to Sakaar in a plan to feed Galactus with the unique "Old Power" which he claims would sate his master's hunger for thousands of years, sparing many other inhabited worlds. He is opposed by the Hulk's son Skaar, and is enslaved by an obedience disc. The conflict is ended when Skaar's mother Caiera sacrifices her soul and Old Power as sustenance for Galactus. Unfortunately, Galactus now seems addicted to the Old Power and has begun searching for other planets containing it to sate himself.

After an encounter with the High Evolutionary, the Silver Surfer and Galactus battled Thor and the Asgardians. The battle ended when the Silver Surfer chose to leave his post as herald and guard an Asgardian artifact. Galactus "tethers" him to Asgard's location in Oklahoma, resulting in his powers waning the further he travels from Asgard, and grants him the ability to return to human form.

During the war with the Serpent, Silver Surfer aids Doctor Strange, Namor, Loa, and Lyra in the liberation of New Atlantis from Attuma (in the form of Nerkodd: Breaker of Oceans). He subsequently aided Loki in 'reactivating' Mjolnir so that it could restore the deceased Thor's memory in time to allow him to return to life.