Marvel Godzilla Reprinted

[Benjamin Haines]

lhb412 wrote:
"I actually think Dr. Demonicus' comment isn't a reflection of the time this comic was written, but rather a deliberate choice to show the character as racist. Moench writes this comic about a multi-ethnic, international cast, and I noticed in my reread that he attempts to add details like prejudice and other frictions here and there instead of pretending it's a post-racial society.

I realize this is pretty much par for the course of classic Marvel, where a civil rights activist would be a common side cheacter in an issue of The Mighty Thor or something."


^ Oh I agree. I should have been more specific about what I was getting at. I wasn't taken aback by the villain being openly racist but by how he expresses it. He doesn't hurl a slur or make some snide reference to a stereotype. He simply says "black man" fully intending that to be an insulting descriptor in itself. It just strikes me as a relic of American culture in the latter part of the 20th century, when the dominant framework for racial discourse was the whole "pretend we're colorblind" schtick, the idea that to not be racist is to not even see the differences in people's skin color or ethnicity at all. Of course that concept, as naively well-meaning as it sometimes can be, is just outdated make-believe that does more harm than good for a number of reasons. It's an attempt to replace one form of ignorance with another. It treats recognition of race and ethnicity as a de facto problem, conditioning people to avoid even positive acknowledgment of race and ethnicity, which allows a factual observation like "black man" to be taken as negative recognition by default, turning it into yet another insult in a racist's verbal arsenal even though there's nothing wrong with being a black man or being any other race or gender. Most damaging of all, that "pretend we're colorblind" schtick fosters a culture of looking the other way when it comes to issues of systemic prejudice. If we're all keen to pretend we don't even notice that people around us have different colored skin or different national heritage or different whatever, then nobody's speaking up and calling foul when a black person gets targeted by corrupt police actors or when a Muslim family's attempt to buy a home in an upscale neighborhood is inexplicably rejected. Even after the civil rights movement, those kinds of deep-rooted prejudices really festered in American society while going largely unchallenged by the culture at large. The more that society shifts toward recognizing and celebrating diversity, the more those longstanding prejudices embedded in social norms get addressed, which is what all the present-day backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts is really trying to fight. The buzzwords always change, back in the '90s and 2000s it was called fighting political correctness, then in the 2010s it was called fighting wokeness, and now it's called fighting DEI, but it's always been about fighting the progress that society makes against systemic prejudice. Nobody who wants to preserve systemic prejudice wants to blow their cover by admitting that out loud, hence the buzzword euphemisms. The way that Dr. Demonicus expresses his racism by repeatedly calling Gabe Jones "black man" reminds me of a time before Americans were comfortable acknowledging race and ethnicity in positive contexts, back when well-meaning people tried hard to act like they couldn't see race while ill-meaning racists conveyed their disparaging intent just by pointing it out.

Issue #6 of Marvel's Godzilla is a lot of fun. Gabe locates Godzilla in Northern California and observes him walking into a giant cave on the side of a mountain, where he sleeps. SHIELD unveils their fancy new replacement Helicarrier, dubbed Behemoth, which is specially designed to take on Godzilla. Relenting to Gabe, Dum Dum Dugan forgoes his plan to implode the mountain on Godzilla and initiates Gabe's plan to knock him out with gas and capture him alive.

The Behemoth is a successor to SHIELD's Helicarrier that was destroyed in issue #3 but it also seems to be a precursor to the Super-X and other specialized anti-Godzilla aircraft of later films. Knocking Godzilla out with gas is straight out of Destroy All Monsters. Maybe that's a coincidence but I still think writer Doug Moench must have watched some of the Godzilla movies on television before he wrote this comic.

This issue tees up the impending activation of Dr. Takiguchi's anti-Godzilla weapon, a giant robot whose name isn't revealed just yet but whose diagrams we finally get to see in a cool full-page spread. Jimmy Woo can't seem to pick up on Tamara's disinterest in him until after he kisses her and she walks away. Before the engineering crew can complete the robot's final tests, Robert sets about trying to steal it so he can use it to help Godzilla, which doesn't go as he intends. The plan to knock Godzilla out with gas also doesn't go as intended, although he is eventually captured and transported to a huge SHIELD containment facility north of San Diego. Nothing goes as planned, and the issue ends on a cliffhanger with Godzilla breaking free as Dum Dum and Gabe run for their lives!

This is the first issue in which Herb Trimpe did all of the penciling and inking himself. I think it's the best art of any issue yet, with a lot of fine detail even in small panels.

[lhb412]

Seeing the art reproduced so clearly (and slightly oversized) allowed for close inspection of Trimpe's art, and noticing the subtle variation via the inking became a pastime.

