User:The King of the Monsters/Sandbox/Marvel
|
The Marvel Godzilla (ゴジラ is an incarnation of Gojira)Godzilla that first appeared in Marvel Comics' Godzilla, King of the Monsters series.
It is the first incarnation of Godzilla to originate in American media.
Name
The name "Godzilla" is a transliteration of Gojira (ゴジラ), a combination of two Japanese words: gorira (ゴリラ), meaning gorilla, and kujira (鯨 or クジラ), meaning whale. At one planning stage, the concept of "Gojira" was described as "a cross between a gorilla and a whale." The two words "whale" and "gorilla" describe Godzilla's traditional characteristics. The word whale represents his aquatic lifestyle and his bulky size. The word gorilla represents his sheer strength and the strategic thinking he uses when fighting against other monsters.
After the close of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, this Godzilla is never referred to by name during any of his subsequent appearances, due to Marvel Comics no longer holding the rights to the character.
Design
This incarnation of Godzilla is entirely green unlike the character's film incarnations, and has purely red eyes. His dorsal plates start near the top of his head, similarly to the Hanna-Barbera Godzilla. His head is more dinosaur-like, with a long snout, sharp teeth, and eyes positioned higher on his head and facing slightly to the sides. His dorsal plates maintain the traditional maple-leaf shape, but are green in color rather than bone-white. The Marvel Godzilla has long, muscular arms with four claws. The Marvel Godzilla tends to keep his tail suspended in the air rather than drag it across the ground.
In the Iron Man comics, Godzilla's mutated form has webbed fingers and large fins staring at his armpits, and going down to his wrists. During his appearances in The Thing, the Godzilla Mutation has very short arms, and large scales on his brow and lip areas. In both comics the mutated Godzilla has a large fin in place of his dorsal fins, and two horns protruding from the top of his snout.
In his cameo in The Mighty Avengers, the Marvel Godzilla has reverted to his original form, with an entirely green body and rows of dorsal plates on his back. His eyes are no longer red in this issue, and his face resembles the Heisei Godzilla.
Origins
The Marvel Godzilla was awakened by nuclear weapon testing in the Pacific Ocean, and attacked Tokyo in 1956. Over the ensuing years, Godzilla became the lesser of two evils, fending off malevolent monsters that would attack Japan. By unknown means he was eventually trapped in an iceberg, and managed to break free once the iceberg reached Alaska in the 1970's.
History
Abilities
Fire Breath
Instead of firing the character's traditional atomic breath, the Marvel Godzilla is able to breath flames from his mouth. Godzilla can also shoot a non-lethal blast of hot air from his mouth instead of fire breath. Godzilla's fire breath is strong enough to overpower the Human Torch. The Marvel Godzilla is unable to use his fire breath when in his mutation form.
Durability
Like most other incarnations of Godzilla, the Marvel Godzilla displays an impressive level of durability. Godzilla is immune to all conventional weaponry, and appears to be mostly unharmed when hit full-force by Thor's hammer.
Trivia
- Artwork of this incarnation of Godzilla was used by Toho to create Godzilla's current copyright icon.
- The Marvel Godzilla's appearance reflects the American poster artwork for Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which depicted Godzilla as green and breathing orange flames. The stereotype of Godzilla being green and breathing fire would be carried over to many other depictions of the character in both American and Japanese media, such as Hanna-Barbera's Godzilla cartoon and the Godzilland merchandise line, as well as the television series and OVAs based on it. In the film Godzilla 2000: Millennium, Godzilla was actually made a dark green color while his atomic breath was depicted as orange rather than blue. These characteristics would also be present in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus.