Sure, most comic book readers will point to Doctor Doom being the biggest villain to face off against the Fantastic Four. But while Doom may be the most legendary, and arguably the most important, he’s not quite the biggest threat Marvel’s First Family has had to deal with. That honor goes to Galactus, the cosmic being who devours entire worlds to feed his never-ending hunger.

Debuting in Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s “Fantastic Four” #58, Galactus wasn’t limited to the page for long. In 1967, just a year after his debut, he made his first on-screen appearance in the “Fantastic Four” cartoon, but his green skin and blue armor weren’t quite comic accurate. Later animated interpretations did him better justice, as the cosmic threat made memorable appearances in the 1994 “Fantastic Four” animated series and 2010’s “Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Alas, the same can’t be said for his cinematic debut in Tim Story’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” Putting aside the overall lackluster nature of the film, producers made the baffling and now-infamous choice to reinterpret Galactus for live-action. It may have been fair of them to be unsure whether audiences would accept a thousand-foot-tall man in a purple suit, but they definitely didn’t accept him as a giant space cloud, which is how he’s depicted in the film. Thankfully, it seems the MCU is finally getting it right; actor Ralph Ineson is playing the role in the flesh, with a practical costume, in 2025’s “Fantastic Four: First Steps.” But before you step into the theater, you might want to check out our explainer video on Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds.”

Fantastic Four fans were eager to forget cosmic cloud Galactus after the 2007 film “Rise of the Silver Surfer,” but that didn’t diminish their hunger for a comic-accurate version. We’re finally getting one in “Fantastic Four: First Steps,” which will tell the story of his arrival on Earth a bit more faithfully than the previous film. In the franchise’s first MCU entry, Galactus arrives on Earth looking to consume the planet to feed his awesome hunger, with his herald, the Silver Surfer, preceding his arrival.

Reportedly, Galactus isn’t just on Earth for a midnight snack in “First Steps,” as it’s quickly revealed that he has another agenda, one involving the newborn offspring of Reed Richards and Sue Storm — Franklin Richards. In the comics, Franklin is one of the multiverse’s most powerful mutants, able to reshape reality at his whim. In one storyline, Franklin even makes Galactus his herald, and in the 2015 event series, “Secret Wars,” he helps his father create an entirely new timeline.

More interestingly, in the 2003 miniseries “Earth X,” which takes place in an alternate future, it’s revealed that Galactus only eats planets that have the egg of a Celestial within their core. The idea that the Earth is home to a Celestial egg was a new concept in “Earth X” and was clearly the inspiration for the MCU film “The Eternals.” But what really makes that story so eyebrow-raising is that in “Earth X,” Galactus is revealed to be none other than Franklin Richards.