I don't think any inkers fully do Trimpe dirty, which is certainly something that happens (famously with Jack Kirby in the '60s), but there is definetely more well-realized inking and more "workmanlike" inking throughout, with some of the most impressive being Trimpe inking himself.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ I see what you mean. I've read issue #7 and the inking isn't nearly as smooth and finely understated as in issue #6. It doesn't make the art look bad but the lines are clearly thicker and it doesn't look as detailed. I wonder if it's just normal for inkers to try to leave more of their own visible mark on the art when they don't do the penciling. Is that still a standard practice in comics to have two different people do the penciling and the inking? I think all of the artists for IDW's Godzilla comics have done both.

Issue #7 finally reveals Red Ronin in action, with the ending setting up a high-stakes showdown with Godzilla to be continued in the next issue. What I find fascinating about how Marvel gradually set up Red Ronin in this comic is that it's the same approach that Toei soon took with the tokusatsu series Battle Fever J, which was Toei's second collaboration with Marvel Comics after Spider-Man and the first Super Sentai series to feature a team-piloted giant robot. Whereas Spider-Man obtained his powers and started piloting his giant robot Leopardon in the very first episode, Battle Fever J offers only glimpses of Battle Fever Robo under construction in the first four episodes, saving the giant robot's activation for the fifth episode. Issue #7 of Marvel's Godzilla comic was published in February 1978 and then Battle Fever J began airing in Japan in February 1979. I guess Marvel brought that concept from this comic to Toei when they were developing Battle Fever J together, or maybe one or more people at Toei had read this comic and lifted that concept from it. Either way, it's the same gradual buildup to the newly constructed giant robot's activation!

[lhb412]

^ Fascinating! I had no idea Battle Fever J did that!

" I see what you mean. I've read issue #7 and the inking isn't nearly as smooth and finely understated as in issue #6. It doesn't make the art look bad but the lines are clearly thicker and it doesn't look as detailed. I wonder if it's just normal for inkers to try to leave more of their own visible mark on the art when they don't do the penciling. Is that still a standard practice in comics to have two different people do the penciling and the inking? I think all of the artists for IDW's Godzilla comics have done both. "

There is a world of variance in here. First things first: having a separate inker used to be standard because of the assembly line nature of comic production. Herb Trimpe was drawing at least two different comics at this time, I think? Maybe he could pencil and ink two books a month, but maybe that's way too much. Also, artists back then weren't as precious about their work, so wanting to maintain their individual style was less of an issue, and even if they wanted that maybe they didn't have the power to buck company procedure. Jack Kirby hated inking, and in the '60s at Marvel some inkers obliterated the detail of his pencils, but by the '70s when he'd taken more proactive control of his career he was able to insist on his preferred inker, so that's more of a collaboration.

There's multiple reasons why artists tend to ink their own work now. There's more a sense of mystique and respect around an artist's individual style, so preserving their authorial stamp is seen as more correct. Part of the assembly-line process was about maintaining a kind of house style across the publisher. Now that so much of art is drawn digitally it's a different process and the penciling/inking binary doesn't exactly comport to the new processes. Used to, these folks would all live in the same city and maybe work at the same office, so being able to hand your penciled page to the next person just isn't feasible if you're still working on paper and not digitally.

As for if the inkers put a lot of their own style into their inking? Sometimes! Steve Ditko inked his own work, and back in his Marvel days he'd occasionally ink someone else's Hulk story or whatever and he'd Ditko-ize the art. Some artists pencil very tight, making for clean lines that an inker can faithfully go over for a pretty clean transition from the pencils to completed page. Sometimes the artist's pencils are looser, sometimes they can be very loose! (I've heard of artists who ink their own work doing almost all the details in the inks, the pencils being more like a rough blocking out of things) An inker could add details or subtract them depending on personal preference or how busy they are or just how much they cared!

Most of my favorite comics are creator-owned or otherwise have a strong authorial stamp, so I'm used to artists doing their own inking, but if you ask a real hardcore fan of Marvel or DC comic art from the '60s through the '90s you'll liable to get an even more long-winded description of all this, with many, many examples of favorite and least favorite penciler/inker combinations.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ Also fascinating! Thanks for the rundown.

The battle between Godzilla and Red Ronin in issue #8 is wonderfully dynamic. Godzilla is still rampaging through the US military base north of San Diego after breaking out of SHIELD's "escape-proof" cage, closing in on a field of primed nuclear missiles. Rob is only 12 years old but he has hijacked this giant robot and inadvertently made himself the only person in the world who can operate its cybernetic control helmet, and now he's the only thing standing between Godzilla and the missiles. Rob knows that it will be disastrous if Godzilla detonates any of those missiles or triggers them to launch but his goal is to protect Godzilla from SHIELD, so he uses the robot to fight the monster but he's still figuring out the controls in the process, fiddling with buttons without realizing the totality of the cybernetic control helmet. Red Ronin can protrude a lightsab— er, a laser blade from its shield but Rob strives to limit its power to avoid hurting Godzilla, who isn't holding back at all. SHIELD also gets involved with their Behemoth Hellicarrier but Rob turns Red Ronin against them!

