Hollywood is finally making a new Godzilla movie with Godzilla: King of the Monsters so we thought it was high time to look back through the pages of history and check out how the so-called "King of Monsters" has been portrayed in comics. You might not realize it, but while Godzilla was terrifying thousands of fleeing Japanese folks, he was also gracing the pages of comic books and that character has adapted and evolved over the years into a significant player throughout the medium. Just about everyone alive has heard of Godzilla from the movies, but his time in printed form through the medium of comic books has endured for as long as he has graced the silver screen.
This list takes a look at the history of Godzilla in comics and covers some of the ways the character has been portrayed throughout the years. Is he the mindless monster he appears to be from his portrayals back in the 1950s or has he evolved into the more thoughtful battler of gigantic beasts he has been portrayed as in the more recent films? His time in comics covers a wide range of the character's traits and abilities, but many readers these days may not be as familiar with him. Given the vast period of time Godzilla has been a character in popular culture, it seems strange many fans don't know more about his time in comics, but that's exactly why we write lists like this one! Let us know in the comments which facts you didn't know or any we might have missed in this list of 20 Things You Didn't Know About Godzilla Comics!
20 HE FIRST APPEARED IN MANGA BACK IN THE '50S
Japan first saw a giant lizard wreaking destruction across Tokyo in 1954 with the release of the first film, but it wasn't long before the pages of comics were depicting his destructive nature as well. The same year Godzilla released in theaters, a Manga adaptation was released to accompany the film.
The Manga adaptation was about as successful as the film, which effectively brought in audiences from all over the country. Godzilla may not seem like much of a horror film these days, but in '54, not a lot of kids were lining up with their parents to see it. The Manga offered an opportunity to introduce the character to children (Of course, the adults loved it just as much).
19 GODZILLA COMICS HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR 60+ YEARS
When the first Godzilla Manga was released in 1954, it came in the form of a comic book adaptation of the popular film, but it was far from the first and only appearance of the character in comics. Since the '50s, Godzilla has appeared in comics across the world with many finding publications in the United States and elsewhere.
In many markets, Godzilla comics are as popular, if not more so than the films. While many of the books released between 1954 and 1999 were adaptations, most were unique stories by multiple artists and writers, which made for an entirely new media for fans to find and love the character. Granted, it took some time for Godzilla to find his way to the U.S. comic book market, but more on that later...
18 ADAPTATIONS WERE MADE FOR MOST FILMS
Since Godzilla first roared onto the silver screen in 1954, there have been 35 movies made by both Japanese filmmakers and others outside the island as of 2018. Almost every one of those films was quickly followed by a beautifully illustrated comic book adaptation that helped to tell the story from the film in comic book form. Generally, comic book movie adaptations aren't hugely successful, but that's never been the case for Godzilla adaptations.
There are only a few films that weren't given this honor including King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S. and Godzilla: Final Wars. That leaves 29 comic book adaptations, which includes the American productions.
17 MANY FILM SEQUEL COMICS WERE MADE
The Japanese comic book market is nearly as prolific as the American one and while many of the books are never translated and released outside the island nation, fans of Manga in Japan have had a lot of options over the years. In terms of Godzilla comics, the industry hasn't provided fans with a single adaptation for each film, many came with multiple books.
Comics have always been an art form that can augment the story from a film and the books in Japan are no different. While an adaptation was made for most films, multiple issues were subsequently released that acted as independent sequels and prequels. Once a movie was released, fans could flock to stores and read more stories related to that film for months afterward.
16 GODZILLA INVADED AMERICAN COMICS IN 1976
It may have taken some time, but Godzilla finally found his way to American comic book publishers in 1976. The very first Godzilla comic published in the United States was actually a movie adaptation/tie-in comic, but it only consisted of four pages and acted more like a teaser book than anything else.
The book was published by Cinema Shares International Distribution Corp. and was given away for free to people visiting movie theaters. There are no credits in the book so it is unknown who wrote or drew it and it didn't have a cover. It had two of the characters' names wrong and came as a magazine-sized print on newsprint. They aren't easy to find, but you can check out the scans online.
15 MARVEL PUBLISHED GODZILLA COMICS BETWEEN 1977 AND '79
A year after the Godzilla vs. Megalon comic was provided to moviegoers checking out the movie, Marvel Comics picked up the rights to the character and began publishing its own unique stories featuring the character. The first Godzilla comics published by Marvel ran for 24 issues and came under the title of Godzilla King of the Monsters.
All of the stories in this first 24-issue run by Marvel were unique. The character was placed into the Marvel Universe with all the calamities and implications that come from dropping a gigantic nuclear fire-breathing lizard into a world of superheroes. These books are a fun read and are relatively common, which makes putting the whole run into your collection an inexpensive prospect.
