Despite the mixed reception to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, there’s one thing all kaiju fans can agree upon: Godzilla is awesome and we want to see him destroy more stuff. And although it took them a while to get started, American comic book publishers have given us exactly that — pages upon pages of giant monster mayhem.

Manga about Godzilla have been made in Japan since the first movie’s 1954 release, but outside of a 4-page promotional comic for 1976’s Godzilla vs. Megalon, the King of the Monsters didn’t appear in American comics until a 1977 Marvel series. After a few false starts, Godzilla comics are now enjoying a renaissance period, offering some of the best kaiju stories in any medium.

Here’s how Godzilla began his unstoppable march to comic book domination.

King of the Mighty Marvel Monsters

Although we now think of Marvel as a multimedia entity, the publisher’s first forays beyond capes and cowls were more tentative. In the late 1970s, this included launching titles based on pop-culture trends, such as the blaxploitation riff Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, kung fu titles Iron Fist and Master of Kung Fu, and horror books like Tomb of Dracula. It also included producing comic book adaptations of properties from other media, including an early Star Wars series and Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Where Luke Skywalker and co. stayed in their galaxy far, far away, Godzilla was fully integrated into the Marvel Universe, with prominent SHIELD agents Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, and Jimmy Woo appearing in each story. The series’ twenty-four issues, all written by Doug Moench and mostly penciled by Herb Trimpe, follows SHIELD’s Godzilla Squad unit as it at first hunts, and then allies with, Godzilla.

As demonstrated in his work on Moon Knight and Batman, Moench knows his way around dark characters, but he keeps Godzilla fairy light. The giant lizard gains a teen sidekick in the form of Rob Takiguchi, who pilots the Tony Stark designed mech Red Ronin, and Trimpe’s Kirby-esque compositions keeps things fun and goofy.

Without permission to use other Toho kaiju, Moench and Trimpe have to make their own monsters, and yellow beasts with bear trap faces and copter blade tails lack the pop of King Ghidorah or Mechagodzilla. But when the book drops Godzilla into the Jim Shooter-era Marvel Universe, the stories match the energy of the decade’s superhero comics. The series’ final extended arc, which begins with Godzilla being shrunk to mouse size by Ant-Man’s Pym Particles and then having an adventure in New York, is the best example of this. We get to see Godzilla wrestling a sewer rat, disguising himself in a trench-coat and fedora when he grows to person-size, and then fighting Spider-man, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four in an Infinity War-sized crossover.  

No, they aren’t exactly scary, but Godzilla: King of the Monsters offers fun kaiju mayhem.

Rising on Dark Horse

After leaving Marvel, the rights for Godzilla lay dormant for several years, finally being picked up by Dark Horse Comics. A mainstay in a comics world dominated by the big two publishers, Dark Horse made a name for itself with popular indie characters like The Mask and Concrete, as well as established IPs, including Predator, Robocop, and Indiana Jones.

Although Dark Horse had great success with many of its licensed properties, it never found its footing with Godzilla. The monster’s tenure with the company begins well, with an English translation of the 1984 manga adaptation of Return of Godzilla (released in the US as Godzilla 1985), the 1992 Godzilla Color Special pencilled by Art Adams, and the joke one-shot Godzilla vs. Charles Barkley.

But the best of the Dark Horse run appeared in Godzilla: King of the Monsters Special #1 from 1987, a tense story about Japanese contractors uncovering an ancient tablet that summons the beast back from the depths. Steve Bissette and Ron Rondall’s pencils, combined with inks by Art Nichols and Tony Salmons, accentuate the mournful story co-written by Bissette and Randy Stradley. The issue begins with Noriko Yoshiwara, daughter of the scientist who discovered the tablet’s power, recalling the day her parents died during Godzilla’s attack. Instead of stripping tension from the story, this backwards structure creates instead a sense of impending doom as the monster marches closer.

Six years later, Stradley wrote a solid sequel to that story for two issues of the anthology series Dark Horse Comics. Decades after King of the Monsters Special, an adult Noriko returns as a scientist who has developed a poison to kill Godzilla. To get her revenge, she recruits members of G-Force, a monster hunting organization from the movies, promising to find Godzilla for research purposes.

The poison sends Godzilla on a rampage, blood pouring from his nose and eyes, which mutates victims and contaminates the water supply. This toxic twist nicely updates classic themes about humanity destroying itself through hubris, and penciller Bobby Rubio and inker Brian Garvey’s images of bleeding Godzilla make the monster scarier than he’s looked before.

