Parenting 101: Why Did Galactus Want the Baby? (A Dad's Take)

It was 3:14 in the morning on a aggressively damp Tuesday when I found myself standing in the kitchen, gently swaying Twin A while attempting to read Marvel lore on my phone at twelve percent brightness. She was doing an incredibly accurate impression of a dying cicada because I had refused to let her hold the kitchen scissors in her cot, and my brain, starved of REM sleep, decided this was the perfect time to investigate the underlying motives of a giant purple space alien. The internet has been buzzing about the new Fantastic Four film, and a very specific question kept popping up on my feed regarding the devourer of worlds and the Richards family. You know the one. I scrolled through forums, dodging spoilers and aggressive fan theories, wondering what possible use an ancient cosmic entity would have with an infant.

Holding a screaming child at three in the morning genuinely alters your brain chemistry, which is the only excuse I've for how much sense the comic book logic suddenly made to me. Galactus, a being cursed with an insatiable hunger that forces him to consume entire planets, arrives on Earth and immediately demands that Reed and Sue hand over their newborn son, Franklin. As I watched my own tiny, sticky-fingered destroyer of worlds systematically dismantle my sanity, I didn't wonder why a world-eater would want a toddler. I wondered why he thought he could handle one.

A cosmic entity with a tapeworm

By six in the morning, Twin B had joined the fray, and the true parallels between the Marvel universe and my kitchen became painfully clear. In the comics, Galactus is driven by a tragic, endless hunger. He isn't inherently evil, he just has a cosmic tapeworm that requires him to eat a solar system for breakfast. I watched my two-year-olds consume my patience, my dwindling bank balance, and three punnets of outrageously expensive organic raspberries in four minutes flat, only to violently reject the fourth punnet because the berries were, quote, "too red."

If you dig into the lore, one of the primary reasons Galactus takes an interest in baby Franklin is the child's innate "Power Cosmic." Franklin isn't just a mutant; he's an omega-level reality warper who can literally create pocket dimensions. Galactus, eternally exhausted by his own dietary restrictions, theorizes that a child who can build universes out of thin air could finally provide him with an infinite food source, or perhaps even cure his hunger entirely. I can relate to this on a deeply spiritual level. If one of my daughters suddenly manifested the ability to conjure a perfectly toasted, crustless cheese sandwich that they would actually eat without throwing it at the cat, I'd also view them as my salvation.

Our GP, Dr. Patel, looked at me with a mixture of pity and mild alarm last week when I asked if a diet consisting entirely of beige carbohydrates would stunt their growth, muttering something vague about how children usually manage to extract key nutrients from seemingly thin air and that I shouldn't panic as long as they've energy, which is frankly the least scientific and most terrifying thing I've ever heard a medical professional say out loud. I suppose it's the pediatrician's equivalent of throwing your hands up and accepting that toddler biology operates on a completely different dimensional plane.

Reality warping in the living room

Around ten in the morning, the reality warping truly begins. Franklin Richards bends the fabric of space and time. My girls bend the laws of physics by ensuring that a single cup of spilled water somehow covers three square meters of carpet, the sofa cushions, and the inside of my left shoe. I remember the days when I just stared at the glowing screen of our highly sensitive e baby monitor, wondering if the blurry, static-filled lump on the screen was a breathing child or just a discarded muslin cloth, praying for twenty consecutive minutes of silence. Now, the silence is a threat. If it's quiet in my flat, it means someone is either drawing on the walls with a rogue marker or attempting to flush my keys down the toilet.

It's in these moments of pure, unadulterated chaos that you realize you need physical objects to anchor you to reality. I've bought entirely too many toys since becoming a father, mostly plastic atrocities that flash blinding lights and sing songs that haunt my nightmares. But there's one item that has miraculously survived the relentless gauntlet of my children's affection. It's the Crochet Deer Rattle from Kianao, and I'm not exaggerating when I say this tiny wooden and cotton deer has seen things that would break a lesser toy.

I originally got it because I was going through a phase of pretending I was going to be the sort of parent who only provided aesthetic, Montessori-aligned wooden toys, a delusion that lasted exactly until someone gifted us a neon plastic singing bus. But this deer rattle stuck around. During the Great Teething Wars of last autumn, Twin A used the smooth wooden ring to violently bash the skirting boards in the hallway, treating it less like a soothing sensory object and more like a miniature medieval mace. The incredible part is that the wood didn't splinter, the organic cotton head didn't unravel, and it survived being entirely submerged in a bowl of lukewarm porridge. It provides a highly satisfying tactile resistance for angry little gums, and the soft rattle noise is mercifully quiet enough that it doesn't trigger a migraine when shaken directly next to my ear at point-blank range.

The great succession plan of SW19

By midday, we attempt a nap, which is less of a restorative sleep period and more of a hostage negotiation. The comic book historians will tell you that the secondary reason Galactus wanted the baby was for succession. Deep down, the giant purple space god absolutely hates his job. He hates being the universe's grim reaper. He looks at Franklin's unimaginable power, coupled with the inherent empathy of a human soul, and thinks, "Ah, here's the guy who can take over the family business."

