Have we finally gotten the greatest adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey...?

Homer's epic poem The Odyssey is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and a cornerstone of world literature and Western culture, directly inspiring such modern works as James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses, 1995's episode five of Wishbone, The Coen Brothers's 2000 film O, Brother Where Art Though? and the Animal Man passages of DC's 2006 weekly comic book series 52.

Now comes perhaps most consequential retelling of The Odyssey, with major talents tackling the oft-told story in a much talked-about new take sure to introduce the classic to a new generation. 

I am talking of course about Godzilla's The Odyssey. 

IDW published the oversized one-shot comic in June, branding it with a "Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre Presents" above the title. Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre was a 2024 miniseries by the great Tom Scioli, in which Jay Gatsby used his vast fortune and single-mindedness to try to rid the world of Godzilla, a bizarre literary mash-up that also folded Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, the protagonist from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and others into the adventure (I reviewed the collection, released in 2025, in this column). 

It was as great a comic as it was a wild one, and it must have been successful for IDW, as they have since launched a line of "Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre Presents" books, starting with April's Romeo & Juliet and Godzilla. Godzilla's Odyssey is the second in the line. 

Unfortunately, Scioli himself isn't creating these books himself, each of which has a different creative team. Rather, Scioli is providing inspiration, and contributing around the edges. He provides the cover art (or, given the variants, some of the covers) and a five-page Godzilla and Robin Hood back-up. 

The Odyssey book is the work of writer Frank Tieri, whose 2023 Godzilla vs. pirates comic Here There Be Dragons was surprisingly well received for how simple it was, and artist Ilias Kyriazis, whose inspired art sings, and really sells the unlikely combination of source material.

Now, based solely on a reading of the summary on Wikipedia just before reading this, it certainly seems Tieri stays fairly faithful to the Homer's poem, at least in terms of the chronicling the events of Ulysses' journey, if not each and every character, and certainly not the structure (It would seem a couple of books have been excised, but those seem to be the same ones that usually get excised). In fact, I wonder if it may even be a bit more faithful than that other big Odyssey adaptation of the summer...? But I should probably leave that matter to be judged by anyone who has both read Homer's original poem and remembers it. 

That so much of The Odyssey is in Godzilla's The Odyssey is in itself is pretty impressive, as Tieri and Kyriazis don't have much room to work with; they need to squish the whole 24-book poem into just 35 pages. They manage it, and they do so without ever betraying that they were crunched for space. The layouts are as open and breezy, and the panels as few-per-pages, as one has come to expect from modern comics. Hell, they even allow themselves a splash page here and there. 

Perhaps this is helped by the extremely fleet pacing, where a typical adventure of an island might only take a page or three, or a nicely constructed page like this one below, which combines a map with a comic, and put me in mind of one of those Sunday installments of The Family Circus, where a dotted line might follow Billy or whichever kid through the neighborhood:

(Come to think of it, I bet it would be fun to see a clever artist adapt the entirety of Odysseus' journey into a Family Circus style journey strip. Surely someone somewhere has had that idea already though...)

The other way the comic saves time and space is by the relative simplicity of its structure. The entire adventure is told in the Olympian court, with Athena and Poseidon recapping what goes on and has gone on while they argue with one another (Athena is pro-Odysseus, Poseidon anti-Odysseus), and eventually Zeus involves himself.

The Olympians, by the way, are wonderfully designed. Rather than the standard toga-wearing models and bearded men of old movies and most comics, Kyriazis' Olympians are all quite distinct, some of them even unique. They put me more in mind of, say, George O'Connor's masterful Olympians graphic novel series or Cliff Chiang's version from his chunk of the 2011-2016 New 52 Wonder Woman series rather than those of, say, George Perez's post-Crisis Wonder Woman relaunch. 

You can probably tell, or at least guess, who each of the are at a glance, and yet I like how...different they seem from one another and, in some cases, from more traditional renderings. The most interesting looking of them all are, of course, Athena and Poseidon. 

While the latter looks like a big, strong, muscular old man with a long beard and loin cloth, resembling his brother Zeus save for that, in medium shot, he looks a bit like the ocean and, in close-up, a bit like a fish, Athena looks like no version I've ever seen before, nor imagined. That's her on the left below, identifiable by the owl on her shoulder. Honestly, the strange armor she wears suggests a chess piece or a fancy layer cake to me. It's a great design, one that looks appropriately alien given how far removed the Olympian gods are from humanity.

So, how does Godzilla fit into all of this...?

Well, he appears on the opening splash page, when "The Trojan Godzilla", an apparently life-size wooden construction of the familiar monster, is left as a gift outside the gates of Troy. In the world of Godzilla's The Odyssey, Godzilla is well-known, referred to as "the legendary hammer of Zeus". (Does the mention of Godzilla and Zeus in the same sentence tickle your memory, as it did mine? Then you are likely remembering 2016's Godzilla: Rage Across Time #2, in which writers Chris Mowry and Kahlil Schweitzer and artist Tadd Galusha had Godzilla storm Olympus, climaxing in a battle between the King of the Gods and the King of the Monsters.)

And he pops up now and then throughout Odysseus' journey as a sort of guardian monster. He's there to fight the cyclopean monster who killed, cut and half and then replaced the cyclops on one island (that would be Gigan, of course), as well as the many-headed dragon Scylla (King Ghidorah) and the whirlpool monster Charybdis (the tidal wave-creating Titanosaurus).

(Now, why didn't Odysseus think to simply grab Charybdis by the throat and throw it at Scylla...?)

Perhaps most satisfyingly, Godzilla is there at the end in Ithaca, where he cracks open Odysseus' castle and uses his atomic breath to skeletonize the suitors (Is this as suspenseful as a long-bearded Matt Damon fighting dozens of men in hand-to-hand combat? No, but it is certainly quicker and more satisfying; I mean, if you've already seen Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, then surely you can imagine how delightful it would be to see Godzilla vaporize Robert Pattison's smarmy Antinous, right?).

If all the creators did was stick Godzilla into the narrative like this, portraying his as something between a monster and a god—which, to be fair, he has long been depicted as, in his films as well as comics—then Godzilla's The Odyssey would have been a pretty fun comic while also fulfilling its reason for being.

