I had read most of the contents of this 1996 trade paperback collection before, having found the 1993 Arthur Adams-drawn
Creature from the Black Lagoon adaptation in a back issue bin, and having read his 1992
Godzilla Color Special a couple of times in a library-borrowed 1998
Godzilla: Age of Monsters collection (where it appeared, ironically, in black and white).
Researching Godzilla comics of late, I learned that Adams, maybe the best Godzilla artist ever, had once collaborated with Alan Moore, maybe the best comic book writer ever, on a Godzilla story (of sorts) in the pages of 1990s anthology series Negative Burn, and that the story was collected in Art Adams' Creature Features.
And so I was curious to find a copy of the long out of print book. The consortium the library I work at shares materials with did not have a copy in any of its 40 libraries. Neither did the consortium that my local library belongs to. I only saw one used copy for sale on Amazon, and it was selling for the rather expensive (and oddly specific) price of $43.67.
That left me with two options. I could visit Ohio State University's Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus and read it there (a three-hour drive, so more a thing I could do when visiting the city rather than a reason to go visit the city), or I could hope that my library could find a copy on WorldCat that would be willing to share it with us. (The "Cat" stands for "catalog", and it's a resource that connects libraries to one another; it's my last resort for finding books often, but the library that might own the rare book I want might not be willing to share it, so it's never a sure thing).
Luckily, a library in Roanoke, Virginia both had a copy of this now 30-year-old trade paperback collection and was willing to mail it to Mentor, Ohio, so I was able to read that short—like, three splash panels over four pages short—Adams/Moore collaboration, as well as see the Godzilla Color Special in color (So now I know that G-Force's matching jumpsuits were orange, for example, and that Godzilla's ray weapon was electric blue in color).
Given how hard it is to find this collection, I thought I would take a few moments to break it down here for readers (Although, if you live near Columbus or Roanoke, you should be able to get your hands on a copy). I should note that regardless of how great the book is, it's unlikely to ever be reprinted. Not only is it from Dark Horse Books, but the two stories that make up the bulk of the book star licensed characters, and not only are they no longer licensed to Dark Horse, they are now licensed to two entirely different publishers.
IDW of course has the Godzilla license, while that for the Universal Monsters (including the Creature) is held by Skybound/Image. The book also includes eight pages of Monkeyman and O'Brien comics, originally published by Dark Horse but I assume owned by Adams (that's what the fine prints says here, anyway), and the Negative Burn short by Adams and Moore.
I suppose it's possible for IDW and Image and Adams to all get on the same page to republish this book, but it seems unlikely. I feel it would be more likely that these stories might appear in new, different collections from various publishers.
THE COVER
Adams' original cover is dominated by three figures: Godzilla, the Creature and Adams himself, all of whom ae roughly the same size, and all seem to be teaming up against the reader.
Along the bottom we see Adam's Monkeyman and O'Brien in an inset, and Adam's version of Julie Adam's Kay swimming by in her iconic white bathing suit. All three seem to be reacting to Adams and his monster friends above.
Note the strings of saliva stretching between the top and bottom of Adam's mouth. While I don't think most of us think of Adams when we think of the various excesses of 1990s mainstream comics art, such depictions of saliva are a very '90s thing, so it's interesting to see Adams drawing it, and drawing it in a self-portrait.
THE INTRODUCTION
This is from Geof Darrow, who is now probably best known for his Shaolin Cowboy but, to 1990s readers, would probably be better known for Hard Boiled, The Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot and his many covers and illustrations.
He pens a one-page prose introduction, and I'm afraid I can't tell how serious it is.
He starts out by saying he asked Adams why he liked Godzilla, and Adams replied "Nick Adams." Nick Adams (1931-1968) died about a decade before I was even born, so I'm not expert, but I think he might be best known for starring in the TV show The Rebel...? I've only seen him in his two Toho movies: Frankenstein Conquers the World and Invasion of Astro-Monster, the latter of which Art Adams discusses with Darrow in a conversation relayed in the introduction.
That seems reasonable. It's easy to imagine someone of Arthur Adams' generation seeing that movie at a young age and being impressed by it enough to fall in love with the genre and, perhaps, to be taken with Nick Adams' portrayal of a dashing, heroic, Western astronaut.
Darrow then says he asks Art Adams what he liked so much about Creature of the Black Lagoon, and he replied "Julie Adams". Again, that's reasonable, especially if Arthur Adams saw it at a certain age; certainly, Fay Wray is why a pre-teen Caleb first fell in love with the movie King Kong.
Of course, you'll have noticed that Arthur Adams shares a surname with Nick Adams and Julie Adams.
Is this all a gag of Darrow's, and he's making up these conversations with Arthur Adams...?
