Ratings3
Average rating3.7
This was an amazingly fun, and bizarre, book, collecting the two years' worth of Godzilla comics that Marvel published in the 1970s. The series starts with Godzilla arriving in Alaska and tearing his usual swath of destruction down the Pacific coast before being halted by SHIELD (the Strategic Hazard Intervention and Enforcement Law Division) and a pre-teen boy piloting a giant robot. After that it seems like they weren't too sure of what to do with the character, but the series contiued for another fourteen issues, and featured Godzilla battling everything from superheroes to cattle rustlers, as well as changing in size and travelling through time. I think it reached its zenith (although some may regard it as a nadir) in one scene where a four-foot tall, trenchcoat-clad Godzilla fights off muggers on the mean streets of New York.
Another amazing thing about this book is something I've seen in other Marvel books of the same era, which is a blending of different levels of fiction. As a result, when Godzilla strikes, people say they know it's Godzilla because they've seen Godzilla movies (which are not mentioned as documentaries). Similarly, when The Thing (a rival of the Hulk) shows up, he mentions watching the Hulk TV show. So we have fictional characters talking about the real presentations of other fictional characters, who are to them real. It's a neat trick: I'll have to make sure to to steal it sometime :o)