But, of course, they don't stop there. As the last few paragraphs make clear, like most of IDW's Godzilla comics, this one makes full use of the whole Toho stable of monsters (and, surprisingly, other characters and creatures), using them in pretty much wherever they could conceivably fit as analogues to the original elements of classic Greek mythology. 

The characters never use the real names of the Toho IP—for example, Ghidorah and Titanosaurus are referred to only as Scylla and Charybdis—leaving it up to readers to recognize them. Godzilla fans won't have a problem doing so, though, making these 35 pages a treasure trove of Easter eggs. And, I imagine, if you don't get a particular reference, well, I'm sure there's a Godzilla fan somewhere online willing to tell you all about it (Like me; I will tell you all about any of the cameos in here).

I've already mentioned the most obvious ones. A delightful surprise came during the part where Odysseus receives a bag of wind from the god Aeolus (A sequence not in the film; while Nolan isn't shy about using the monsters or demonstrating that magic is real, he equivocates when it comes to the existence of the gods himself, even the one who is onscreen throughout the film). The bag has a bat-like symbol on it, which I thought odd for a few seconds, until I turned the page:

Of course, the wind is Rodan, who, in his initial 1956 film appearance, destroyed the city of Fukuoka by generating hurricane force winds by flapping his wings. (Check out that first panel, too; I love how Kyriazis captures and conveys the sheer weirdness of a giant monster emerging from a small bag.)

Perhaps the strangest Godzillafications in the comic though come on the island of Circe and when Odysseus sails past the sirens. Circe doesn't turn his men into pigs, but rather into loathsome giant sea louses, like the one seen in 1984's Return of Godzilla. And the sirens, rather than being some sort of admixture of women with birds or fish? Well, here they wear head-to-toe silver jumpsuits with ponchos; it appears they are a trio of Kilaaks, the all-female aliens from 1968's Destroy All Monsters. 

There are several more such inserts, at least one more of which I thought quite clever, but I don't want to over-spoil the book for anyone who hasn't read it yet. 

Now, while Godzilla's The Odyssey seems pretty faithful to the plot of The Odyssey, thoroughly Godzilla-izing the proceedings to the point where Homer's story is at once transformed but intact, does it diminish Odysseus, given that is now the co-star in a poem named after him and that, over and over, Godzilla saves him and his crew? (For one example, Odysseus doesn't have to come up with any kind of scheme to save himself and his men from the cyclops; here Godzilla arrives at the cave mouth to fight Gigan while Odysseus and company simply run away).

I'm not sure. He still has his "brilliant attack on Troy" going for him (even if the shape of his wooden gift is different), he still has the bravery and perseverance to face and survive whatever is thrown at him, and he still pulls off his bow trick and he is at least prepared to take on all the suitors until Godzilla arrives. 

And then, I suppose, there's this scene:

At the end, Odysseus comes face to face with a power far beyond him, one that has demonstrated its ability to control his face and, ultimately, whether he lives or dies. Now, a scene in which Godzilla confronts a human adversary or ally like this, seemingly sizing him up and, if the human is a good guy, ultimately storming off without eating, stomping or roasting him, occurs repeatedly in the Godzilla cycle of films. Here, Odysseus has the courage to face him (even if Godzilla has the hero sweating!), just as he has faced the dangers presented to him throughout his journey, and he has the grace to thank Godzilla, just as he had prayed to the gods a few pages earlier.

In the end then, Tieri doesn't just insert Godzilla (and friends) into The Odyssey, but he manages to portray the invincible monster as a divine figure capable of using his great strength for good or ill, and for rendering judgement on humans.

In other words, Godzilla's The Odyssey presents Godzilla as a something of a god, which, as I mentioned previously, is a common take on the character, while the comic simultaneously portrays Odysseus' relationship to this godlike entity in a way consistent with the way he addresses the Olympians and ultimately comes to think of them after an earlier burst of hubris that apparently so offended Poseidon (In this telling). 

As weird, as unlikely and as funny as Godzilla's The Odyssey is, then, it's also the very best kind of comic book team-up. 

************************

Now, if you didn't buy this comic off the rack last month, either because you weren't sure how awesome it might be or because you quite sensibly didn't want to spend $7.99 on a 40-page comic book (and/or, like me, you were waiting for a trade collection of the "Monsterpiece Presents" specials), well I've got good news for you.

Do you have a library card? Does your library offer access to Hoopla digital media service through their website? If so, then you can borrow and read Godzilla's The Odyssey for free...along with a bunch of other Godzilla and IDW comics. Not a fan of reading comics (or anything else) on screens, I was waiting for some kind of collection to read this, as I said above, but, well, with the national conversation turning to The Odyssey this weekend, it seemed like a good time to check out the Godzilla version. 

Art Adams' Creature Features, a great book you probably won't be able to find.

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. 

Godzilla Vs. The Marvel Universe viewing guide

The Godzilla vs. The Marvel Universe trade paperback, released September 30, collects the half-dozen Godzilla vs.... series of one-shots Marvel published earlier this year. In addition to pitting the King of the Monsters against a different Marvel hero or hero team, each issue had a different creative team and was set in a different decade of Marvel history...somewhat surprisingly, each also seemed to at least attempt to feature an appropriate version of Godzilla for that decade.

It's not just that the artists seem to draw that decade's particular version of Godzilla (the differences in Godzilla's appearances in each issue, for example, seem to owe as much to which Godzilla suit they are using as reference as to their individual styles) or use era-appropriate enemies. The scripts also sometimes refer to specific human characters and plot points from the movies and, in at least one case, the comic is a direct sequel to a particular movie, referring to that film's plot, its unique depiction of Godzilla and picking up where the film left off (In that particular case, I'm not sure certain aspects of the comic make all that much sense if you haven't seen the Godzilla film it references).

Curiously, some of the comics seem to be Marvel continuity (or, at least, like they could be), some are emphatically not. One story refers to the events of the previous story, for example, while characters who we are told are dead in one book appear alive in a later one. 

Some of the books refer so directly to the events of other Marvel comics, particularly the 1980s-set Spider-Man issue, that the writer and editor include various asterisks and editorial boxes referring to particular issues of Secret Wars and Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man.

