SUNDAY CLASSICS: What If…The Silver Surfer Possessed the Infinity Gauntlet? (1993) #49: Love, Power, & Corruption

What you do if you had the ability to become a god? You would have the ultimate power and control of everything and everyone around you? This is perhaps everyone’s dream at one point and time. It’s the ultimate scenario that we all ask ourselves or ask in groups and usually come up with answers that will appease the group we are in. I remember first reading this in my teen years and thinking to myself how cool it would be to have the gauntlet. What would I do with the gauntlet? Surely 14-year-old me would use it for the greater good to benefit mankind. WRONG! The only answer to give in this situation is what the Silver Surfer did, which was starting with noble intentions, but overall, ended in disastrous measures. I don’t want this review to be about what we would do with ultimate power, but what Norrin Radd did whit his ultimate power and what it took to bring him back to his normal way of thinking. If we take it back to Infinity Gauntlet #4, Silver Surfer almost snatched the gauntlet from Thanos, but in this issue of What If… we see that he succeeds, and the universe will never be the same! Silver Surfer is now a god and an unlikely cast of characters must team up to stop him and bring him back to normal. Thanos, Patrick Warlock, and Dr. Strange set out to take down the new god, who even had the gull to tell the cosmic entities to “fear my reign”.

Corruption never goes well for anyone and the Surfer is no exception. He goes on to kill Mephisto as Thanos and Patrick Warlock look on in utter disbelief and fear the unknown. Dr. Strange in a last-ditch attempt to overthrow the new god summons the one person that could talk any sense into Norrin Radd…Shalla-Bal. Now here’s where it gets interesting, the Surfer give her omnipotence so she can join him and they can rule the universe together, he would soon find out that Shalla has other plans. She rejects his offer, but then Surfer gets out of control and is ready to destroy her, Thanos, Dr. Strange, and Patrick Warlock until she pleads with him not to do this. With the words “I love you” Norrin Radd breaks free from his corruption and realizes what he has been doing and destroys the gauntlet and all is restored in the universe, and in the end, Norrin Radd creates an isolated universe so him Shalla-Bal can live out their days. This issue is more than just another What If… issue, it reminds us to stay humble and grounded to who we really are because, in the end, love wins.