Venom (Godzilla)

Godzilla, King of the Monsters is an American comic book series published by Marvel Comics. Running for 24 issues from 1977 to 1979, the series starred Godzilla, a Japanese monster film character licensed from Toho. The series is set in the publishers' shared Marvel Universe and was the first ongoing American comic book based on Godzilla.

While the initial cycle of Godzilla films had ended following the commercial failure of 1975's Terror of Mechagodzilla, dubbed versions remained popular attractions on American television, particularly with younger viewers. Marvel publisher Stan Lee was also a fan of the character, and arranged for a license of the character in 1976; the deal struck was for Godzilla himself only, with none of the other Toho monsters which had appeared in the film series included. Toho themselves would pay no further attention to the series.

Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe was assigned to draw the series, and would later reflect on the similarities between the two characters. He was sent movie stills by Toho for reference, and attempted to keep the film version's personality by drawing Godzilla as "a guy in a rubber suit". Lee tapped Doug Moench to write it after hearing the latter wanted to work in a lighter tone following his work on Master of Kung Fu.

Lee took him to a screening of a Godzilla film which left Moench largely unimpressed; however he felt that Marvel's Silver Age audience had grown up with the company and saw Godzilla as an opportunity for the publisher to reconnect with a younger audience, and was able to successfully convince Lee of his plan. To meet the challenge of adapting the scale of the character in films to the comic book medium, Moench planned to humanize Godzilla by adding a supporting cast. To this end, and inspired by the role of children in the films, Moench devised the character of Rob Takiguchi (named after a high school friend of the writer's) to befriend Godzilla. The robot Red Ronin was also created for the series at the suggestion of Goodwin, who was aware of the success of super robot in Japan. Goodwin also came up with the plan of setting the series in Marvel's shared universe, allowing potential new readers to experience the company's other titles and appeal to other Marvel readers.