From Marvel Comics
Out of the frozen Alaskan waters comes Godzilla, king of the monsters, and his first order of business on American soil is to destroy an Alaskan oil pipeline. The destruction brings the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D., who assigns a "Godzilla Squad" consisting of Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Gabriel Jones, Jimmy Woo, and Nick Fury brings in resident Godzilla expert Yuriko Takiguchi his assistant Tamara Hashioka and his grandson Robert Takiguchi to help.
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1st printing.
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Story by Doug Moench. Art by Herb Trimpe and Jim Mooney
As a S.H.I.E.L.D. battalion tries to stop the King of Monsters with various weapons, it all proves nothing more than an exercise in aggravation for the giant monster. After the monster destroys everything SHIELD throws at it, it manages to leave the scene unscathed. Meeting up with Fury, Dugan is introduced to Takiguchi and his clan and they begin to discuss how they may stop Godzilla. Tamara talks of a secret weapon that they have been devising to use against the monster.
By the end of his cross-country journey, Godzilla will have made it all the way to New York City and battled not just other giant monsters, but also a who's who of superheroes, including the Fantastic Four and key members of the Avengers — Thor, Iron Man, the Vision, Yellowjacket, and the Wasp — before returning to the sea.
Is this the fever dream of some uber-fanboy? A story pitch like the one Patton Oswalt improvised on Parks and Recreation in 2013, detailing a crossover between Star Wars: Episode VII and the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Nope, this storyline did indeed happen — just not on film.
For 24 issues, running from 1977 to 1979, Marvel Comics published Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which saw the title character marauding across U.S. soil for the very first time — long before Roland Emmerich's 1998 film effort and Gareth Edwards's 2014 reboot. But more than just an American odyssey, the comic series was also a sojourn through the Marvel Universe. Written by Doug Moench and illustrated primarily by Herb Trimpe (with Tom Sutton filling in for two issues), Marvel's Godzilla presented Toho Co. Ltd.'s biggest star in a manner that had never been seen before — and would never be seen again.
So the Godzilla comic was not a writing assignment that Moench pursued. Instead, he was tapped for the project by Marvel's then-publisher Stan Lee. Moench was surprised, since, at that time, he was associated with more sophisticated material, like Master of Kung Fu — comics aimed at older, more mature readers. Nevertheless, he says he thought immediately of the kids who lived in his neighborhood. "They were crazy about Godzilla," he explains. "So I told Stan that I would want to put more emphasis on the kid angle, do things that I thought kids would really want to see, in a way that adults would enjoy it too. Stan said, 'I like it! Great idea! Go do it!'"
Moench portrayed Godzilla, albeit ambiguously, as basically a force for good. He says he took his cues from the movies of that time period. They include two notorious entries: Godzilla vs. Megalon, released in the U.S. in 1976, in which the Big G teams up with the robot Jet Jaguar to battle the evil Megalon and Gigan, and Godzilla on Monster Island (titled Godzilla vs. Gigan in Japan), which features Godzilla and Anguirus speaking to each other. You read that right — speaking.
Monster Island was actually screened for members of Marvel's creative staff—including Moench and Lee — by Toho executives before the film's U.S. theatrical release in 1977. "It was a piece of crap," Moench recalls, "but Stan was sitting next to me hooting and hollering and clapping. He went crazy during the fight scenes, shouting, 'Go get 'em, Godzy!'"
Noted comic book writer Roger Stern, a Marvel editor at the time, was also at the screening. "Stan was trying to show enthusiasm in front of the Toho execs," Stern explains. "They were three or four Japanese businessmen who looked like they came right out of central casting — short, dressed in dark suits, very buttoned-up and serious. And all of us Marvel people were cracking up, from the movie and from Stan. The Toho execs didn't know what to make of it. At the end, after we've watched this terrible movie with these awful special effects, Stan shouted, 'Take that, Star Wars!' And we cracked up all over again. The Toho execs sat there stone-faced, wondering what was going on with us."
The Godzilla movies of that era also tended to feature a young boy as one of the central characters. To that end, Moench introduced 12-year-old Rob Takiguchi, who would serve as a surrogate for the comic's younger readers. Accompanying his grandfather, scientist Yuriko Takiguchi, who is called in to assist S.H.I.E.L.D., young Rob sees Godzilla as a hero and works to thwart any attempt to harm or kill the creature. Rob's role in the series reaches its apex in issues 7-13, when he takes control of a giant robot called Red Ronin, built to subdue Godzilla, and uses it to come to the monster's aid against S.H.I.E.L.D. and other giant creatures.
Speaking of which — the rest of Toho's stable of monsters, including Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidora, never appear in the comic. "We would have had to pay Toho the same amount for each one," Moench explains. "It was such a shoestring profit margin that there was no way Marvel could afford them."
As a result, Moench created his own oversized monsters for Godzilla to battle, like Batragon, a bat mutated by a deranged geneticist calling himself Doctor Demonicus (in Issues 4-5), as well as Yetrigar, a Sasquatch-like creature exposed to radiation (Issues 10-11), and the Mega-Monsters — three alien beasts sent to Earth by their masters to prepare our planet for conquest (Issues 12-14).
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