None of the comics similarly refer to the movies being referenced though, perhaps assuming all of the readers have seen all of the Godzilla films. 

Which seems somewhat unlikely, really. So I figured maybe I could help out. 

Below then are the various films referenced throughout the Godzilla vs. The Marvel Universe collection. Please note that there will obviously be spoilers for the comics discussed (including some of which are rather delightful surprises) and if you're wondering whether I liked each comic or not, I will of course have a more traditional EDILW review of it in the next installment of A Month of Wednesdays.

Godzilla vs. Fantastic Four by Ryan North, John Romita Jr. and Scott Hanna This1960s-set story opens with a flashback to the events of 1954's original Gojira/Godzilla, Reed Richards' narration saying that he and the Fantastic Four had rushed to Tokyo to help after Godzilla's original attack there, but were too late. (The continuity here doesn't really work though, does it, since the FF didn't debut until 1961, huh...?).

Reed has this to say of the events of the film: 

Thankfully, the brilliant Dr. Daisuke Serizawa and his oxygen destroyer had managed to defeat the deadly beast--at the cost of his own life.

I would have loved to have collaborated with a mind like his...

Serizawa, played by Akihiko Hirata, was one of the main characters in the original film, a mysterious scientist who was part of the Gojira's love triangle who, as Reed mentions, invented the weapon that killed Godzilla: the oxygen destroyer, a weapon so potent that it completely skeletonized the monster.

 (As an aside, because Godzilla was skeletonized at the end of the original film, I always assumed that the Godzilla that appeared in 1955's Godzilla Raids Again and throughout the rest of the Showa cycle* was a second Godzilla. Here Johnny Storm mentions that "it seems that defeat might not have been as permanent as we thought," given that Godzilla is now attacking New York, and, perhaps because I was reading a Marvel comic, it hit me that much later films like 1999's Godzilla 2000: Millennium, 2001's Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack and 2023's Godzilla Minus One would make much of Godzilla's healing factor; could the original Godzilla perhaps have simply re-grew its body around its skeleton between Gojira and Godzilla Raids Again, Wolverine-style...?).

Reed's line kind of elides the events of the film's climax though. Serizawa didn't just die in the process of using the oxygen destroyer against Godzilla, he took his own life. Worried that once his weapon was used, the governments of the world would want to add it to their apocalyptic arsenals, perhaps attempting to force its secrets from him, he agreed to use it against Godzilla only after fist burning his own notes.

Then, he cut the breathing tube providing him with air while he was underwater, drowning himself.

After the FF battle Godzilla, who has appeared in New York City, ultimately KO-ing him with a city's worth of electricity (Godzilla's vulnerability to electricity seemed to vary in the early Showa films, depending on the movie), the city and, indeed, the whole planet, is faced with an even more terrible threat: Galactus' new herald, King Ghidorah!

King Ghidorah was introduced in 1964's Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster. The three-headed, two-tailed, winged golden dragon would go on to become Godzilla's most regular foe, appearing in three more Showa films, and appearing in one Heisei film and two Millennium films, as well as Legendary/Warner Bros.' American "Monsterverse" film, 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters. 

Godzilla vs. Hulk by Gerry Duggan, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Daniele Orlandini The biggest outlier of this suite of stories, the Hulk issue is set in the 1970s, but seems to have its own, discrete continuity that deviates sharply from that of the "real" Marvel Universe. 

Here, for example, we're told Fin Fang Foom, Tony Stark and Rick Jones are all dead...that last of whom, it is implied, might have involved some uncharacteristic foul play from Bruce Banner. Also, Doctor Demonicus, a character that Doug Moench and Tom Sutton introduced in the short-lived Marvel Godzilla series of the 1970s, plays a major role, suggesting that the events of that series might be honored in this one-shot.

The plot involves General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross's kaiju-hunting team of super-scientists laying a trap for Godzilla. 

The bait is Mothra, who the mind-controlled giant spider Kumonga is webbing to the desert floor in Texas. 

"The cries of Mothra will be too much for Godzilla to resist," Demonicus tells Banner. "They have showed some camaraderie in the past."

Mothra was introduced in the 1961 film Mothra, and, with 1964's Mothra vs. Godzilla, she and her lore were subsumed into Toho's growing Godzilla "universe." Though they were enemies in that film, and Godzilla tried to start some shit with her during her brief appearance in 1966's Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, the two monsters were allies in Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster and 1968's Destroy All Monsters (which was actually set in the far-flung future of the 1990s, but never mind that). 

Kumonga debuted in 1967's Son of Godzilla (and later briefly appeared in Destroy All Monsters and the Millennium Era's 1994 finale, Godzilla: Final Wars).

When Godzilla does arrive, Ross and Banner attack the monster, each of them piloting a Mechagodzilla. Mechagodzilla, a robot duplicate of the monster built by aliens, first appeared in 1974's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, and reappeared the following year in Terror of Mechagodzilla. Later versions of the character (in 1993's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II, 2002's Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and 2003's Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., Mechagodzilla) would be the creation of the Japanese military, intended as a weapon to use against Godzilla, as Ross' versions are here.

Finally, Demonicus reveals his ultimate weapon, created from the genetic material of each and every monster the Thunderbolts had previously defeated: Hedorah. This monster first appeared in 1971's Godzilla vs. Hedorah, one of the franchise's more divisive films (Personally, it's one of my favorites...despite that weird...thing Godzilla does near the climax).

Godzilla vs. Spider-Man by Joe Kelly and Nick Bradshaw Apparently set somewhere around 1985, given that Spider-Man is wearing the black costume he picked up during the course of Secret Wars, this issue is somewhat unique in that it doesn't feature any other monsters from other Toho films. It's also the only one that refers to another, previous one of the one-shots, with Spidey narrating, "The last thing I remember hearing of Godzilla was when it tangled with the Hulk!", a little red spider-symbol standing in for an asterisk, leading to an editorial box pointing readers to Godzilla vs. Hulk. 

Kelly refers to Godzilla as "an eighty-thousand ton surgeon" who "wakens only to excise the earth of the cancers that plague it."

Bradshaw seems to be drawing his version of the Godzilla from 1984's The Return of Godzilla (which came to the U.S. the following year as Godzilla 1985); note the prominent fangs throughout.