Darrow continues:
Art went on for some time, ricocheting between the film credits of Nick and Julia Adams (no relation, I think). As he continued, it occurred to me that Bryan Adams was playing on the stereo and that Art's shelves held numerous books by the likes of Charles Addams and Richard Adams, and videos of films like Adam's Rib, Deep Inside Tracey Adams, The Best of Buck Adams and countless more where the name Adams figured in either the title or credits.
Now if this were anyone else, I'd have said this was a bit egotistical. But I know Art to be as modest as he is talented; I ruled out ego and put his interests down to mere coincidence. But if it had been an enormous ego at play, I knew few others who'd have as much right as Art Adams.
So yeah, it seems like a long—too long—riff on the fact that Arthur Adams shares a surname with a Godzilla actor and the heroine of Creature to get to the point where he could note that Adams is enormously talented.
In the final three paragraphs remaining, Darrow notes how influential Adams is on the "hot" artists of the day, and makes a joke about how Adams was often criticized for his speed ...including by those same artists. ("I think the main reason they are concerned with Art's rate of production is because they've run out of Art Adams material to pay 'homage' to and are on their third or fourth Adams retread work, and their editors are at last staring to complain about being billed for the third or fourth time for the same material.")
He also notes that this trade paperback is well worthwhile because the comics within it were "hopelessly under-ordered."
I assume he's not joking about that, although it does make it unfortunate to readers in 2026, who might want to read these comics now...
UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Scripted by Steve Moncuse and drawn by Adams and Terry Austin (the latter presumably handling the inks, although in this collection both Adams and Austin simply share an "art by" credit), this is exactly what it looks like: A comic book adaptation of the 1954 black-and-white horror film.
Comic book adaptations used to be far more popular, perhaps even common, in years past, although they seem to have long been out of style. In fact, I'm not even sure what the most recent such comics might have been. Those that pop up immediately in my memory are the 1989 DC Comics adaptation of the original Batman film by Denny O'Neil and Jerry Ordway (which got a "Deluxe Edition" hardcover release in 2019), the 1990 Archie Comics adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film (by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird themselves, oddly enough, and just re-released in a 35th anniversary hardcover by IDW last month) and 1992 Topps Comics adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula (penciled by Mike Mignola, which is almost certainly why it saw a hardcover collection released by IDW in 2018).
Surely others have been published since though, right?
Anyway, the odd thing about this one was, of course, that it was released almost 40 years after the original film.
While over-sized at 49 story pages, it's still relatively short for an adaptation of a feature film, I think, but it's quite complete, the creators managing to get it all in there thanks in large part to the man tiny panels on each page, maybe 12 per page or so.
In that respect, the comic feels a little old, a little small and a little crowded. It certainly doesn't read like a comic book of the 1990s.
The creators do a damn good job thought, and this is basically the seminal film translated pretty directly into the comics medium, nothing really new or unique added...aside, I suppose, from seeing Adams' renderings of the various characters, and seeing just how awesome the Gill-Man design could be when it's not limited by having to be made out of rubber to latex or whatever and fitted over a human actor.
That is, the monster looks much more monstrous, and more realistic, too.
The only downside?
According to Wikipedia, this
wasn't the Creature story Adams most wanted to tell. Here, listen to this:
When Adams learned that Dark Horse would acquire the rights to the Universal Monsters, Adams lobbied to them to illustrate the comics sequel to the 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon, but Dark Horse wanted to produce and adaptation of the film first, and told Adams that if he illustrated that, that he would be able to illustrate a future sequel.
Unfortunately, the article goes on to say, the book suffered from low sales and the Universal Monster comics ended up costing Dark Horse money, so we never got that Creature sequel Adams had planned.
Of course, that means there's a Creature from the Black Lagoon sequel by Arthur Adams out there somewhere, even if only in his head, yet to be published. Hopefully Skybound has read Adams Wikipedia entry, and is in the process of contacting him to produce that comic for them now...
If you can't find this issue in a back issue bin or get your hands on Creature Features, it was also collected along with Dark Horse's Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy adaptations in the 2006 trade paperback Universal Monsters: Cavalcade of Horrors.
GODZILLA COLOR SPECIAL
This 1992 comic was co-written by Randy Stradley and Adams and drawn by Adams. The 40-page one-shot was one of the earliest of Dark Horse's Godzilla comics, following 1987's Godzilla King of the Monsters Special and a 1988 mini-series republishing a manga adaptation of 1984 film Return of Godzilla.
Aside from being totally awesome, it's notable for introducing G-Force, a team of jump-suited Japanese adventurer scientists based on the Fantastic Four (The team consists of a brilliant scientist, his wife, his wife's kid brother and his best friend, a big guy who is also their pilot). A military force by that name was introduced in the 1993 film Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II; Adams and Stradley's G-Force came first, although given the lead time it takes to make a movie, it's possible the two G-Forces were created simultaneously.
