Stan Lee's 20 Greatest Marvel Comics Creations
15. Galactus
One of the rumours to be the next overarching MCU villain once Thanos’ arc is done, Marvel could certainly do worse than hungry hungry Galactus.
Bored of the standard pantomime super villain, Stan Lee and co-creator Jack Kirby wanted to write something completely different. Galactus has a simple motivation: hunger. He devours entire planets, not because of malice or as part of any grand, Thanos-like view of justice. Just because of hunger.
His sheer scale defies expectations. A being of cosmic sentience, Galactus is a God with no purpose or calling. He isn’t god of anything... he simply is. This lack of purpose could have rendered him a rather limp and pointless foe, but from a narrative perspective it’s his biggest strength. There is no reasoning with Galactus, no mind games, no getting the upper hand. Nothing is personal. He destroys homes, kills millions, and doesn’t give it a second thought.
On the face of it, he’s so overpowered it could get dull, or else ridiculous to see him defeated. However, both Lee and the Marvel writers since have understood the importance with nuance when it came to Galactus.