I'm not sure to what extent Kelly's portrayal of the monster as a guardian of Earth's natural order fits at that particular point in the monster's history, although certainly Godzilla spent the later films of the Showa cycle fighting alien monsters and would go on to do so off and on in the films of the Heisei era. 

This particular year would be an awkward time for the monster, though.

Godzilla vs. X-Men by Fabian Nicieza and Emilio Laiso This 1990s-set story features Charles Xavier and his X-Men taking an interest in Godzilla's predations, which seem focused on the Japanese Tsugunai Robotics company, which is later revealed to be working with Trask Industries (That is, of course, the company that makes the mutant-hunting giant robots, The Sentinels).  

What's with Godzilla's interest? Well, after the X-Men battle the King of the Monsters in a rather unusual way, we find out, when a three-headed giant robot enters the fray. This, we are told, is Tri-Sentinelmechakaiju, "containing the form and power" of a trio of Godzilla advesaries from the Heisei era: Biollante (from 1989's Godzilla vs. Biollante), Battra (from 1992's Godzilla vs. Mothra) and Fire Rodan (never actually referred to as such in the film, at least not in the English sub-titles, this is a form taken by Rodan in 1993's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II).

As for the enmity that Tsugunai Robotics has for Godzilla? Well, it is eventually revealed that one of their number is a man named Kaneto, and that his father was part of the newly established Japanese Self-Defense Force in 1955. He died "in the mayhem" that resulted when Godzilla fought "a monster named Anguirus". (These words appear in thought clouds at the top of a panel showing the silhouettes of Anguirus and Godzilla facing off in a burning city; the city and the monster shapes look so film-accurate, I think the image might actually be a manipulated still from the movie, which is, of course, 1955's Godzilla Raids Again). 

Godzilla vs. Avengers by David F. Walker, Georges Jeanty and Karl Story This one is set in the 2000s, as seen by the New Avengers line-up (and the Brian Michael Bendis parodying script, courtesy of Bendis friend and occasional collaborator Walker), but the Godzilla content, perhaps oddly, refers back not to the Millennium era, but that of the Showa era...sort of.

The story is set-up as a particularly talky, quip-filled debrief of the Avengers team's attempt to break up a fight between Fin Fang Foom and Godzilla, the Marvel monster in the shorts wanting to prove that he is King of the Monsters, rather than the licensed guest-star in the Marvel Universe. Also entering the fray? Jet Jaguar, who Iron Man explains is "a robot designed and built by Goro Ibuki to handle situations involving kaiju, just like this!"

Jet Jaguar appeared in the not-very-good 1973 Godzilla vs. Megalon (How not very good? Well, it was one of the two Godzilla films to have an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 built around it). He hasn't appeared on film since but has appeared in some of the IDW comics. Goro Ibuki was one of the film's human characters and was played by Katsuhiko Sasaki.

Though this version of Jet Jaguar looks exactly like that from the film, he is here built by Bonnie Ibuki, the niece of Goro Ibuki, and her friends.

Godzilla vs. Thor by Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder This final story, which seems to be set in either the 2010's or, perhaps, today, is the one that is most dependent on the familiarity with a particular film: 2001's Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: All-Out Monster Attack, which is one of the better Godzilla films (Up there with the original, Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One). 

Aaron makes multiple references to the film. Narration refers to Godzilla as "a monster fueled by the restless souls of those lost in war," which is specific to GMK, wherein Godzilla's metaphor for World War II is made literal, a mysterious old man telling one of the human characters that Godzilla was attacking Japan because they have forgotten the dead of the war.

Like the Godzilla of the film, this one has cloudy white, pupil-less eyes, giving him a particularly sinister appearance.

A high priestess of the Hand, who has here resurrected Godzilla, watches ecstatically as Thor and Godzilla fight, exclaiming:

Yes...Godzilla is even stronger than before!

Stronger than when it slew Mothra and King Ghidorah, the last of the Guardian Monsters!

This too refers to the plot of GMK, as in that particular film, Godzilla is quite unequivocally the bad guy, and a trio of ancient guardian monsters of Japanese myth rise up to oppose him. These are, as the priestess says, Mothra and King Ghidorah (in his only film appearance as a "good guy" monster), as well as Baragon from the very weird 1965 Frankenstein Conquers the World, also known as Frankenstein vs. Baragon. The poor, goofy-looking monster is neither namechecked by the Hand priestess nor included in the title of GMK...

In the film, Godzilla is ultimately destroyed by a human opponent, when an admiral in the Japanese Self-Defense Forces played by Ryudo Uzaki pilots a submarine into Godzilla's open mouth, fires a powerful missile into a wound in the monster's throat which, when Godzilla attempts to use his atomic breath, ends up blowing him up and incinerating his body.

But since Toho never actually seems to let the viewers think Godzilla is ever really dead, not even in standalone films like GMK, the film ends with an image of Godzilla's disembodied heart on the ocean floor...a heart that then resumes beating before the credits roll.

When this comic opens, the Hand has apparently recovered that heart and the priestess has it bathed in a shower of blood from the world's worst killers, which apparently jump-starts it and resurrects Godzilla off-panel. 

While I think a comics reader can make it through this volume without much familiarity with various Godzilla films okay, and probably even stumble through the Thor issue, these specific references will probably stick out as confusing if one hasn't seen GMK. And you should see it because, as I said, it's one of the better Godzilla movies. 

*If you're not terribly familiar with Godzilla films, I will here note that the 71-year-old, 35-feature film franchise is divided into cycles or eras, some of which are named for the Japanese emperor at the time of their release. The Showa cycle spanned 15 films between 1954's Gojira and 1975's Terror of Mechagodzilla and, a few glitches aside, can basically be viewed as a single, continuing, multi-film saga. It received a reboot in 1984 with The Return of Godzilla, which kicked off the Heisei cycle, which constituted seven films, and has a rather tight film-to-film continuity. It ended with 1995's Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, which killed off the Heisei Godzilla, making room on the world stage for the new, American Godzilla (Which ended up not needing the stage for long, as that Godzilla only starred in a single, 1998 film). The franchise was rebooted again in 1999 with Godzilla Millennium: 2000, the first film of the six-film Millennium cycle, each film of which was meant to be standalone, with a single exception, and ended with 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. We're currently evolving Reiwa Era, which so far consists only of 2016's Shin Godzilla and 2023's Godzilla Minus One (Unless you count the trio of made-for-Netflix animated films, which I don't). And, of course, the Legendary/Warner Bros "Monsterverse" franchise that kicked off with 2014's Godzilla is still going strong, with Godzilla starring or co-starring in five of its six films, another of which is slated for 2027 release. 

