As
Hercules and Firelord fight off the dirt-demons defending the brain of Ego the Living Planet,
Thor strikes the brain with Mjolnir and is drawn into his mind…
…to
relive the Living Planet’s origin from his point of view. Thor becomes Egros,
chief scientist of a planet doomed when its sun is about to go nova. Egros has
planned for the populace to go into suspended animation in underground
sanctuary and wait until the burned planet has cooled and emerge to rebuild
their civilization. Yet due to a miscalculation, the sun goes nova sooner than
expected, all of the hibernating people die and Egros is fused with the world,
creating a living planet who has suppressed his guilt for millennia only to go
mad when Tana Nile removed a part of his surface….
Thor
now understands the reason for Ego’s madness and he fires a storm into the
brain. Galactus summons the three heroes back to his ship, informing them that
while they kept the planet distracted, Galactus attached a massive propulsion
unit to it, shooting Ego out across the galaxy, likely to never return. After a
postmortem on Ego, with Galactus displaying some sympathy for the mad planet,
Firelord requests that he be set free from his role as Herald. Galactus agrees
but only if Firelord can supply a successor. Thor proposes the Destroyer which
Galactus can animate with a bit of his own consciousness. (And in Asgard, Odin
approves this choice as well as Thor’s wisdom in proposing it.) Galactus
approves and he and the Destroyer vanish while the now freed Firelord flies off
in another direction….