GODZILLA #1 FACSIMILE EDITION MARVEL COMICS
One of greatest comic experiments of the 1970’s! When a group of creative geniuses from Marvel negotiated the rights to their epic kaiju, Godzilla! As a teen, seeing this show up at my drugstore comic rack made me go nuts! How could this go wrong? Of course, we knew that the first issue would start off slow so that the neanderthals who didn’t know who Godzilla could get caught up with the rest of us. And since Godzilla was coming to America, what better group of armed forces to fight him than S.H.I.E.L.D.! And after rampaging through Alaska and taking out Dum-Dum Dugan and his squad, he’s starting making his way toward Seattle! Unfortunately, Marvel had not read the small print. Yes, they could use Godzilla but none of the other Toho kaiju that made up the Godzilla film universe. This quickly threw a monkey wrench into writer Doug Moench abilities. And while classic artists Herb Trimpe and Jim Mooney did a respectable job of Godzilla, the fact that we were not going to see Rodan, Mothra, etc. was kind of a bummer. The series would struggle along for a total of 24 issues with the King of the Monsters fighting the Avengers, the Fantastic 4, a giant Bigfoot/Yeti creature named Yetrigar who looked he had stepped out of an issue of Marvel’s Creatures On the Loose, the giant samerai robot Red Ronin, and even getting shrunk down to battle a New York rat. The title would be given a quiet death in 1979. But this #1 issue brought great joy to us readers back in the day. 8 out of 10 Grahams.
ABSOLUTE POWER GROUND ZERO #1 DC COMICS
Hey, big surprize, DC’s newest ‘big event’ has arrived. And like every other ‘big event’ we’ll have a checklist so you too can get every crossover issue for the full story. BAH! Especially since this entire year has already been setting us up for this tale. Batman’s Failsafe storyline – was all to set up his appearance here. Superman’s House of Brainiac storyline – all for this ‘big event’. But worst of all, is this current version of Amanda Waller. When she was first introduced inthe Legends mini-series and her subsequent appearances in the 1980’s Suicide Squad comic, I really liked her. She was always a hard@ss and that was part of her charm. Now that’s she’s lost weight and become a megalomaniac, she’s just unlikeable in the extreme. How someone hasn’t paid somebody like Deadshot to wack her, I’ll never know. So now she’s got some upgraded Amazo androids and is ready to steal all the heroes’s powers. Let me tell you how this ends … after multiple crossover issues and mini-series that will span about 4 monthes, Waller will fail, Brainiac will escape back into space, Failsafe will be disabled again. The heroes will gain some insight from losing their powers, one or two secondary characters will get killed or maimed. Vengeance will be taken and what’s left over will not sell well and we’ll get another DC Reboot! Sigh! Remember you heard it hear first. 2 out 10 Grahams.
ZATANNA BRING DOWN THE HOUSE #1 DC COMICS
A good start gets brought to it’s knees with one of the most basic cliches in the world of Zatanna. Granted this is a Black Label book, so it falls outside normal continuity but still. Javier Rodriguez draws a pretty good classic fishnets Zatanna and Mariko Tamaki starts off strong. Young Zatanna being teased by classmates at a magic show. Switch to the present where Zatanna is showcasing one of those free shows in Vegas. But she’s content where she is. We’ve got a mysterious sightless(?) woman stalking her during her shows. The final show being interrupted by a weird firebreathing creature. I’m all good with this. In fact, I’m going out on limb here to say that the sightless woman might be a version of Cassandra Craft, who used to pal around with the Phantom Stranger. But then our final panel utters the fatal line (no pun intended) ‘… Zatanna you killed him.” Since her earliest appearances, Zatanna’s relationship with her father has been center stage. And after several false starts, Zatanna came to terms with her father’s death. It came as a letdown to be revisiting this trauma after all these years of therapy. We’ll have to see where this Black Label version takes us. 6 out of 10 Grahams.
GODZILLA HERE THERE BE DRAGONS II SONS OF GIANTS #1 IDW COMICS
An unnecessarily long title for an unnecessary follow up title. Now, don’t get me wrong, Frank Tieri’s historical follow up is a very interesting story. And Inaki Miranda flips back and forth in art styles doing them all well. Set in the times of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, this is an interesting little conspiracy theory thriller with secret societies and mysterious men hidden in the shadows. And this is the proof that this is an unneccesary Godzilla title from IDW. If we remove Godzilla from the story, I would still find the story interesting. Godzilla is not needed for this story to captivate readers. And if the cover art preview of the next issue is correct, the Smog Monster is going to show up? And while I’m sure there was pollution back then, I don’t think that there was that much. I might be wrong. 2 out of 10 Grahams.