The Best Godzilla Movies Never Made...?

As I mentioned earlier this month, I spent some time this spring reading through some of writer John LeMay's books, including Kong Unmade: The Lost Films of Skull Island and The Big Book of Japanese Monster Movies: The Lost Films (Mutated Edition), both of which are bursting with recaps and explanations of intriguing ideas, pitches, concepts and scripts for extremely promising-sounding films that have the benefit of never having actually been fully produced and released, meaning they can never actually disappoint us in the ways that, say, Roland Emmerich's 1998 Godzilla or Dino De Laurentiis' 1976 King Kong could. Both books are basically pure food for the imagination of monster movie fans.

The Big Book of Japanese Monster Movies is incredibly complete, its 450+ pages seemingly covering every "lost" kaiju film whose potential existence left some trace of evidence in the world, and it is, in fact, more complete than even my interest in the subject (For whatever reason, Ultraman, for example, does nothing for me). The category of "lost" films I was most interested in were those starring Godzilla, and there were could-have-been films featuring exciting opponents (Gamera, the American Godzilla, the devil, The Mysterians, TV's Batman, various versions of King Kong) and exciting directors, like Clive Baker and Tim Burton (Seriously! Imagine either of them having made a mid-90s Godzilla instead of Emmerich!).

There are dozens of "lost" Godzilla movies covered in the pages of LeMay's book, but these are the four I found most exciting...


1.) Bride of Godzilla? If it had actually been made, this 1955 script by Hideo Unagami would have been the third Godzila film, following the 1954 original and 1955's sequel Gojira no gyakushū/Godzilla Raids Again...and it would have been the weirdest, wildest one yet. Heck, maybe ever. It breaks sharply from the more or less realistic nature first two films (which were basically the real world + giant monsters, in term of tone and premise), in large part to explain where Godzilla and Anguirus came from and, in even larger part, to stave off their threat.

In it, we learn that the two monsters from the first two films come from a hollow earth lost world, discovered by miners, and that this strange underworld includes mountains, deserts, lakes and giant monsters Godzilla, Anguirus (they would have each been one example of their species, as there would have been multiples of each), plus a giant archaeopteryx, a giant chameleon, a giant bat, giant fleas and, oddly enough, mer-people. The mer-people, one of the script's doctors believes and mentions in a lecture, were a stage in human evolution. This underworld would also have its own orange-colored sky...which would change colors every 23 seconds, its light being given off by a massive wall of uranium.

As for the title character, it is the invention of a Dr. Zenji Shida, a roboticist who has created a sentient robot duplicate of a woman he once loved, as well as a giant robot version of her, the latter as part of the Godzilla Countermeasures Center's plans for dealing with future Godzilla attacks.

Naturally, the monsters escape their cavern, at least the four biggest ones do: the chameleon, the archaeopteryx and one each of the two name monsters we met in the previous films. The military and Bride battle them all, until only Godzilla and the Bride are left standing. The pair then journey together to the entrance of the cavern, where they embrace and the bride detonates, seemingly killing this Godzilla and sealing up the monster-sized entrance.

The budget necessary to turn such a script into a film likely doomed it more than its crazier ideas, but it's worth noting how much it would have changed what became the Showa Godzilla series had it been established so earlier on that Godzilla was a species, rather than an individual (or two...or so), and that Japan had giant-robot, monster-fighting technology so early in the game. As LeMay noted, many ideas from this script would end up in other, future films, most immediately 1956's Rodan.

Whenever a new comics publisher gets the license for producing Godzilla comics again, I would love to see a creative team take a crack at making this into a graphic novel...actually, that goes for all the films on this list (Plus Batman Meets Godzilla, obviously).


2.) Ryu Mitsuse's Godzilla Chapter 30 of LeMay's book is entitled "Stranger than Shin Godzilla: The Godzilla Revival Meeting of 1978." Out of this early discussion of how to restart a Godzilla series after the final movie of the Showa Era—remember, Terror of Mechagodzilla was just released in 1975—Toho approached three Japanese science-fiction authors to make pitches, and while all three of those discussed here sound cool as hell (Yoshio Aramaki's bore the title Godzilla: God's Angry Messenger), and all, coincidentally or not, involved alien origins for Godzilla, Ryu Mitsuse's is the one I most would have liked to see, as among its surreal imagery would have been dinosaurs, the Loch Ness Monster and other such "real" monsters from around the world.

As LeMay explains it, the initial scene is set during the age of dinosaurs. A massive ship lands on Earth, causing untold destruction and interrupting scenes of dinosaur-on-dinosaur violence, when the various carnivores stop hunting and attacking the various herbivores, and they all move in unison toward the ship:

It's not clear in this translation whether the aliens create Godzilla from the dinosaurs, or whether they have brought Godzilla to earth as some sort of doomsday beast. Godzilla roars, and soon the dinosaurs begin committing mass suicide, jumping off cliffs and drowning in the ocean, which fast runs red with blood.

LeMay compares the next portion of the script to IDW's Godzilla: Rage Across Time miniseries, as in a series of episodic scenes Godzilla causes the inhabitants of an ancient village to all commit suicide, knocks down the Tower of Babel and sinks Atlantis.

The final time jump takes us to the present, where some human characters are investigating the mystery of Lake Kussharo's cryptid monster, Kussie. It is actually Godzilla who rises from the lake,  his eyes emitting a strange light, and he roars, causing all who hear his cry—human and animal alike—to walk in a trance into the lake and commit suicide. All around the world, other lake monsters with the same weird powers arise, and "soon, oceans across the world are filled with corpses."

The ending, involving scientists turning Godzilla's suicide urge powers against him, seems rather anti-climatic, but LeMay offers this intriguing description of the project's potential, saying of its episodic nature that it was "as if Stanley Kubrick had written a Godzilla film." That...sure sounds like a movie I would like to see.


3.) A Space Godzilla LeMay says its unclear how seriously Toho ever took this notorious proposal by House director Nobuhiko Obayashi's story, but they approved of it enough to apparently let Starlog publish an illustrated version of it in 1979, along with  proposed credits, including music by Japanese rock band Godeigo and a "Model Animation" credit suggested it would have had stop-motion monsters. Starlog's story, by the way, was illustrated...by none other than Katsuhiro Otomo! (You can see a couple of images  and read much more about it here, which is where I stole the image at the top of this post from.)

This one may actually be more insane than the Bride proposal above, although since Obayashi seems to have been going for insane, that sort of tempers the craziness, I think.

In brief, Godzilla's body washes up on the shore, and the defense forces begin an autopsy, which includes loading Godzilla's brain onto a truck to haul away. When the little girl protagonist who first discovered the body is hounded by reporters, she hides inside the dead Godzilla and discovers a gestating baby Godzilla in the womb! A psychic is employed to communicate with the still-living brain of the dead (dead-ish...?) Godzilla, which explains her real name isn't Godzilla, but Rozan, and she's from a planet called "Godzilla". The humans then rebuild her body into a sort of sentient rocket, load the baby Godzilla back into it and shoot her off towards her home planet, where she hopes to give birth to her child.

The space journey sounds as mythological as it is trippy, as Rozan casts off various body parts to escape various dangers, eventually landing her child Ririn on Planet Godzilla, which has been overrun by monstrous aliens called The Sumerians, lead by General Gamoni. "From here," LeMay writes, "the story stops being any sort of kaiu eiga and turns into a 1960s Italian sword-and-sandal movie, except with Godzillas instead of people."

Among the surreal imagery are Sumerian allies that look like sphinxes and travel in a pyramid-shaped ship, and a final battle between Gamoni, Ririn and his father, carried out atop floating debris in the planet's atmosphere.


4.) Godzilla Vs. Ghost Godzilla Chapter 55 is devoted to one proposal for the seventh (and final) Heisei era Godzilla film, the one that ultimately became 1995's Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah. Because the idea was to kill off Godzilla and lie low for a few years to make room for Tri-Star's American Godzilla (the film that eventually became Emmerich's), the plan was to kill their Godzilla off...while laying the groundwork for his return. Series producer Shogo Tomiyama wanted to use the original, 1954 Godzilla as the villain, which makes some amount of sense; what foe is better-suited to killing Godzilla than Godzilla himself?  There were a couple of different proposals to do so, but the coolest one was that suggested in this title: To pit the Heisei Godzilla against the ghost of the original.

I honestly kind of love this idea.

The Oxygen Destroyer that disintegrated the OG Godzilla's body didn't destroy his life energy, which, over the course of 40 years slowly re-coalesced. That Godzilla then begins haunting Japan in a variety of foreboding ways, including citizens of Tokyo hearing and feeling massive foot falls, but never being able to see what is making them, buildings collapsing in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, and so on.

Ghost Godzilla would have a variety of supernatural powers, including intangibility, teleportation, levitation, creating duplicates, control of light, temperature and weather and, in order to give the live Godzilla something to fight, the ability to possess living kaiju—here, Godzilla Junior/Little Godzilla, who was introduced in 1993's Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla II, and whose form the ghost would grow and warp upon entering it. Ghost Godzilla would also have intriguing weaknesses, like being afraid of daylight, and the fact that it could only move within spaces where he had walked in 1954.

Apparently Tomiyama's pitch was passed on to others to work on, and I don't actually care for all of the details revealed in the more detailed versions that followed, including a father/son human sub-plot and the ghost Godzilla being confined to an island and then Little Godzilla being sent there to fight him as some kind of dumb publicity stunt, but the idea of the the original Godzilla returning as an evil, vengeful spirit whose wrath must be exhausted before it can finally go to its eternal rest...? That all sounds pretty amazing.

Apparently, the reason this was decided against was that the Heisei Godzilla had just fought Mechagodzilla and Space Godzilla in his previous two films, and it seemed like the wrong time to have Godzilla fight another evil version of himself. That's too bad, but hopefully it's an idea that Toho can revive in the future, perhaps for Godzilla's 70th or 75th anniversary...?


Anyway, check out LeMay's The Big Book of Japanese Giant Monster Movies: The Lost Films; I won't tell you again. (Two times seems more than sufficient, right...?)

It's never too late for Batman to meet Godzilla.

I've been reading a couple of John LeMay books that I got for my birthday, including Kong Unmade: The Lost Films of Skull Island and The Big Book of Japanese Monster Movies: The Lost Films (Mutated Edition). I sped through the first in a single weekend, and am still working my way through the latter, but both are fascinating, and well worth reading if you're a fan of King Kong and Godzilla (and other, similar kaiju films). In many cases, I had heard of particular pitches, proposals and productions or read some material about them online, but LeMay lays them out in far greater detail than I've usually seen (For example, Kong Unmade features a 20-page chapter about Peter Jackson's first, 1990s attempt at a King Kong film, which sounded like it would have been pretty great...if pretty '90s. LeMay summarizes the entirety of that film's plot, as well as Jackson's casting choices, like his Heavenly Creatures star Kate Winslet as Ann Darrow).

The reason I bring these books up here on my comics blog, though, is a film mentioned in both, and detailed in chapter 17 of the latter: Batman Meets Godzilla, which at least got as far as a couple of incomplete screenplays or treatments in the mid-1960s.

The information on the particulars of the never-to-be project's backstory is somewhat vague, as it often is in these attempts to reconstruct behind-the-scenes goings-on involving movies that never got made decades after the fact, but apparently a 38-page unfinished script was submitted to Godzilla's home studio Toho in 1965, and Batman '66 producer William Dozier was still considering a film with that title and premise as late as 1968, and he had a more detailed 20-ish page treatment that seemed perfectly familiar with the style and sensibilities of his TV show (It remains a mystery how much Godzilla's bosses at Toho communicated with Dozier, though; one assumes Dozier's treatment was fleshed-out version of a very basic Toho outline, although it's also possible that the two projects were embarked upon separately).

