The book retails for $75 (although I bought mine for $60 at my local comics emporium; and you can get it for about that price at Amazon and Barnes & Noble online). That's actually a pretty fair price, since Marvel's "Masterworks" reprint books run about $60 for ten issues' worth of reprints (with less quality). Plus, the Surfer comics featured longer-than-normal stories; and the Omnibuses, unlike the Masterworks editions, feature the letter columns from each issue.
The comic series is a fascinating slice of comics history from the era of the King and Bobby Kennedy assasinations, of Vietnam and demonstrations. Writer/editor Stan Lee used the comics as a vehicle for his most philosophical writing -- resulting in lots of panels in which the Surfer sails around the outer atmosphere, gesticulating like a ham Shakespearean actor, whining about man's inhumanity to man, interspersed with kick-ass action sequences. The stories in general take a dark view toward humanity, emphasizing the menace of mobs, intolerance as the normal human condition, and paranoia vying with greed.
This mix does not necessarily result in uniformly well-written stories. Lee's forte was and is not necessarily brilliant plots -- indeed, most of his Marvel stories consisted of loose plots or discussions with the artists, leaving the artists to essentially plot and lay out the story before Lee stepped in and wrote the dialogue. Here, Lee must contend with a protagonist who is powerful enough to rearrange the molecular structure of matter with a gesture. About the only limit to the Surfer's power is the barrier that his former boss, Galactus, placed around the Earth to pen the Surfer in -- the cause of much of the Surfer's kvetching. Faced with trying to create challenges for such a puissant main character, Lee makes the Surfer's nemesis no less than the Devil Himself -- personified as Mephisto, whom artist John Buscema depicts as a red, muscular man with a leonine face. Since Mephisto moves in mysterious ways, his plots don't always have to make strict sense -- and they don't. One has to read the two-part story in which Mephisto turns the Flying Dutchman into a claw-handed cyborg (???)to appreciate the loopiness of the story.
Where Lee's writing shone, however, was in his language. Lee is a writer who, like Bradbury and Vonnegut, is in love with the music of the English language. Working in the clipped vernacular endemic to comics, Lee nevertheless uses rhythm, alliteration, bardic appellations, and a sparkling vocabulary to make the abundant dialogue sing. There are phrases in these stories that pop into my head at times decades after I've read them, such as Mephisto's description of his negotiation technique: "Now, where CAJOLERY has failed -- let CARNAGE succeed!"
The best run of the series comes early, in issues 3 through 5. Issue 3 features Mephisto's New Testament style attempt to first tempt, then beat, then extort the Surfer into giving up his soul -- including using the Surfer's girlfriend from his home planet, the Barbara Feldman lookalike Shalla Bal, as a bargaining chip. Issue 4 is a beautifully-drawn battle between the Surfer and the Marvel versions of the Norse Gods, including Thor. Issue 5 is a convoluted yet intriguiging story, in which the Surfer is faced with raising a lot of money in a hurry. Being an honest soul, he goes out in a trenchcoat, sunglasses and slacks -- looking unsettlingly like Michael Jackson would thirty years later -- and tries to get a job; but can't land one without experience or a Social Security card. He tries to rob a bank, but his conscience gets the better of him. He finally acquires the money by cheating his way through a rigged craps game, letting the thugs who ran the game roll him, and then stealing the money back!
The art for these issues is, without exception, excellent -- some of the best Marvel has produced. John Buscema drew every issue except the last (which Surfer creator Jack Kirby illustrated), and his art before and after was never as superb in its spectacle and storytelling as it was here.
The letters columns are a treat in themselves. In light of its philosophical bent, the column attracted correspondence from college students across the nation, themselves engaged in the societal soul-searching of the time. The letters definitely do not toe any line of political correctness. In issue 5 of the series, physicist Al Harper befriends and aids the Surfer. When SS asks Harper why, Harper -- who is black -- muses, "Mebbe it's 'cause I know how it FEELS to be pushed around!" In issue 8's letter column, a correspondent from North Carolina apparently takes this comment personally. "That was uncalled for!" he protests. "For months you've been knocking 'us' (you know who I mean). It sounds as if we were all big, bad murderers who liked hurting minorities." The writer insists, "I'm not a racist," but states he doesn't want Marvel "ruined" by something "that really doesn't concern you as comic publishers" -- i.e., a "civil rights protest." The response to the letter replies that "such matters as racism and equality do concern us . . . as human beings."
The SILVER SURFER OMNIBUS is worth checking out -- not just as a time capsule, but as a fun example of what made Marvel Marvel.
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