I: Feature Story: "Worlds Without End!"

Pages: 39

Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: John Buscema
Inks: Sal Buscema
Letters: Artie Simek

First Appearance: The Overlord

Villain: The Overlord

Origin: The Overlord

Guest Appearance: Shalla Bal

Synopsis: While the Surfer floats on the fringes of Earth's atmosphere, a galaxy away his lost love Shalla Bal pines for him as well. The citizens of Zenn-La remark on her life as a forlorn lover of Norrin Radd, waiting in vain for a man who will never return to her. The Silver Surfer returns to the cabin where Al B. Harper lived, and while leafing through Harper's journals, stumbles onto a concept that escaped his attention before - the speed of light and its potential influence on the barrier! Assuming that if he travelled at faster than the speed of light, he could fast-forward into the futur and reach a time when perhaps the barrier has given way. He puts this plan into action, taking faster-than light revolutions around the Earth's circumference.

As he settles down from his light travels, he realizes that he is indeed in the future as he scans the wasted landscape of the Earth. Everywhere he looks is the rubble of lost civilizations and destroyed humanity, and the Surfer sheds a tear. But his next stop is to reach Zenn-La, and he finds that he can indeed pass through the barrier. But his arrival on his home planet only brings more tortured grief, as he realizes that it, too, is destroyed. In grief, he scans the galaxy for evidence of life on other planets, and he finds one with a gathering of primitive beings. Before he can even question the primitives, they attack. This leads the Surfer to succumb to a fatalistic outlook of his lot in life, figuring he might as well just give up and let them destroy him. The creatures that savagely beat him do so while declaring the Surfer as a prize for the "Overlord". They fight over the Surfer as if he was a prize. But soon there is a high-tech craft that swoops down on the scene, and the creatures all bow to the sentry that disembarks. The sentry gathers the limp body of the Surfer and takes him to the craft, mercilessly slaying the creature with a ray gun.

The sentry carries the Surfer to a citadel, where the Overlord expectantly waits. The Overlord demands to know where the Surfer is from, so that he may "destroy your world - even as I have destroyed all the others!" The Surfer snaps back at this, realizing that the Overlord is responsible for the demolition of Earth and Zenn-La, and he attacks the Overlord in vengeance. An armed guard attempts to stop the Surfer, and the Overlord slays him, saying he wants to battle the Surfer alone, as he has finally found a foe who can offer him amusement!

The Surfer listens as the Overlord offers up glimpses into his past and how it came to be that he destroyed the universe. He brings out a massive feast, as well as female dancers to entertain while he regales the Surfer with these stories and boasts. Among the group of dancers, the Surfer thinks for a moment that he recognizes Shalla Bal, but it turns out she is not. The Overlord idly kills the woman the Surfer seems to have affection for, and then turns his attention to the Surfer. The two combatants square off, going back and forth with surges of their own fantastic powers, until finally the Overlord emerges victorious. Armed guards are commanded to cart the Surfer's limp body away.

As fate would have it, the slave assigned to dispose of the Surfer's "corpse" is a native of Zenn-La, who recognizes the Surfer as the hero of his home planet. Despite the threat of death, he revives the Surfer, and the two discuss a plan to overthrow the Overlord. The sole survivor of Zenn-La tells the Surfer of the Overlord's origin, that the terrible menace was born a freakish mutant due to his father's exposure to an atomic blast. He was savage and super-strong, and had a rage that went out of control. By the time he was an adult, the Overlord had decided on a life of conquest, and so it began - the universal swath of destruction that left no planet safe.

But soon, the Overlord has discovered the two commiserating rebels, and armed executioners break into the chamber and slay the last remaining Zenn-Lavian. The Surfer dispatches the armed men, and enacts his plan: he flies back in time, back to the atomic reactor that exploded, and protects it with a cosmically charged shield so that it will never explode in the manner that would create the Overlord. So it is that in the future timeline, the Overlord is never born!

The Surfer returns back to Earth at the time in which he left.

--synopsis by Gormuu

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

Click on cover image to learn more about each issue.