14 GODZILLA IS PART OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE
If you look back at Marvel Comics in the 1970s, the characters were all over the planet (and cosmos) battling just about anything and everything imaginable. Throwing Godzilla into the mix wasn't all that far-fetched seeing as there were dragons, gods, cosmic beings and everything else from fantasy and sci-fi. The Godzilla comics featured the character fighting other monsters, many of which were unique to the books, but he ended up getting involved with a lot of characters.
You might think that Godzilla was a denizen of one of Marvel's alternate universes, but when he was added to Marvel's library of characters, he was dropped right into Earth-616, the standard reality of the Marvel comic book universe. This meant the giant King of the Monsters found himself in a world full of superheroes and villains.
13 GODZILLA INVADED THE U.S. IN MARVEL COMICS
Most of the early Godzilla films and comic books feature the terrifying giant monster storming his way into cities like Tokyo and other iconic locations including Mt. Fuji. It wasn't until Roland Emmerich's controversial flop, Godzilla in 1998 that he made his way to places like New York City and other American locales, but the comics featured his stomping through American cities long before that film was released.
In the original 24-issue run from Marvel, Godzilla found his way to most of the major iconic cities along the United States coastline. This included New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, and many more. It made sense for Godzilla to come to America in the books seeing as that was the location of most of Earth's superheroes at the time, but it took 20 years for the same to happen in film.
12 DUM DUM DUGAN WAS TASKED TO GET RID OF GODZILLA
You might think that in a world full of Asgardian Gods, Spider-Men, guys in high-tech suits of armor and mutants who regularly fight giant robots, Marvel might have found the perfect person to take out the "Godzilla Threat," which is why the fellow who landed the job will likely surprise you. Throughout Marvel's 24-issue run, the man tasked to take him out was Dum Dum Dugan.
Dugan, alongside his team of talented soldiers and analysts from S.H.I.E.L.D. spent two dozen issues trying to keep Godzilla from wreaking havoc on cities while simultaneously working to put him in front of other monsters he could take out for them. By the end of the series, he was finally able to take him out thanks to a successful shrinking of the monster, but it took the whole team when it was all over.
11 GODZILLA FOUGHT MANY MARVEL SUPERHEROES
While it was down to Dum Dum Dugan to dispatch Godzilla from threatening the Marvel Universe, that doesn't mean the monster didn't come across the radar of Earth's Mightiest Heroes and many more. throughout his time in the Marvel Universe, Godzilla found himself dealing with most, if not all of Marvel's heavy hitters when he stumbled into New York City.
Godzilla was quickly met by the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and even the Champions. In one panel, Hercules successfully picked up the monster lizard and body slammed him onto the ground. It didn't take him out, but it slowed him down for a second or two. Eventually, it was SHIELD who stopped him, but the other heroes threw themselves into the fight early on.
10 HE ALSO FOUGHT OTHER MONSTERS... A LOT.
During his time in the Marvel Universe, Godzilla fought against most of the biggest superheroes, S.H.I.E.L.D. and as many weird and dangerous monsters as the writers and artists could throw his way. Marvel's version of Godzilla and the monsters he fought differed from his depiction in the Toho films at the time and included several monsters differently than had previously been featured on screen.
Most of the monsters Godzilla fought were far more dangerous than he was to the Marvel Universe though they seemed more intelligent than he was. He battled Yetrigar, a bigfoot analog pictured above, the Beta-Beast and the Mega Monsters-Triax, Rhiahn and Krollar as well as Red Ronin, a gigantic samurai robot made specifically for the Marvel series.
9 GODZILLA EVOLVED IN THE COMICS
When he first stormed onto the Marvel scene in 1977, Godzilla was different than he was being presented on film at the time. In the movies, he had evolved into more of a "protector of mankind" than a mindless monster, but his comic book presentation was more of the latter in the beginning. It took many issues, but over time, Godzilla evolved on the page in the same way. He went from destructive rampage to battling other monsters and even showed compassion for humans.
He picked up and didn't harm Dum Dum Dugan at one point and even cared for one person in the very end. It was realized by the human onlookers as he went back into the sea at the end of his series that he wasn't the mindless monster they initially thought he was.
8 THE RIGHTS TO THE CHARACTER HAVE BEEN AN ISSUE FOR YEARS
When he was first introduced, Godzilla was created for and the property of Toho, a Japanese film, theater and distribution company. Togo has always worked in the media of film so when it came time to release their many properties in comic book form, Toho leased the rights for a short period of time to Marvel Comics Group in 1977 with the intention of pulling those rights in 1979.
The company ended up regaining the rights to Godzilla and all associated characters in 1979 and never returned them in full to Marvel, but that presented a problem of sorts. Over the following decades, there were several issues with Marvel and other companies publishing books bearing the Godzilla title and characters.
7 MARVEL LOST THE RIGHTS BUT KEPT USING HIM
Even after losing the rights to include the character in their books, Marvel kept producing comics featuring Godzilla for years. To be clear, the company was no longer allowed to use the name, likeness or characters Toho owned, but for whatever reason, he either popped up in stories or was referenced for decades after Marvel lost the rights in '79.
In an issue of Iron Man, Doctor Demonicus, a character from Toho's library, mutated Godzilla to make him look a little different, but the use of the characters was a clear breach of copyright. He continued to find a place in Marvel Comics for years having shown up in Spider-Man, Avengers and other books from time to time.
6 EVENTUALLY, MARVEL MODIFIED GODZILLA
In the aforementioned issue of Iron Man #193, Marvel's use of Doctor Demonicus and Godzilla was an attempt to continue using the character, but with some changes. The storyline in that book saw Godzilla mutated by Demonicus so that he no longer looked like Godzilla... at least enough that the company could continue using the character with the excuse that he didn't look like Godzilla despite his clear origin as the Toho monster.
Eventually, Marvel acquiesced to the copyright claim by further modifying the character into a more dragonlike appearance. The company renamed their character Wani and published him into a story in Marvel Spotlight #5 in 1980. The character didn't catch on and mostly disappeared from Marvel's library of books.
5 A NEW AGE OF GODZILLA COMICS CAME IN 1987
Godzilla was pretty popular when he graced the pages of Marvel Comics in the 1970s, but after the company lost the rights to the character, American readers went nearly a decade without new and interesting stories featuring the King of the Monsters. Eventually, the rights were picked up by a relatively new player in the field of American comic books: Dark Horse Comics.
In 1987, Dark Horse Comics began publishing books featuring the character. The company published books featuring Godzilla for 12 years with multiple one-shots, miniseries and an ongoing series. These books far outnumbered and outsold Marvel's books, but many still associate Godzilla comics with Marvel which only held the rights for two years vs. Dark Horse's 12.
4 HE ONCE PLAYED ONE-ON-ONE WITH CHARLES BARKLEY
You may have already heard about this infamous event, but there was a time when Godzilla went one-on-one with none other than Charles Barkley. Yes, someone created a comic featuring the two characters playing basketball against one another, but crazy as it might seem, the idea didn't originate in comics, it came from a 1992 Nike television commercial.
The book was put together by Mike Barron with art by Jeff Butler and Keith Aiken for Dark Horse Comics in 1993 as a one-shot and despite it being so ridiculous, it was relatively well-received. The story was stretched into a full-length comic book with amazing art and while it may seem silly today, it was equally silly when it was released.
3 FOLLOWING DARK HORSE, IDW PICKED UP THE RIGHTS AND KEPT IT GOING
As Toho appears to enjoy doing, the rights to Godzilla shifted once again in 2010. When Dark Horse was finished publishing the character, IDW Publishing picked up the rights to the character, but also managed to do something none of the other publishers managed to do in the preceding years: the company picked up the rights to all associated Toho movie monsters.
IDW quickly began publishing books bearing the name Godzilla as well as many of the other monsters the company acquired the rights to. The company pumped out one-shots, miniseries and several ongoing series with subsequent reprints hitting the market and quickly selling off the shelves. By 2018, the company retains the rights to the character and has plans to continue publishing Godzilla books well into the future.
2 IDW INCORPORATED NEARLY ALL OF THE TOHO MONSTERS INTO THEIR BOOKS
When IDW was given the rights to the other Toho movie monsters, the company didn't sit on any of them. Within a very short period of time, IDW began releasing books featuring any and every movie monster to come out of Japan's movie monster industry and it managed to integrate them all within the Godzilla mythos. In addition to Godzilla, the company was able to snag the rights to all of the following:
Anguirus, Rodan, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, Hedorah, Gigan, Mechagodzilla, Titanosaurus, Battra, SpaceGodzilla, Destoroyah, Moguera, Varan, Manda (kaiju), Baragon, Gaira, Sanda, Ebirah, Kamacuras, Gorosaurus, Gezora, Kamoebas, Jet Jaguar, Megalon, King Caesar, Biollante, Mecha-King Ghidorah, Orga, Megaguirus, Zilla and Kiryu
IDW also introduced new monsters of their own based on prehistoric fossils of trilobites and integrated them into the same roster of monsters storming through IDW's library of books.
1 GODZILLA WILL REMAIN IN COMICS WELL INTO THE FUTURE
As 2018 draws to a close, there appears to be no slowing down the legendary monster from Japan. Godzilla comics are still being published by IDW as well as Legendary Comics, which acquired the rights to create comics associated with the release of the 2014 American production of Godzilla. The rights for that book continue to allow the publisher to create works for other films from the series.
With the 2019 release of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Legendary Comics will create another prequel graphic novel titled Godzilla: Aftershock. With Legendary Comics and IDW Publications continuing to work on comics based on the movies as well as the Toho movie monsters, there are plans for Godzilla comics to be released well into the future with no indication they will cease anytime soon.