I think about this every time I'm scraping mashed peas off the linoleum. You just want the baby to grow up fast enough to start contributing to society, or at least learn how to put their own shoes on. The mental load of being the sole arbiter of safety, nutrition, and emotional regulation for two tiny humans is crushing. You want a successor. You want someone else to shoulder the burden of universal balance, or at least take a turn dealing with the nappies.

To try and enforce some semblance of calm during the nap routine, we usually deploy a variety of soft furnishings. I'll be completely honest with you: a blanket is just a blanket. It isn't going to magically make an overtired toddler sleep through the afternoon, no matter what the marketing copy tells you. We use the Mono Rainbow Bamboo Baby Blanket, and it's fine. It's actually quite nice. The bamboo and organic cotton blend is undeniably soft, and it seems to control their temperature well enough that they don't wake up drenched in sweat. It gets puked on, dragged through the hallway, and used as a makeshift tent exactly the same as the cheap scratchy ones do, but the minimalist terracotta rainbow pattern does look slightly more respectable when my mother-in-law drops by unannounced and judges the state of my living room.

If you're currently in the trenches of trying to maintain a beautifully curated nursery while your children actively dismantle it, you might want to browse Kianao's full collection of gear designed to survive the impact of a small, angry superhero.

Brushing the teeth of a cosmic god

The afternoon usually involves a trip to the local park, a desperate attempt to let them burn off whatever cosmic radiation is fueling their endless energy. Reed and Sue Richards famously refused Galactus's deal. They wouldn't trade their son to save the Earth, prioritizing their child's safety over literal global annihilation. As a parent, this makes complete sense. If an alien demanded I hand over one of the twins to save London, I'd politely tell him to fire up the death ray while I bundled the girls into the pram.

Protecting them from the environment is exhausting. We shield them from the sun, from the rain, from the weird guy feeding pigeons, and from themselves. But nothing prepares you for the sheer violence of the evening routine, specifically the dental hygiene portion of the day. Trying to get a toothbrush into the mouth of a reluctant two-year-old is like trying to disarm a bomb while wearing oven mitts.

I recently gave up on traditional bristled brushes after Twin B learned how to parry them, and switched to the Baby Finger Toothbrush Set. I slide this little silicone sleeve over my index finger, which feels incredibly undignified, but it actually works. It gives me direct tactile feedback so I know I'm really scrubbing a molar and not just vaguely massaging their tongue while they bite down on my knuckle with the bite force of a juvenile crocodile. The silicone bristles are soft enough that they don't cause the dramatic bleeding that usually accompanies our brushing sessions, and I can just toss the thing in the dishwasher afterward. It's a small victory in a war I'm mostly losing.

Surrendering to the multiverse

By seven in the evening, the flat is quiet. The reality warping has ceased. The world-eaters are asleep in their cots, their cosmic energy powered down for the night.

I sit on the sofa, covered in a mysterious sticky substance that I hope is just jam, and I finally understand the lore. Why did Galactus want the baby? Because a baby represents infinite, terrifying potential. They're blank slates capable of destroying your entire world and rebuilding it into something completely different. Reed and Sue knew that if they just loved Franklin enough, if they nurtured him instead of using him, his reality-warping powers would be a force for good.

I'm just hoping my two use their powers to sleep past 5:30 AM tomorrow. But knowing my luck, we'll be up before the sun, battling the hunger all over again.

Before you completely lose your mind trying to decipher the nutritional needs of your own tiny cosmic entities, take a look at Kianao's sustainable parenting supplies to find something that might just survive the toddler years.

Questions I'm entirely unqualified to answer but will try anyway

Q: Is it normal for a toddler to eat their body weight in fruit and then refuse a single vegetable?
A: From what I can gather through bleary-eyed observation, a toddler's digestive system operates on pure spite and fruit sugars. Dr. Patel basically implied that as long as they're currently breathing and haven't developed scurvy, the occasional cucumber rejection isn't going to trigger a cosmic collapse. Just keep offering the broccoli and prepare to find it hidden inside your shoes.

Q: How do you establish a routine when your child seemingly warps time?
A: You don't establish a routine, you establish a series of highly flexible hostage negotiations that vaguely resemble a schedule. I tried following one of those strict military-style sleep regimens once, and my girls just laughed at me in unison. I find that surrendering to the chaos and just aiming for roughly the same nap window every day keeps me from spiraling into total despair.

Q: Are wooden toys honestly better, or am I just buying into the aesthetic?
A: It's a bit of both, honestly. The aesthetic is nice for your own mental health because staring at a sea of primary-colored plastic all day can induce a migraine. But practically speaking, wooden toys like that deer rattle I mentioned just take an absolute beating without breaking into sharp, dangerous shards. They hurt slightly more when stepped on barefoot in the dark, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Q: How do you handle the guilt of not enjoying every single moment?
A: I strongly suspect anyone who claims to enjoy every moment of parenting is either lying to you, heavily medicated, or possesses a staff of night nannies. It's completely fine to hide in the kitchen for four minutes eating stale biscuits just to avoid the noise. You're allowed to hate the sticky, screaming parts of the day while still deeply loving the child producing them.

Q: Can a good blanket seriously help a baby sleep better?
A: Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you a blanket is magic. If your kid is teething or going through a leap, they're going to wake up angry regardless of thread count. However, a breathable organic material does stop them from waking up sweaty and uncomfortable, which removes at least one variable from the massive, unsolvable equation of infant sleep.