Unfinished Fridays: The Last Galactus Story

Writer and Artist: John Byrne
Publisher: DC Comics (1984)
Includes: Epic Illustrated issues #26-34

John Byrne's The Last Galactus Story storyline ran through the Marvel's Epic magazine format anthology until it was cancelled with issue #34. Whereupon the "Last Galactus Story" died unfinished!

Marvel should compile these pages into a trade paperback or include them as part of the John Byrne's Fantastic Four Trade Paperback run they are doing. It would be nice if it included a finished ending...I can dream can't I.

Here is what John Byrne had to say about the storyline (as quoted by Braden-found on the Comic Book Urban Legends page.)...

“We ran nine episodes in Epic Illustrated and it still wasn’t enough to save the book,” Byrne remembers, “so it was canceled. Then, of course, there was essentially nowhere else to put it. I kept promising myself that one of these days I would finish it as a story in the Fantastic Four, but I left the book and felt it was no longer my prerogative to deal with those characters since they weren’t ‘my’ characters anymore. Marvel, in one of their Marvel Universe entries, declared that story to be imaginary and I said, ‘Well, jeez, I don’t work on imaginary stories (laughter),’ or I didn’t in those days. So it languishes in comic book oblivion, or wherever the ‘comic book stories that never get done’ go.”

John Byrne then offered this up to fans if they are curious how he would have ended it (as quoted by Braden-found on the Comic Book Urban Legends page.),...

"We get to the end and he battles a Rogue Watcher, who is actually the same Watcher present when Galactus first appeared. This was the same Watcher who didn’t do anything to stop Galactus from being created and who’s consumed with guilt. So what the Rogue Watcher was trying to do was move an entire galaxy away from Galactus and hide it, so that at least one would be spared.”How could the Rogue Watcher do this? Byrne came up with the idea that by focusing the collected stars’ energy into the galaxy’s core, the Rogue Watcher would then be able to propel the galaxy away from Galactus. Byrne explained, “The Rogue Watcher was taking the stars of the galaxy and moving them so as to create a tunnel effect through it’s core. And if you believe a word of this, you’ve been reading far too many comic books (laughter)!”
“Galactus then battles the Rogue Watcher,” Byrne continues. “It’s almost at the end of the universe; all the entropy has worked up to its full vigor and the universe is running down. In order to defeat the Rogue Watcher, Galactus finally consumes every last shred of energy that is in the universe. Galactus becomes the final repository of all energy in the universe. He then cracks the seal on his helmet, takes his helmet off, and all the energy that he’s stored up explodes out of him. He becomes the big bang of the next universe, with Nova becoming the Galactus of that universe.