BHOC: GODZILLA #20

As I’ve spoken about in the past, as a kid I didn’t really have much interest in monster movies. They were more the fascination of my younger brother Ken, and so they would wind up on television whenever the 4:30 Movie would run their yearly week-long marathon, or they’d show up on some other channel. Consequently, Marvel’s ongoing GODZILLA title was of no real interest to be, despite the fact that its events were playing out within the communal Marvel Universe. I just wasn’t interested. That is, until this issue, when my beloved Fantastic Four were brought in to guest-star, and I couldn’t drop my 35 cents fast enough. It was like getting an extra surprise bonus issue of my favorite book, even if the reading experience was a bit mixed.

Unbeknownst to me before I started reading this issue, but in a prior episode, Hank Pym’s shrinking gas had been used to reduce Godzilla to the size of a small rodent. Over the issues since then, the gas was gradually wearing off, and so he was getting progressively larger. But by this issue, he was still only perhaps a dozen feet tall, and wandering through the streets of Manhattan. Writer Doug Moench wound up working on a couple of licensed tie-in series, and he always approached the job with a straight face, never treating the material as any less worthy than the straight-ahead super hero books that were Marvel’s bread and butter.

Similarly, artist Herb Trimpe was also used on a number of these licensed series as the 1970s wound into the early 1980s. Herb was a longtime Marvel mainstay, but his art had fallen a bit out of step with the times, and so editors sought assignments for him where he could ply his trade and earn a living without jeopardizing any of the “important” assignments. Trimpe’s storytelling was always on point, and his style during this time owed a lot to that of Jack Kirby, whose approach he often was asked to emulate. So Trimpe kept GODZILLA looking like a regulation Marvel title. He was especially helpful when Marvel characters turned up in the narrative, such as the FF this issue.

Anyway, back on the streets of Manhattan, Godzilla suddenly shoots up to a twenty-foot height as Pym’s reducing formula continues to break down, making him far more visible and far more of a menace than before. Fortunately, the SHIELD team tasked with bringing down the big lizard, led by Dum Dum Dugan and including longtime agent Gabe Jones, is just a short hop behind him. They hatch a plan to lure Godzilla into a high-ceilinged museum where they may be able to contain and study him. Unfortunately, the news reports of the creature’s rampage on the streets reach the Fantastic Four in their Baxter Building headquarters, and they head out with the intention of dealing with the situation as well.

The plan to lure Godzilla into the Museum building works, with the SHIELD operatives using flares to draw the colossal lizard in that direction. But the plan calls for calm, and the situation becomes anything but once the Fantastic Four arrive. Spoiling for a fight, the Thing gets in Dum Dum’s face before Reed can cool things off and suggest that they all work together. But while their argument was going on, everybody lost sight of Godzilla (!!!) who has moved deeper into the museum. So now it’s a game of cat-and-mouse as the assembled crew attempt to locate Godzilla before they get smoked by the creature.

This is a Marvel comic, of course, so there definitely has to be a fight sequence, and one breaks out once Godzilla is located. The Thunder Lizard’s tail sideswipes the Thing, and that’s all it takes to set Ben Grimm off on a mission to pulverize the big G. The FF mix it up with Godzilla, with the museum’s curator Hawkins growing increasingly agitated as several of his prize exhibits become collateral damage in the fray. Seriously, what did he think was going to happen when he opened the front doors to Godzilla?

Despite the fact that they were considered the world’s greatest fighting team at this point in their careers, the Fantastic Four all get stymied and eluded by Godzilla, a poor showing from them. That’s what happens when somebody else’s logo is on the front cover. But we’re heading for the wrap-up now, and so the Thing winds up knocking Godzilla off of a transom and into a tank full of live sharks that the museum is exhibiting for some reason. And that’s where this issue is To Be Continued! I don’t know that any reasonable person could feel as though Godzilla was in any danger from those sharks despite his lessened size, but the book needed some manner of cliffhanger and this was the best that Doug and Herb had. So it wasn’t a great comic book, but the fact that the FF would still be around the following month meant that I would as well.