Synopsis / Summary / Plot
A mysterious energy from another dimension has left Eternity comatose as his large humanoid avatar floating in the Dimension Of Manifestations. The same energy has also appeared on planets all over the Galaxy, including Monster Island on Earth. Dr Strange is using the Eye Of Agamotto to help Galactus in his spherical spaceship to track the energy across dimensions. With them are Big G's current and ex-Heralds Nova (Frankie Raye) and Silver Surfer.
They are presently in a turbulent passageway between dimensions and Galactus won't hear any excuse from Strange about the difficulties of tracking in these conditions. He also brusquely dismisses Nova's asking if there's anything she can do to help. She flies crying to her quarters and Surfer, knowing that he would be equally useless in this situation, follows to comfort her despite the fact that their previous romantic relationship (#9-21) didn't end well.
Frankie pours out her heart to him (and her comics history to us). Her father ran away soon after her birth and her mother died when she was too young to remember leaving her to be brought up by her inventor stepfather (secretly Phineas T Horton, creator of the WWII Human Torch). She grew up wanting to be famous and seemed to get her dream when an accident in her stepfather's lab gave *her* flame powers, but he made her hide them. Then she became Johnny Storm's girlfriend, her powers were revealed and she joined the Fantastic Four (FF#238) - and fame was hers.
But soon in FF#244 she took a step further and became the new Herald Of Galactus, finding worlds for him to eat. And sometimes those worlds were inhabited by civilisations, so she has been an accomplice to genocide. And she doesn't have Norrin Radd's excuse that G had tampered with his mind to suppress his guilt (see #48).
Their conversation is interrupted when the ship is attacked by mechanical 'wolves' seemingly built from scrap. All the ship's power is being used by the navigation system in this crazy place so the defences are offline. Galactus sends his Heralds out to fight them off.
Apparently Surfer's Board and Nova's flight wouldn't be reliable out there so they have harnesses tethering them to the ship. A wolf immediately attacks Nova until Surfer blasts it to bits. But then a large pack descends on them. The pair fight back-to-back blasting away at the seemingly never-ending horde. And they know that even more of the wolves are still eating into the ship. So SS risks a cosmic blast that might damage the ship, but at least deals with all the wolves around them.
Before they can find more or where they're coming from they see wolves lining up in an honour guard. An armoured humanoid being approaches between the ranks and announces that he intends to take over their ship.