In this story, Godzilla is approaching a fictional island off the coast of Japan, one whose inhabitants have cut themselves off from modern culture (and thus communication technology) in order to lead a medieval style of life. G-Force and the U.S. military arrive during a storm to evacuate them before Godzilla can get there, but it turns out the islanders have their own plan for dealing with Godzilla: A large statue they believe to be a petrified oni, which, under the right circumstances can be brought back to life.
And that's what happens. Though the statue is far smaller than Godzilla, every time it is destroyed, it magically rebuilds itself, bigger and stronger than it was previously. So here we have two seemingly unstoppable foes.
I think this is probably among the better Godzilla comics I've ever read, and, reading it, you'll see why I think Adams is perhaps the best Godzilla artist. Its relatively short page count finds time and space for Godzilla battling warships and Godzilla battling a giant foe, the exact likes of which we've never seen him fight before, and the human action occurring underfoot is fun and exciting.
This story also includes
this funny sequence, in which Godzilla is as petty as I've ever seen him. In a dramatic moment, he stomps on a character, in a big panel that fills two-thirds of a page. The bottom third of the page features a series of three panels. In the first two, other characters react to the death of the character, one shouting "No!" and the other his name. In the third and final panel, we get a medium-shot of Godzilla, who goes on to keep stomping on the clearly already dead character, "THOOM THOOM THOOM" sound effects letting us know he did so three more times in rapid succession, as if to rub the other characters' faces in what he just did.
There's one line of dialogue here that will seem like an odd throwaway if you read this special anywhere other than Creature Features. "Remember how he helped us defeat The Shrew-Manoid's monsters?" one member of G-Force asks another. Here though, one of the short stories to follow will introduce us to said Shrew-Manoid.
As I said above, this story was also collected in 1998's Godzilla: Age of Monsters, which is another place you can try to look for it.
MONKEYMAN AND O'BRIEN
In referring to the contents of the trade, the back cover refers to "two rare Monkeyman & O'Brien stories," which, in 2026, seems ironic. That's because, as far as I can tell, all Monkeyman & O'Brien stories are rare now.
All of the comics are from the '90s, and, as far as I can tell, the only collection was published way back in 1997. Which is unfortunate, as the two super-short stories collected in here made me want to read more about these characters, a super-intelligent gorilla and a super-strong woman, respectively.
The feature was part of Dark Horse's creator-owned "Legend" imprint, where Mike Mignola's Hellboy originated (Indeed, Adams' feature occasionally ran as a back-up in Hellboy comics), and the characters appeared in a two-issue crossover with Image's Gen13 in 1998, a series I'd really like to see.
The two stories here, "The Shocking Case of the Brief Journey" and "Trapped in the Lair of the Shrewmanoid", are both four-pagers. One is from 1993's San Diego Comic Con Comics #2 and the other from 1994's Dark Horse Insider #27.
The first opens with a full-page splash, making its short page-count feel even shorter, and the story plays more like a scene than a story. The leads are running a theropod dinosaur hot on their heels while O'Brien narrates a little bit about them and what's going on. Before the dinosaur, a brown-ish one with plates on its back the same shape as those on Godzilla's, can gets its jaws on them, they reach "the D-gate," a little glowing device that opens a portal and sends them...somewhere, presumably the present. The dinosaur satisfies itself by carefully sniffing and then eating the D-gate projector.
And, um, that's it; it's just 11 panels total. Not much to it, obviously, but it allows Adams to draw a gorilla, a dinosaur and a beautiful woman, all things that he apparently likes to draw and he's exceptionally good at drawing.
The second is 18 panels but manages to feel more like a complete—albeit quite short—story. It opens with our heroes bound in very substantial looking manacles and chains to a large pillar underground, menaced by The Shrewmanoid, who was mentioned in the Godzilla Color Special (Although here there's no hyphen in his name).
It's clear that he's meant to be an analogue of Marvel's Mole Man, whom he rather exactly resembles, only sans glasses and with a different color scheme. He also has a horde of humanoid followers, although these are little rat people that kinda sorta resemble Rizzo and friends from The Muppets, and commands at least one giant monster.
In the opening panel, a large one that fills three-fourths of the first page, is filled with these rat people, and, like so many of Adams' drawings, this one seems to be one that he must have labored over for a while, as he draws the hell out of the crowd. It rewards scanning closely too, as the rat people all wear clothes, and some of them seem to be cosplaying familiar comic book characters. One, for example, seems to be dressed as Doctor Doom, only with a red cape rather than a green one, and another wears a trenchcoat and seems to have sanded-down horns like Hellboy.
As for that giant monster, that is K'Nog, a giant naked mole rat. Using their great strength, our heroes escape and prevail, O'Brien tearing down the pillar and using it like a baseball bat to clear the crowd of rat people, and Axwell Tiberius (aka "Monkeyman") grabs K'Nog by the teeth and flips him onto his back with a "WHAM!"