I don't want to merely repeat what LeMay has to say, so check out his book for more info, but he summarizes various scenes, and it's more to enough to at least suggest that he film might have proved rather awesome. Commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara are visiting Japan, when their cruise ship is cap-sized by a wave, and Batman and Robin come to the rescue. The wave was created by Godzilla, who is being controlled by a new, original villain named Klaus Finster. Among the events LeMay reports from the scenarios are Godzilla falling in love with Batgirl ("Love happens to Godzilla," the treatment apparently says), Batman distracting Godzilla with a Godzilla mating call, Batman and Robin fighting sumo wrestlers on a train and samurai actors in a Kabuki theater and the Dynamic Duo running around nude in a bathhouse wearing only their masks (because "they must honor tradition"). Oh, and at one point they meet the Tokyo police chief, Chief Sadakichi O'Hara.

While it doesn't seem like Batman ever grows big enough to take on Godzilla hand-to-hand, nor does he suit up in any kind of Batman giant robot like the one on the above Batman'66 cover, he does climb up Godzilla on a bat-rope, a scene that anyone who has ever seen any of the Batman TV show could likely picture quite easily, and plants enough explosives on Godzilla's head to knock him out.

As much fun as it is to imagine this film having reached fruition, in terms of the history of the franchises, I think I agree with LeMay that while it might have worked just fine as a Batman project, it doesn't seem like a particularly good Godzilla one, and Godzilla's mid-to-late 1960s output, as rocky as parts of it might have been, was probably better off for him in the long-run than if he played guest-star to Batman instead of appearing in Ebirah, Horror of The Deep or Son of Godzilla.

Of course, maybe we don't have to content ourselves with just imagining a meeting between Batman '66 and Godzilla, at least, not if DC Comics were to get involved, have someone track down the treatments and square away the licensing for a comic book crossover, prod the likes of Jeff Parker, Richard Case and Mike Allred into action and publish a Batman '66 Meets Godzilla series.

DC has already had Batman '66 meet The Green Hornet, TV's The Avengers Steed and Mrs. Peel, The Man From UNCLE and the characters from 1977's Wonder Woman TV show, plus Archie and the gang from Riverdale. Why not Godzilla...?  Heck, in addition to their various crossovers, DC has even published a Batman '66 special based on an unproduced script by Harlan Ellison in 2015's Batman '66: The Lost Episode.

Review: Godzilla In Hell

This is perhaps one of IDW's most surprising comics based on an intellectual property license, and they've certainly published some doozies. The format may be that of a standard comic book mini-series–it was published serially as five numbered issues–but it doesn't tell a single story so much as serve as a sort of challenge to its creators (which number among them two that are likely to be among many Godzilla fans favorites). It's that almost avant garde aspect that makes the collection such a startling read, as the creators are met with simple guidelines–the three words of the title and nothing else, apparently–and then get 20 pages to do whatever they want, several mixing literary allusion and theology into a story featuring a character still best-known for particularly cheesy and cheap mass entertainment aimed at children.

I was repeatedly struck by how deep and how daring some of these stories turned out to be, but never as struck as I was by the simple fact that IDW commissioned such a series in the first place.

Each issue has its own creative team and tells its own discrete story, with nothing in common save the obvious. Collected into a single volume, Godzilla In Hell becomes an anthology.

The first issue is by James Stokoe, creator of the excellent Godzilla: The Half-Century War (maybe the best of IDW's many Godzilla comics to date). One of his claims to fame on that series was how he decided to illustrate Godzilla's famous cry, and there are several instances of his clever uses of incorporating lettering into his art in his story, including integrating the title into the walls of the deep pit that Godzilla falls down to reach Hell (Godzilla himself is drawn tiny, making the fall itself seem astronomical, given what we know of Godzilla's size) and Dante's "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here" carved into a gigantic obelisk waiting to greet Godzilla. He responds, as he so often does, by blasting it to rubble using his atomic breath.

Stokoe faces the silent (save for a few growls) monster with a series of bizarre challenges as he stomps through a seemingly endless, rocky wasteland, including a vast sea of floating humanoid shapes that swarm the king of monsters and, ultimately, his own double, which Stokoe brilliantly designs into a horrifying monster wearing Godzilla's shape like a disguise.

Several of these elements are more or less classic visions of hell, but none so terrifying as the ending, which really drives home the most horrifying aspect of eternal damnation. Without giving away the ending, Stokoe not only puts Godzilla in a hell that feels both universal and personal to the protagonist, but uses it to demonstrate Godzilla's inhuman, force-of-nature will. While "hope" doesn't really seem like an emotion one might attribute to the monster, despair certainly isn't one either, and it's the absence of despair more than the possession of hope that keeps him relatively unruffled as he goes about falling and fighting forever.

That's followed by a story written and painted by legendary Godzilla artist Bob Eggleton. It's a much more straightforward story, told in a much more straightforward manner. While there's no dialogue, save for the occasional "REEE-UUNNNNNKKKK" or "SKREEONK," this story is anything but silent, as Eggleton narrates it, making for an extremley sharp contrast to Stokoe's preceding story.

In poetic, if purple, prose, the artist tells us that Godzilla has awoken in hell, "The abysmal plain of the underworld presenting all which has failed or gone wrong." But, he seems to assure us, Godzilla doesn't really deserve hell, either because he's a good rather than bad monster, or, perhaps, simply because he is a monster, and thus more animal than sentient, soul-bearing, morality-comprehending creature. "This is not his final destination," Eggleton's narration states, "but a journey, a test..."

Godzilla in Purgatory, then.

His Godzilla travels from one arena to the next, in each new setting–a flaming world of nuclear wars, a frozen cavern, the sea–he faces a demon version of an old opponent or ally. After three fights comes the boss battle, with "The reason the leviathan was brought into this horrific netherworld...King Ghidorah, the great three-headed dragon, the golden devil." You know Dante's devil had three faces, right?

A whirlpool sucks him below the waves before he can do battle with his archenemy, and the narration tells us that he is being taken to "fresh levels of torment...or a way out..."