Unfortunately, the Dark Horse run never again reaches those heights, even when legendary Justice League International artist Kevin Maguire takes over writing duties. Like Marvel, Dark Horse lacks the rights for other monsters, and none of the new creations have much character; but unlike Marvel, they do not have a bullpen of established oddities to interact with Godzilla, forcing them to fill that hole with G-Force. A pastiche of the pre-super-powered Fantastic Four — brilliant scientist, joined by his loyal wife, his muscle-bound best friend, as his younger brother-in-law — G-Force acts as an annoying distraction every time they’re on the page, and sadly, they never get squashed by Godzilla.

The promise of the license gone extinct, Dark Horse stopped publishing the character in 1998.

The Indomitable IDW Publications Run

After a decade’s absence from the comics page, Godzilla returned as he always does, stronger than ever. Although Marvel and Dark Horse had some good Godzilla stories, the character has been reaching its full comic book potential with IDW Publishing.

To be fair, IDW has two advantages over the others. First, they have a stable of artists and writers who are not only immensely talented, but are also Godzilla superfans, who know what makes the character work. Instead of just retelling the usual “monster stomps city” narratives that the movies have done better, these creators can tell stories unique to comics because they know and love the character.

Second, and just as importantly, IDW has the rights to the entire stable of Toho creations, which gives them a whole weird world to unleash. Gone are the knock-offs from the Marvel era, or the generic G-Force heroes of the Dark Horse years. Now, we get comic versions of well-known kaiju such as Mothra and Rodan, classics like giant robot Jet Jaguar and the smog monster Hedorah, and deep cuts like Sanda and Gaira, twin gargantua from mutated Frankenstein flesh.

With this fandom and freedom, the IDW comics offer refreshing takes on our favorite monster, as demonstrated by the various mini-series. In Godzilla: Gangsters and Goliaths (2011), writer John Layman tells a gritty crime story in which a disgraced cop kidnaps the Elias, twin fairies who communicate with Mothra, and pits the creatures against violent gangsters. The five issue Godzilla: Rage Across Time (2016) features one shot stories from various creative teams about Godzilla in different settings across history. If you ever wanted to see Godzilla battle Zeus or aid Hannibal’s march across the Alps — and really, why wouldn’t you? — this is the comic for you.

These synopses make the series sound like nothing more than goofy genre mashups, but there’s a surprising amount of pathos to the stories. In the five part Godzilla in Hell (2015), different creative teams, including perhaps the definitive Godzilla artists James Stokoe and Bob Eggleton, take turns describing the King of the Monsters’s Dantean journey through the underworld. For the first time in almost any medium, Godzilla gets to be the sole protagonist here, and even without the advantage of dialogue or interpretations from human characters, the creators manage to make the monster into a fully developed hero.

But for me, the best Godzilla comics — in fact, the best version of Godzilla in any form — are the first eight issues of the 2011 ongoing series Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters, written by The Goon’s Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh. With moody, dynamic art from Phil Hester, Bruce McCorkindale, and Victor Santos, Kingdom of Monsters plays like a kaiju version of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks — frightening, bleak, and darkly funny.

The first comic to feature everyone from Toho’s roster, Kingdom of Monsters is simply the story of Godzilla, Anguirus, Gigan, and others razing and rampaging across the globe. Like most kaiju stories, the comic does feature plenty of human characters, but they never get the focus. Instead, humans exist only as fodder to be ground up under the battling monsters.

The first pages of the first issue set the tone, in which two kids playing on a beach watch inquisitively as stalagmites jut through the sand. The next panel pulls back to reveal them standing in Godzilla’s maw, which promptly snaps shut.

In the next issue, the kids’ father plots his revenge, gathering explosives and tracking the giant lizard. When he finally finds his enemy, he leaps from a building onto the beast and pounds the detonator, shouting “You took my children from me!” The impact makes no more than an impotent puff. Godzilla stops, scratches his nose, and continues crushing the city. Characters more and less sympathetic die equally meaningless deaths, including broad spoofs on Lady Gaga and racist border state governors.

Yes, that’s unpleasant, but that’s exactly the type of horror Godzilla invokes. He’s a giant lizard with atomic breath who, for whatever reason, periodically stomps through cities. He takes no notice of most of us, killing us without empathy or logic.

Comic books have given us many versions of Godzilla over the years, but the version in Kingdom of Monsters is, for me, the King of the King of the Monsters.