After the earlier issues featured some anti-Godzilla strategies that had already been done in the Showa films by that point, it's interesting how this issue features Red Ronin constricting Godzilla with cables and airlifting him out to sea more than a decade before Mecha King Ghidorah would do the same thing in a movie! Naturally, Godzilla brings them both crashing down but, unlike in GvsKG and later movies that reused that bit, he immediately resumes attacking Red Ronin in San Diego Bay after they fall. It isn't the end of the battle! The actual end of the battle is original and very creative.

[Benjamin Haines]

Issue #9 is a nice self-contained story in which Godzilla destroys the Hoover Dam and then attacks Las Vegas! It's cool to see him finally trekking inland after spending the first eight issues on the west coast. He gets more than he bargained for when he destroys the dam, as the ensuing floodwaters dwarf him and sweep him away for miles through rural towns and woodland, ultimately dumping him in the desert near Vegas. That's something that would be awesome to see onscreen in a movie someday. Mothra vs. Godzilla implies something like that but we don't actually see him swept through terrain by floodwaters.

Godzilla's rampage down the Vegas Strip is intercut with the parallel story of a despondent gambling addict named Winslow Beddit, who is down to his last dime and still decides to bet it on the slots. He is not a sympathetic character, and his insistence that his dying mother needs him to win big so she can get a medical operation just makes him seem foolishly irresponsible for betting away what he had. The twists of fate that unfold as Godzilla arrives are fittingly dramatic.

[lhb412]

Issue #9 has a special place in my heart, because it, along with issues #4 and #24, were the first back issues I bought as a kid. The other two were more straightforward in terms of what you'd think a Marvel Godzilla comic would entail, but #9 was just so different from what my expectations were that it really stuck out.

[Benjamin Haines]

^ It is a very unique story compared to prior issues. The main cast of human characters appear minimally while Godzilla's journey through Vegas parallels that of a one-off character.

Issue #10 is really good too, with the introduction of the prehistoric man-beast Yetrigar. His battle with Godzilla in the Grand Canyon is savage and the arrival of Red Ronin at the end is another gripping cliffhanger.

Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones continue to provide great banter and thoughtful perspectives in their pursuit of Godzilla. My introduction to those characters was the first live-action Captain America film, where they were among Steve Rogers' team of Howling Commandos during WWII but their roles in the movie were minor. I knew that the Howling Commandos were Nick Fury's team in the classic comics so it's cool to see Dum Dum and Gabe play lead roles in Marvel's Godzilla comic.

[Benjamin Haines]

It's weird how the beginning of issue #11 is an abridged retelling of the last several pages of issue #10, starting when Godzilla and Yetrigar fall down into the Grand Canyon. It even repeats Rob's internal monologue to Red Ronin with different wording.

The battle is cool, and it leads to some thrillingly perilous scenes for a group of river rafters caught in the middle. Rob actively tries using Red Ronin to help Godzilla against Yetrigar, making the battle similar to Monster Zero or Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

Although the third-person narration in this series works very effectively, Rob's internal narration describing the battle as it happens is really clunky.

Next issue: the Mega Monsters!

[Benjamin Haines]

Issue #12 kicks off the three-part Mega Monsters saga with Godzilla getting beamed up by aliens and transported through space! There's no way that writer Doug Moench hadn't seen Monster Zero in a theater or on television before this.

Dum Dum makes it clear to Gabe that he puts on his crusty persona to get through to people because he cares, and despite all his fuming about Rob stealing Red Ronin, he's really worried about the boy getting himself killed. Rob is still flying Red Ronin as far as it will go, racked with guilt about killing Yetrigar.

Most of this issue focuses on how Godzilla's trek through America takes a detour to the moon courtesy of aliens from the planet Beta. After Godzilla defeats their hideous Beta-Beast, they attempt to communicate to him (and us readers) that they've been at war with aliens from the planet Megan for centuries, each side abducting giant primordial beasts from planets in the dawn of life and using them as weapons against each other. The Betans claim to be the only side that wants the war to end, and they say they're on the verge of defeat after their latest battle but that the Megans don't realize this, and that the Megans will soon invade Earth to plunder resources for their armaments. The Betans say that the Megans will prepare Earth for conquest by sending their three strongest war-monsters, the Mega-Monsters: Triax, Rhiahn and Krollar.

