Godzilla King of the Monsters #24
It’s strange being a longtime Godzilla fan in the middle of this renaissance for the King of the Monsters. When I was growing up in the 2000s, everyone knew the name Godzilla, but almost no one my age knew anything about him beyond the fact that he was a giant lizard who destroyed Tokyo. I was one of the exceptions; I got introduced to Godzilla through the Save the Earth videogame for PS2 and have not stopped loving him since, even when I brought it up to my friends and they went “Isn’t that the big lizard who destroys Tokyo?”, or worse, “Isn’t that the big lizard that attacks New York?”.
Now the place of Tristar’s 1998 Godzilla film in the broader context of the franchise is a weird one. As a Godzilla film, it is an abomination. However, if you take the “God” out of the creature’s name and treat it as a separate entity, which Toho later did, it’s not a bad monster film in its own right, so long as you don’t think that’s supposed to be Godzilla himself. If you want an actual case of Godzilla attacking New York City, you have to go back to either Destroy All Monsters (where he is briefly seen on a rampage through the Big Apple due to alien shenanigans) or this, the final issue of Marvel’s Godzilla (#24).
Yes, much like the Transformers there was a brief point where Godzilla was a part of the Marvel Universe, and what an odyssey it was. To give an idea, the series starts with SHIELD chasing Godzilla across the globe in various unsuccessful efforts to bring him down, before gradually escalating to the point where they’re using Pym Particles to shrink him, after which he’s smuggled through the city in a trench coat, Raphael-style, before the Fantastic Four get involved and he tumbles back in time. All of that, however, was simple prelude to the grand finale. Now, quite sick of all these comic book shenanigans, Godzilla returns to present day and launches an all-out attack on New York City, and as any Marvel fan knows, that comes with consequences as the Avengers move to intercept him.
Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Iron Man and Thor among them, throw everything they have at the King of the Monsters, only to realize they are nothing to him. The best they can hope for is to get him angry enough to chase them out of the city before he smashes it to bits, which you’d think they’d have some experience with given their past with the Hulk. This being Godzilla and this being the 1970s, his rampage is not halted by force of arms or the newest invention of a resident super-genius, but the goodwill of one young boy who is able to convince him to leave the city (and continuity) in peace. As he does, we get a brief glimpse of Spider-Man, who claims to be disappointed he missed the whole event, though one has to wonder what exactly was so important that he couldn’t swing across the bridge from Queens to Manhattan to, you know, help.
Save for a brief cameo appearance in an issue of Avengers in the 2000s, that was the end of Goji’s entanglements with Marvel; he was absent from comics entirely until Dark Horse snagged him in ‘86, and he’s bounced around between publishers ever since. Still, even as his rampage continues across the multiverse and he rinses through the Justice League and the Power Rangers among others, there will always be a special place in my heart for the first time he showed up in someone else’s world, and made it to clear to them why they should never come to his.