biggmonsterman666:

Day 43 – September 1996 – Issue 16:  This final issue includes, like all previous issues, a letter section.  In particular they comment that they hope Godzilla will return to print one day.  It would, but not at Dark Horse.

The story starts with Godzilla resting at the bottom of the ocean.  By some mean which cannot be explained since this is all from G’s point of view, he is transported back to the Cretaceous.  This story could have been included in the time-travel story arc, but also seems to fall into the Dark Horse series Age of Dinosaurs. Another enormous space dragon-creature has arrived to snack on the remaining dinosaurs of this period.  It spies Godzilla and thinks he would make a much bigger dinner (much like Bagorah), but the Big G is a formidable opponent and gets the upper hand.  But the creature tries to leave just as the dooms-day asteroid strikes, killing it and the other land animals as Godzilla sinks back into the ocean, only to awaken in the present time with a piece of dragon in his claw.  The space dragon is a pretty cool design, and the storyline is in part similar to the third Rebirth of Mothra movie in 1998 with King Ghidorah. A great fast-paced story with great art, both courtesy of Bob Eggleton who also supplied the cover art.

This ended the reign of Godzilla in comic form for North America (as far as I know) for the 20^th Century.  I really enjoyed re-reading these from an older perspective.  The Marvel stories are a bit dated, but still enjoyable and worth keeping for now.  The Dark Horse series is pretty well constructed and I like that it paid homage to the Showa and Heisei series.

On a side note, I found out online that Fox Kids featured a couple of short Zilla-related comic stories (based on the animated series) in their magazine around 1999.  If you’re interested you can find information here:  https://wikizilla.org/wiki/FOX_Kids_Magazine_Issue_37

IDW would take up publishing Godzilla comics/graphic novels starting March 2011.  It seemed to me a very successful run with a license that included all TOHO Kaiju.  Since it’s such a recent release, I won’t be posting any thoughts on it.  YET.  Right now I’m just going to sit back and enjoy the new GODZILLA KING OF THE MONSTERS.