I: Surfer Backup Story: "The Peerless Power of the Silver Surfer"

Pages: 12

Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Frank Giacoia
Letters: Artie Simek

Villain: Quasimodo

Marvel Milestones: Quasimodo gains anthropomorphic form

Synopsis: The Surfer is wandering through the sky on a summer day when duck hunters accidentally fire upon him. He sends a warning blast down to stir them up, with the Surfer wondering why humans make sport of other animals. As he flies into the city, the computerized sentient named Quasimodo cries out from the deserted building he has occupied since the day he was abandoned by the Mad Thinker (see FF KING-SIZE SPECIAL #4). The Surfer senses the torment of Quasimodo and enters the building. Quasimodo begs the Surfer for assistance to gain a human form, and the Surfer responds to the tragic self-pity of the living computer. He calls upon his astonishing reservoir of cosmic power and changes the computer into something resembling a man. Quasimodo is now seemingly armor plated, but hunched over like his namesake.

Quasimodo now realizes he can walk and reach out and touch objects like humans, but he also flies into a rage when he realizes how pitifully ugly he is. In this moment of rage, he falls back on his original mission coding - he is a "Quasi-Motivational Destruct Organ", and Quasimodo is built to destroy! He lashes out at the Surfer and rages into the streets in a rampage. Realizing he now has the human power to use his limbs, he hurls chunks of the building facade down upon the crowd below. The Surfer arrives to clean up the mess he unwittingly created when he granted Quasimodo a semblance of humanity.

The two battle at the building tops, flailing against each other until the Surfer absorbs Quasimodo into a haze of cosmic energy, which engulfs him and transforms him into part of the firmament of a clock tower as a statue gazing down at the city for the rest of time. Or will it be the rest of time?

--synopsis by Gormuu

Issues Reprinted
Silver Surfer #1-6, FF Annual #5 backup story

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