The Mega-Monsters do indeed arrive and enter Earth's atmosphere, just as the Betans warned, but I'm still not sure that they're being entirely truthful. They say that the Mega-Monsters are targeting the most powerful entities on Earth, and with Godzilla on the moon at that moment, the first target seems to be Red Ronin. Triax immediately knocks Red Ronin out of the sky, as a mysterious voice in Rob's head tells him to prepare to die, but the Betans beam Godzilla directly down to the scene. What a cliffhanger!

[Benjamin Haines]

The last page of issue #12 promised a mighty big monster mash and issue #13 delivers! At first it's two against one, Godzilla and Red Ronin vs. Triax, and they've got their hands full enough just trying to handle that, but soon Rhiahn and Krollar arrive and the Mega-Monsters outnumber the heroes three to two! It's a five-titan brawl in Salt Lake City!

Although the Betans in issue #12 say that planet Beta is at war with planet Megan, the Megans themselves in issue #13 refer to their home as planet Mega. That does make more sense, a more consistent naming convention, the Betans of planet Beta vs. the Megans of planet Mega. How could they not be at war for centuries with parallel names like that?

The National Guard rolls into the burning city, and then Dum Dum and Gabe arrive when the chaos is at a fever pitch, followed soon by Jimmy Woo and Tamara Hashioka.

I guess the Betans were being honest when they described the situation to Godzilla, because they say the same thing among themselves here without anyone else present, although I'm still not sure that they're not planning to eventually conquer Earth themselves if they can eliminate the Megans. The Betans intercept transmissions in their moon base from a Megan spacecraft approaching Earth, and they realize that the Megans are preparing to blast their own Mega-Monsters with an Energex-Ray, which will make them ten times as powerful and ultimately kill them by energy overload but not before they're able to defeat Godzilla and Red Ronin. The Betan commander pilots a ship and attacks the Megan craft but it returns fire, destroying the Betan craft's controls and sending it auto-piloting on a collision course with the moon base's atmosphere dome. As the Betan population within the base reacts to the catastrophic emergency, the Megan pilot manages to get the damaged craft close enough to Earth to fire the Energex-Ray just before the craft implodes. Down in the city, just as Rhiahn beheads Red Ronin and leaves Rob dangling unconscious from the robot's severed head on the street, the Energex-Ray hits the three Mega-Monsters, making them grow so tall that they tower over Godzilla. This comic really excels at these cliffhangers!

[Benjamin Haines]

Issue #14 is a thrilling conclusion to the Mega-Monsters trilogy. Maybe this saga could have benefited from being an issue longer but I think it's really well-structured as three issues. Part one is all of the setup, with Godzilla taking a trip through space to the moon, ending with Red Ronin attacked by Triax as Godzilla suddenly gets beamed down to the scene. Part two is the big five-titan brawl in Salt Lake City and it ends with Red Ronin's destruction and the powered-up Mega-Monsters towering over Godzilla. Part three is Godzilla joining forces with Dum Dum and Gabe to save the day!

Dum Dum finally comes around and sees Godzilla in a new light here and Gabe is thankful to see it happen. Godzilla seems despondent when he sees Red Ronin decapitated but then he seems happy when he sees Dum Dum and Gabe helping him. Dum Dum flies the SHIELD saucer craft to distract Rhiahn while Gabe pilots a National Guard helicopter and distracts Triax, allowing Godzilla to kill Krollar one-on-one. I was expecting the Mega-Monsters to ultimately die of their foreshadowed energy overload from the Energex-Ray, meaning that Godzilla would just need to hold his own long enough to outlive them, so it was very satisfying to instead see them defeated through Godzilla's teamwork with the main SHIELD protagonists. The way Godzilla kills Triax is brutal, and it's a lot like the much-later death scene of the female MUTO in G'14, and then Rhiahn's death scene is a glorious ending to the whole battle. Dum Dum acknowledges it's no coincidence when Godzilla saves his life for the second time, and then he takes back everything he's said about Godzilla.

My only real complaint is that the extra-gigantic growth of the Mega-Monsters at the end of issue #13 is inconsistently depicted in issue #14. There are several panels in which they still appear to tower over Godzilla, especially in the earlier pages, but whenever they interact directly with Godzilla, they usually look like they're still the same size as in issue #13.

It looks like the Betans were being honest about the situation from the beginning. I guess I'm just paranoid from all of the double-crossing alien invaders in Godzilla movies.

[Benjamin Haines]

I've read the first part of the cattle-rustling two-parter. Issue #15 is a nice break from all of the big-scale action preceding it. The plains of the American Midwest are a unique setting for Godzilla, with major Valley of Gwangi vibes when the ranchers try to lasso Godzilla's tail.

It's cool to see three big full-page panels in one issue. Each of them emphasizes Godzilla's sheer size in a different way.