Now in Comics Form: Marvel's Godzilla

So I got this free scanner. It ain't the finest scanner in the world, nor is it the fastest, but it's my scanner, and also the free. So I've been able to finally begin the first Major Epic Ongoing Thing here at Seattle Under Siege!, and that's an issue-by-issue look at Marvel's oft-lamented (here, anyway) series from the late '70s, Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Scroll down and you'll see this was the first topic on the blog, and will remain an ongoing feature whenever I have time to do it right. Like, with research, which of course means Wikipedia block quotes.

But it's not the Marvel Godzilla Project, a name suggested and rejected by the Committee for Using "Project" in a Blog Article. And besides, I've got plenty of licensed comics to fall back on using the theme that was blasted into my eyes on the cover of Godzilla #1. The truth is, I've got a frightening number of comics based on other "media properties," so to speak. A lot of "official movie adaptations" and the like, including one that I really wish I hadn't read before going to see Return of the Jedi, but also entire series based on such things back before companies like Dynamite, bless 'em, were licensing everything that's ever aired on my TV. By happenstance, most of them are Marvel, but there's some of DC's 80s Star Trek in there, I think at least one Babylon 5 issue, and things that should never have been comics (though I swear all the Star Comics were my sister's. I don't swear on anything really important, but sure, I'll swear. Okay, maybe Alf.)

But I'm digressing more than a little. That's all just to say that Now in Comics Form! is the general theme, which will no doubt serve to display my often deplorable taste, which didn't really improve much with what the gray streaks in my beard tell me must be "maturity."

So back to Godzilla. In this case, and most cases, this won't exactly be a history of the book except what I can look up on the Interwebs with minimal effort. I should know that history, but I don't know it as well as I could. See, I read this series beginning at age 5. As I mentioned earlier, this series was the first I collected in any sense of the term. It's the series that taught me how to use a calender, if only to coax a trip to H&I Grocery or perhaps Fred Meyer for a browse of the racks to see if the new Godzilla (and not long after, the new Star Wars) had arrived. But I knew next to nothing about the origins of the series as a Marvel property, it just seemed the most natural damned thing in the world for there to be a comic book version of the monster whose movies and Saturday morning cartoons had enthralled me literally since before I can remember. So let's call on the millions upon billions of people stacked miles high and also circling the Earth (or such is my understanding) at Wikipedia, as promised.

In the 1970s, Godzilla starred in a 24 issue run of comics written by Doug Moench and published by Marvel Comics entitled "Godzilla" which thrust Godzilla completely into the Marvel Universe ... Godzilla encountered not only agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but also many heroes from Marvel Comic books. Among them, the now defunct group called The Champions (sans the Ghost Rider, then a member at the time), The Fantastic Four, Devil Dinosaur and Moon-Boy, and The Avengers, along with a brief, belated cameo by Spider-Man in the last issue of the series. Godzilla also fought other gigantic monsters, including Yetrigar, who was likely patterned after King Kong, and The Mega Monsters, and in defeating these, three alien beasts, saved Earth and an alien world which had been at war with the masters of the Mega Monsters

Hmm...okay, that doesn't really tell us much about the history. Why the series came and went so quickly. Was it not selling? Was Toho unhappy with the Big G's portrayal? Did Evil Smoking Jacket Devil Dinosaur pull a few strings to eliminate the better-known competition? All I know is when issue 24 hit the stands and ended with Godzilla wandering into the sea, never again to walk the Marvel Universe under the same name, it was as if someone had socked me in the gut. I don't think I ever truly recovered, to be honest.

Perhaps we should turn to the always handy Appendix to the Handbook to the Marvel Universe?

GODZILLA

Real Name: Godzilla, or possibly Gojira (see comments)

Identity/Class: Terrestrial dinosaur mutate (could also be a Deviant mutate)

Occupation: Rampager

Group membership: None

There you go. Rampager. Mutate. Could also be a Deviant mutate.

The next installment of "Now in Comics Form" will be all about Godzilla #1, which opens on the west coast of Alaska. And though it's tempting to just re-read the excellent Essential edition of the series (still available at finer and more discerning comic shops than you deserve near you) for this little . . . don't say "project" . . . experiment, I'm going to break open the color originals.

In the meantime, here's a peek of Herb Trimpe's (unfortunately faded in many cases) art inked in issue 1 by Jim Mooney and featuring the inimitable words of Doug Moench, who had the task of writing a book for a hero who had nothing resembling a real vocabulary except for that short time he spent handing with Jet Jaguar. Especially in this first issue, when Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, and Jimmy Woo (of Agents of Atlas fame) are just getting up to speed and the rest of the supporting cast is busy with exposition -- especially Nick Fury, making his one and only appearance in the series. Moench appears to have decided to make up for Godzilla's lack of vocabulary with some of the most turgid and gloriously hyperbolic narration I've ever read in a bronze age Marvel comic, and that's saying something. I love every single word. Behold! And click! To enlarge! These! Images!

Godzilla bursts from an iceberg and into the world of Iron, Wonder-, Spider- and X-Men. Also, gods from different pantheons who pal around. Seriously, Herc, Thor--Godzilla and Gamera would fight more.
Without using clonebotwhatevers.










Our hero opts for the classic "over the mountain road with the optional smoldering jaws" follow-up for the traditional explosive entrance originally seen in King Kong. Fear not for Lighthouse-Man, his power over lighthouses saves him. He improbably survives the complete and total destruction of his home on the opposite page, and still manages to summon a bit more shock and alarm when he realizes the 30-story dinosaur that just crushinated his house...killed the phone line.

Next up in issue 1, "The Coming!"
-Godzilla kills an Alaskan pipeline. See the symmetry there?
-Nick Fury and the Old Japanese Professor fill in Dum Dum Dugan on the situation while zipping to and fro across America wasting billions in jet fuel at the height of the 70s gas crisis (the cute and cuddly ancestor to today's...ask your parents about it).
-Herb Trimpe makes up monsters when Marvel can't or won't secure the rights to any other Toho monsters.
-Jimmy Woo does things! Not as much as Dum Dum, but still! Jimmy Woo!
-Godzilla departs for parts south. In this case, Seattle, a path which will lead an overwriting blowhard of a hack to pontificate upon the topic of this comic book nearly twenty years later.