After these first two stories, it becomes apparent that, despite the changes in story-telling styles, one could read at least these first few stories as connected, given how each ends with Godzilla falling from the level of hell the story is set on, so that perhaps this is the same Godzilla (varying artistic styles and visual signifiers notwithstanding) on the same journey through different parts of hell (Spoiler alert: That holds true of the rest of the stories too, if you want to view them from that angle).

Eggleton's story is something of a disappointment after Stokoe's, and the narration sucks some of the mystery out of the concept, but who's going to complain about Eggleton painting two-pages of sequential art featuring Godzilla battling Rodan, Anguirus and Varan through portentous settings?

The third story is the first by an entire creative team, rather than a single creator. Ulises Farinas and Erick Frietas write this issue, while Buster Moody draws it. Godzilla is facing off against his opposite number Space Godzilla in the ruins of Rio de Janeiro, with the Christ The Redeemer statue watching from a hell above. As Space Godzilla powers up, it crumbles to dust and rubble as well, and after a page or so of fighting, the Godzillas lock breath weapons, increasing their power more and more until the entire world is destroyed.

So that's what it takes to send Godzilla to the afterlife, apparently.

He awakes beholding a gigantic, Purgatory-like mountain, the words "Submit, Serve Peace" echoing from it on repeat. A host of tiny angels with butterfly wings (or should that be moth wings, given the fact that this is a Toho licensed comic?) stream toward Godzilla, and he smashes one between his massive claws like it was a bug.

In response, the disembodied voice cries "You shall learn to submit to peace!" and Godzilla is plunged far, far below ground again, this time awaking in an endless cavern of ice, little red devils (well, little to Godzilla; they're our size) hiding behind stalagmites and, curiously, the rubble of Christ The Redeemer laying in the shape of a cross next to Godzilla.

He is immediately faced with Space Godzilla, and an evil, Satanic presence. The devils fly down Godzilla's throat. Then the host of heaven flies down his throat after the devils, the rubble resurrects itself in the shape of a cross, and here is the conflict in a single panel:

Heaven cries, "Serve God! Submit to God!" while Hell criews, "Enter the throat! Become one with Hell!"

Both Heaven and Hell want Godzilla, but what does Godzilla want?

Well, he uses his divine power-up to put down Space Godzilla, and when Heaven essentially says Godzilla owes his allegiance to the "my army of peace," Godzilla demonstrates that he wants what he always wants: To be left the fuck alone.

He breathes atomic fire in the direction of Heaven, snatches up a handful of both angels and devils and–in the book's most surprising moment, both sides betray God and Satan and fall to worshipping Godzilla, who couldn't care less, as he kills a handful of each and stomps off, the cross rubble once more.

This is probably the best of the five stories herein, and one of the best, most direct Godzilla comics I've ever read or seen, as it pretty directly and elegantly defines the character as an elemental force of destruction beyond morality and, here, beyond even God. Blasphemous? Maybe in certain circles, but then, that's Godzilla for you. He's a monster, not a man, and all he does is fight and fight until his conflicts have been killed or otherwise destroyed, and then he moves on until it's time to fight again.

The next issue, another by a creative team, is written by Brandon Seifert and drawn By Ibrahim Moustafa. Another mostly silent story, with only monster calls and roars for sound. This is the most meta of the stories, and the one that requires (and rewards) repeated readings the most. On the opening splash, Godzilla stands triumphant over the crumpled bodies of two of his greatest foes, King Ghidorah and Destroyah.

Almost immediately they rise to do battle again, and the three monsters battle throughout a seemingly abandoned Tokyo, one of them occasionally suffering what would appear to be a death blow, only to rise again later–as when Ghidorah flies Godzilla high up into the sky only to drop him so that he's impaled by Tokyo tower. (!!!)

During all the fighting, Godzilla eventually notices a huge and seemingly impenetrable wall, and tries to break it. Eventually he does, and finds himself beyond his own narrative confines. The character is outside of the film, outside of the panels of the comic book, in complete nothingness.

It's a maybe obvious, but well-done, version of existential dread for a fictional character of any kind, told and sold eloquently by Moustafa's artwork.

Dave Wachter closes out the book with another mostly wordless story. In this one, Godzilla determinedly trudges through several inhospitable settings, irritated but unfazed, not showing the least bit of fear or concern until he's swarmed by millions of strange red, cycloptic, bat-winged creatures. He attempts to escape them, and keep moving forward, by scaling a titanic mountain, atop which a creature that is all tentacles rest, red towers on either side of it reaching up and disappearing into the black clouds that fill the endless sky.

Godzilla's breath weapon won't work, as if he were in a dream, and he can't scale the mountain. So in a weirdly emotive panel, he spreads his arms and closes his eyes, and the creatures completely devour him, skeletonizing him in moments. But! Each creature's mouthful of Godzilla has turned it into a piece of Godzilla, and they then swarm the bones, acting as Godzilla's flesh and muscles.

He/they can now not only fire the atomic breath, but they can do so from endless mouths, every cell of this reborn Godzilla, blasting aways the guardian creatures, the clouds above and even carving a smooth pathway to the top of the mountain, upon which we see the red pillars were actually just part of an obscured torri gate. Godzilla passes through, a quote from Buddha hovering in the panels of the last two pages and, on the final page, he emerges, alive and whole once again, bursting from the sea.

The quote?

It is better to conquer yourself...

...than to win a thousand battles.

Then the victory is yours.

It cannot be taken from you...

...not by angels or demons...

heaven or hell.

–Buddha

How appropriate is it that at the end of a series in which Japanese Godzilla contends with a series of interpretations of the traditional, Western conception of Hell, he ultimately finds salvation in a the example and words of Buddha and a Shintoist symbol...?

It's a great, even beautiful ending to a great, even beautiful series. I can't recommend it highly enough.


***********************

I must confess that I was a little disappointed that the infernal figure standing between Godzilla and Ghidorah on Jeff Zornow's EC Comics-esque variant cover for Godzilla In Hell #1 never showed up within.

While these issues took on a cool, often philosophical bent, it also would have been great fun to see Godzilla fighting traditional denizens of hell like Cerebus and The Furies, or Beelzebub, Baphomet and Asmodeus, or denizens of Dante's Inferno, like Geryon and others.