Do you think you're patriotic? I bet you have nothing on Silver Surfer. Before he became the chrome-plated dude we know today, he was a regular humanoid alien man. One day Galactus showed up to eat his world, but the Surfer wasn't having it. He flew up to Galactus on a ship and said, "What do I have to do to make you not eat my planet?" Galactus said, "I guess you could be my slave and travel around looking for other worlds for me to eat." It's not like the Surfer could have backed down at that point, so he took the job. Galactus chromed him up and gave him a surfboard. Thus began the longest job ever.
That's gotta suck. Sure, your own world is saved, but you have to go around and doom other worlds too.