Issue(s): Godzilla #18, Godzilla #19, Godzilla #20, Godzilla #21, Godzilla #22, Godzilla #23, Godzilla #24
Cover Date: Jan-Jul 79
Title: "Fugitive in Manhattan!" / "With Dugan on the docks!" / "A night at the museum" / "The doom trip!" / "The devil and the dinosaur!" / "The king once more" / "And lo, a child shall lead them"
Credits:
Doug Moench - Writer
Herb Trimpe - Penciler
Dan Green / Jack Abel - Inker
Mary Jo Duffy - Editor

Review/plot:
Godzilla has been shrunk to the size of a bird...

...and he's being brought to a habitat established in Gladstone Hawkins's museum in New York. When they arrive in New York, however, Rob Takiguchi helps Godzilla escape (claiming he went into a trance and doesn't remember doing it).

Mini-Godzilla wanders the streets of New York (sooooo cute!)...

...and eventually gets into a fight with a sewer rat.

However, the shrinking gas created by Henry Pym begins to wear off, and so he's human-sized by the time Rob catches up with him.

Rob sets Godzilla up in the standard Marvel disguise and brings him back to SHIELD...

...but when Godzilla and the SHIELD agents see each other, both sides get agitated and a fight breaks out.

Godzilla escapes again, now at 7 feet tall and soon growing up to 25 feet. It's at this point that the Fantastic Four get involved.

Their involvement isn't really welcomed by SHIELD, who already have a plan to lure Godzilla to the museum using lights. But they do let the FF try to corral Godzilla into his habitat.

The fight with the FF leads to a "This week only" exhibit of live sharks in the museum, and Godzilla gets knocked into the shark tank (there are some crazy flailing arms going on in that second panel below).

After that is settled down, Reed Richards offers SHIELD the solution of sending Godzilla, who is still shrunk down to about 25 feet at this point, back in time using Dr. Doom's time machine. They agree.

(I guess Reed fixed the problem with the time machine that prevented it from transporting radioactive materials, as shown in Fantastic Four #19.)

In the past, Godzilla teams up with Devil Dinosaur and Moonboy to fight a horde of cavemen and dinosaurs. If only they could have gotten Kirby to draw it.

(Click on that last one to embiggen.)

Meanwhile, it turns out that Doom's time machine was somehow affected by Godzilla's radiation (so maybe he didn't completely fix the problem). Reed says that it'll either explode or bring Godzilla back into the present. So the FF do what any responsible people would do, and they drop the time machine in the middle of Times Square.

Godzilla reappears just as SHIELD arrives.

A mega-battle with the Fantastic Four and the Avengers ensues.

(The last one is embiggen-able again. It's Godzilla, you know. Epic scale.)

Finally, Godzilla is convinced by Robert Takiguchi to just stop fighting and go away, "as far away as you possibly can". Godzilla heads into the ocean.

Speaking as a big fan of the 60s and 70s Toho Godzilla films, this series never really lived up to its potential. It's obvious that the shrinking idea was meant as a way for Godzilla to interact more with the rest of the Marvel universe and even the regular cast of the book, but it didn't quite pan out. It was cool to see Godzilla shrunk down to the point where he could fight with other Marvel characters (and rats and sharks), but the battles with the super-hero teams weren't quite as epic as they should have been. So the story kind of fails both as a Godzilla story and as a Marvel superhero story. But it's still an interesting footnote in Marvel history, and the series does have a bit of a minor legacy, with many characters from the series (including Godzilla himself, in mutated form) appearing in later books.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: "Obviously this takes place before the [Avengers] roster shake up in Avengers #181." Also takes place after the FF are back together; the MCP places it between FF #203-204.

References:

• Moonboy compares Godzilla's fire breath to the flames of the Sky Demons, from Devil Dinosaur #3 and Devil Dinosaur #5.
  
• Moonboy encounters "Hag", a character from Devil Dinosaur #9.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

The series was cancelled not due to poor sales, but because Toho dramatically increased its licensing fee.

There was a cover by Steve Ditko intended for the Godzilla story later altered for Marvel Spotlight. The cover was first(and only?) published in the Comics Journal, and Godzilla looked a bit...well...puny.

Honestly I think Dugan should have gotten a Godzilla lighter after this whole thing was over with. That opening panel with him lighting his cigar was neat.

I guess the radiation problem could also explain why the time machine sent him to a parallel world instead of the actual past?

The ending to issue #23 was pretty novel in that Wasp and Yellowjacket were able to topple Godzilla by fluttering their wings in his inner ear canal. Pretty creative use of those characters.