Living as we do in a time when it seems almost every comic ever is readily available, it's kind of frustrating to know there are all these Arthur Adams comics about a gorilla and a beautiful woman fighting monsters out there but not readily available. (At the very least, I would hope DC might publish that Gen13 crossover, maybe in some kind of future Gen13 collection or another...)
Ah well, hopefully someone gets around to collecting it eventually. In the meantime, I am glad that Creature Features provides a bit of an introduction to the concept and characters.
"TRAMPLING TOKYO"
The final entry isn't from a Dark Horse book, but rather from Caliber Press's Negative Burn anthology. As the images are copyright Adams, and the words copyright Alan Moore though, I guess all Dark Horse needed to reprint it int this collection was the permission of the creators.
What's perhaps most interesting about it is that while it features Godzilla, or at least a version of Godzilla, this one, unlike the Godzilla Color Special or any of Adams' other Godzilla work, this is not an official Godzilla story, so the version of the character Adams draws here is a unique, original one—Godzilla-y enough to suggest the character, but not so Godzilla-y as to actually be Godzilla (In this respect, the characters' appearance here is similar to the way he might appear in newspaper comic strips, New Yorker cartoons or parodies in Mad magazine and elsewhere.)
The short strip is one of Negative Burn's ongoing features, "Alan Moore's Songbook," in which various noteworthy comic artists would illustrate lyrics written by Moore. “Trampling Tokyo” is told from the perspective of a weary Godzilla who has tired of his life destroying cities and now longs to retire to the peace and calm of Monster Island.
The strip consists of just three panels spread over four pages. An opening splash page featuring the title “Alan Moore’s Songbook: Trampling Tokyo”, a two-page splash featuring two verses in boxes before another illustration and a final splash page featuring a third and final verse.
Adams’ monster here looks an awful lot like what Godzilla might look like if he were a real creature, one that might exist in nature, rather than the one of Toho's films.
Adams gives us three images of his new, off-brand Godzilla. The first, a splash pages, shows it from the chest up, apparently mid-roar, while smoke fills the background.
The second, a double-page splash, shows the creature’s entire body as it stands in an urban setting, its dorsal plates crackling with energy (electric blue, in the colorized version) while a beam of explosive yellow-orange energy pours from its jaws, destroying some sort of high-tech vehicle, while another such vehicle swoops above the blast, avoiding it.
In the third, another singe-page splash, the monster stalks off, away from the smoking city; in the sky, we see images of its fellow monsters’ faces. One looks exactly like that of the larval Mothra, another looks like it could be a similarly off-brand Rodan, given its beak and suggestion of wings (although it has a mane of spines, unlike Toho’s Pteranodon-like monster), and the other two are distinctly dinosaurian; one could be Gorosaurus, I suppose, given how much like a standard theropod dinosaur that monster looks, while the other is a unique design of Adams’).
Adams' “Trampling Tokyo” version of Godzilla's body looks much like that of Toho’s, especially in the deep grooves of the scaly skin and the plates along its back, but the face is more bestial and dinosaurian, with an elongated snout and deeply-set eyes, on the sides of the head rather than the front.
Its posture is similarly that of a real dinosaur, as it is hunched forward and balanced by a long, whip-like tail. Its arms are short and held close to its body, folding up like those of a Jurassic Park raptor in the last panel, and its legs look as if they are bent backyards, as it stands atop its clawed toes.
This is not a monster that a man in a suit could play...at least not most men, and not easily.
In fact, it would have made a perfect design for the monster that starred in the 1998 American Godzilla; for that film, the creators clearly wanted a more dinosaur-like, more “realistic” version of Godzilla, and here Adams provides one, while still giving the monster just enough Godzilla signifiers that he suggests the original without looking all that much like him.
Moore’s song is short enough that I could probably quote it in its entirety here, but I will instead just note that, among the nuclear age imagery (X-Rays, Hiroshima and Robert Oppenheimer are mentioned), there are a few references to Toho’s filmography.
When Godzilla first mentions Monster Island, he says “The tiny twins hold hands and sing/while Mothra plays guitar”, the “tiny twins” referring to the Shobijin introduced in 1961’s Mothra.
The song ends with another mention of the idyllic nature of Monster Island, “where the luminous lagoon night never ends/and all my monster friends/ are singin’ Gojira! Gojira! Go!”, before repeating the title.
And if Moore’s Godzilla was tired of trampling Tokyo way back in 1995, I can only imagine how exhausted he is of doing so now, over 30 years, some 15 feature films and dozens of comics later...
“Trampling Tokyo” has been collected several times since it was originally published, not just in Creature Features but also in 1998’s Alan Moore’s Songbook and 2005’s Negative Burn: The Best from 1993-1998.
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