Last Planet Standing #5

Background

Galactus has activated his machine, leveling half of Manhattan in the process. However, between the Vision sacrificing his body to destroy Galactus's force field and the Silver Surfer defeating Galactus's herald Dominas, our heroes are more determined than ever to put an end to Galactus's scheme.

Story 'Last Planet Standing'

Arriving on the scene, the Silver Surfer pleads with Galactus to stop what he's doing, claiming that in an effort to regenerate the universe, he will only destroy it. Galactus argues that as all living beings yearn to grow and evolve, so does he want to break his cycle of consuming living energy. Meanwhile, as the Fantastic Five work on amplifying Mainframe's power, the Red Queen and some Revengers take the opportunity to loot the chaotic streets.

As the other heroes standby, Reed orders Scarlet Witch and Silver Surfer to channel their energies into the machine boosting Mainframe. An enormous beam is fired at Galactus's force field, and the street level heroes move in. Stinger shrinks herself, Spider-Girl, and American Dream down, and J2 wraps them up in metal and throws them into Galactus's machine.

Galactus pontificates aloud as he sends his Punisher robots out into battle, which forces Mainframe to activate all of his backup bodies at once. The two robot armies battle one another as the Surfer leads a direct assault on Galactus, who shatters the Surfer's surfboard effortlessly as he swats the heroes assault aside. Inside Galactus's machine, Spider-Girl and company jump around wildly to dodge the machine's defense systems.

On the street, fallen heroes look up to see that Galactus has activated his doomsday device. The machine uses energy collected from planets and living gods and pours it into the new star created by Captain America's death. Inside the machine, Stinger works actively to deactivate it. She determines that one of two circuits would cut it off, and when she reaches for the wrong one, Spider-Girl's spider-sense warns her otherwise. With that, American Dream throws her shield at the other one, and for the first time in millennia, Galactus feels pain as the machine backfires. His machine reverses its flow of energy, sucking power out of the star and overloading its reserves. The backfire frees Thor, who makes his way to Galctus. Also making his way for Galactus is the Silver Surfer, who knows that even Galactus could not handle that kind of power overload. Even as Spider-Girl and friends attempt to escape the machine, Death appears before Galactus, but the Surfer intervenes, siphoning off extra energy from Galactus. A cocoon of energy forms around them, and the other heroes marvel at the Surfer's sacrifice.

Suddenly, the cocoon bursts, and out from it emerges an amalgam of the Silver Surfer and Galactus. He explains that his transformation has given birth to a new form of energy called the Power Essential, and claims that his new power will be for building planets and bringing forth life. He then flies off into the cosmos.

Spider-Girl and her comrades return to normal size to find the Vision restored by the Power Essential. As Spider-Girl wonders how the world will ever recover from the events of the past few days, Stinger asserts that humans are a hardy breed, and as they all stare into the sky at the new cosmic entity flying towards Captain America's star, she explains that while no one knows what the future may bring, they are just lucky to have a future.

General Comments

Let me start off by apologizing for my procrastination in writing this review. It's been over two months since this book came out as I'm writing this, but I really just couldn't bring myself to read this book over again for the review. This particular issue was the biggest disappointment of the series, and I didn't start out with high expectations for the series. I kept reading these books out of loyalty more than anything, but each time I thought, "They might be going somewhere with this. This could turn out...not bad."

Boy, was I wrong.

So much unnecessary crap was thrown into this series...little subplots about and android that only wants to follow orders (go figure, eh?), villains we've barely heard of before switching sides in a positively heartwarming two panels...all good little subplots; unfortunately, Tom DeFalco doesn't make me care about the characters in the least. Destroying the Vision's body in the MC2 universe affects me ALMOST as much as DeFalco's killing off an alternate reality's version of Captain America did in Last Hero Standing, and that was next to zero. How does he expect me to care about heroes from the Marvel Universe in a universe that is centered on a non-canon version of a future where Spider-Man's daughter survived? I don't even want to talk about how lame merging the Silver Surfer and Galactus together is...and he calls that evolution.

Congratulations, Tom, you've taken two classic characters born from the minds of Lee & Kirby and turned them into one crappy character. I don't know which would be funnier; if DeFalco had this planned out since he'd written Last Hero Standing, or if he later thought, "Hey, that would be a FANTASTIC idea for a sequel!" Either way, it's laughable.

Overall Rating

I'm gonna go ahead and give this one half a web. That's both for the single issue and the series as a whole. Honestly, if Tom DeFalco wants to come out with a third installment and make this a trilogy, I wouldn't spend my money on it. I'd stand around and read it in the comic shop, just for the giggles, but I'm not wasting any more money supporting this dreck.