Essential Godzilla
Marvel
Filmdom's most famous monster is no stranger to comics, but of his many comic-book adventures, perhaps none was stranger than the one collected in the pages of this book. For two years in the late-1970s, Marvel Comics secured the rights to Toho's Godzilla, and they gave him his own comic book, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which ran for 24 issues.
The short-lived series began with the Japanese monster busting out of an iceberg off the coast of Alaska, and then stomping through much of the Western U.S. before ultimately coming to New York City. Big G wasn't simply starring in a book published by Marvel, however; his adventures were actually occurring in the shared setting of Marvel's whole line of books, the so-called Marvel Universe.
So writer Dough Moench and artist Herb Trimpe, whose Godzilla was more dinosaur-like and animalistic than the more familiar rubber-suit version of the movies, didn't simply pit him against giant bigfoots and space monsters. Instead, agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. relentlessly pursued Godzilla, and the movie monster butted heads with familiar Marvel faces like Devil Dinosaur, The Champions, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers. He even had a shouting match with The Daily Bugle's J. Jonah Jameson, and, in the most inventive story arc, was reduced to only a few inches high by Ant-Man's gas, allowing him to slug it out with a New York City sewer rat.
The many superhero-free stories within all feel like mini-Godzilla movies, particularly with Moench's melodramatic dialogue about the folly of military science and the disaster of misunderstanding, but it's the more Marvel-ous tales that make this a must-have for pop-culture connoisseurs—where else can you find the answer to the question of who's stronger, Godzilla or the Mighty Thor?
Gray Horses
Oni Press
Hope Larson follows up last year's sadly beautiful graphic novel Salamander Dream with another great-looking three-color story that's equal parts optimism and melancholy. Our protagonist is Noemie, a French exchange student who has left her home to attend school in Onion City, Michigan.
She befriends a Mexican-born baker's daughter, finds herself the prey of a benevolent photographer stalker (but it's okay, because he's cuter than he is creepy) and has strange continuing dreams about a horse that speaks her native language.
Gray Horses lacks the tight focus and pastoral appeal of Salamander Dream, but there's a certain charm in Larson's many little artsy-fartsy touches and her evocative storytelling that you feel you more than understand. Her super-simplified art, peopled with round, soft figures, is always a pleasure to look at, and the black, white and orange interiors feel more like a storybook than a small-press graphic novel. Still, why the orange tones on the inside and purple on the outside, if the word "gray" is right there in the title?
Red Sonja/Claw No. 1
WildStorm/DC and Dynamite Entertainment
The comics industry is experiencing something of a barbarian boom, thanks mostly to Dark Horse Comics' beloved Conan series, which has paired harder-edged, more Robert E. Howard-esque tales of the bare-chested hero with painterly art that evokes lurid paperback covers. Imitators have been popping up, with none seeming so successful as Dynamite Entertainment's Red Sonja, who has her own monthly series and several spin-offs, of which this crossover may be the weirdest.
A joint production between the She-Devil with a Sword's home publisher, Dynamite, and DC Comics, this book finds Sonja riding alongside Claw the Unconquered, a recently disinterred obscure sword-and-sorcery character who had his own DC comic back in the mid-'70s. He was basically a Conan clone but with a twist—his right hand was actually the purple claw of a demon that emanated evil and tried to seduce him into walking a darker path (I had a similar problem with my right hand in my teens).
Artist Andy Smith includes enough scantily clad women and head- and limb-lopping violence to satisfy the swelling audience for barbarian comics, but when publishers start digging up characters like Claw the Unconquered, you know the inevitable bust must be drawing near.