Blame Godzilla. If not for Godzilla, I might never have started reading comic books. Sure, I had already read some Star Wars comic books, and possibly one or two DC Comics treasury editions, but I didn't really get into comics until the late 1970s, and it was all Godzilla's fault.
By the late '70s, I had been exposed to a steady diet of Godzilla movies on Saturday-afternoon television, so I was the target audience for Marvel Comics' licensed Godzilla: King of the Monsters series.
Godzilla was an oddity. While Marvel's other licensed titles were set in worlds all their own, separate from the Marvel Universe, Godzilla was firmly grounded in the MU. Godzilla tangled with SHIELD, the Fantastic Four, the Champions, and the Avengers.
For a newcomer to Marvel's roster of superheroes (apart from Spider-Man and the Hulk, of course), Godzilla was a crash course. Thanks to Godzilla, I quickly became a fan of the Avengers, and Iron Man in particular. From there, things spiraled out of control.
But now you know whom to blame.
The first four issues of Marvel's Transformers comic book were some of my earliest, and they also took place in the Marvel Universe. Well, for one issue, anyway (#3). I remember being mystified by Spider-Man's black costume (I was only familiar with the old red and blue one, and I couldn't figure out how the black costume could materialize out of "nowhere"). I picked up the comics bug and learned all about Spidey's alien costume and a thousand other Marvel factoids soon enough.
ReplyDeleteOne villain from the Godzilla comic book later popped up in an issue of Avengers West Coast in the ealy 90's. His past with the giant lizard was hinted at, but the name Godzilla wasn't used (for legal reasons? Can Toho Studios sue over a name drop?)
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James
Name drops are apparently taboo, because they avoid them both in the case of the big G and with Rom, who had a long 75 issue run set well in the Marvel U.
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