The Beta-Beast!
GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS — Issue no. 12, April 1978
Book: Godzilla, King of the Monsters
Issue No.: 12
Published: April 4, 1978
Title: “The Beta-Beast!”
Cover Price: 35¢
Welcome to another episode of Chance Tries to Remember if He Had This Specific Comic Book as a Kid. The cover of this issue features Godzilla flying through outer space, along with the title “Star Sinister!” (Which is not the actual title of the story, but discrepancies between the cover-hyped story title and the actual interior story title are fairly common for Marvel books of this era.) That cover image seems so familiar to me. But I don’t remember anything about the story inside. So I might just remember seeing the cover image somewhere, as opposed to actually owning the book when I was seven years old.
Stroll down memory lane aside, this Godzilla book isn’t as great as the previous issue, but it’s still pretty good. Godzilla gets mixed up in a war between two alien worlds — Beta and Megan. It seems the aliens from Megan want earth’s resources to aid in their war effort, so they’re sending three giant monsters to conquer Godzilla’s home planet. The aliens from Beta have a secret base on earth’s moon, and they transport Godzilla there to prove his worth by fighting one of the Beta aliens’ monsters, the titular Beta-Beast. Bonus — the Beta-Beast is introduced via a sweet mid-issue splash page.
If the Beta guys need someone to fight the Megan aliens’ beasts, it seems kind of silly to let Godzilla beat up on their own Beta-Beast. But that’s what Godzilla does. So he’s crowned Beta’s monster champion, and just in time, as the first of the Mega-Monsters (so called because they’re from Megan), Triax, arrives on earth. The Beta aliens teleport Godzilla back to earth to face Triax. And go figure, Godzilla’s friend, the kid-piloted giant robot Red Ronin, is there, too. That’s where the story ends, hinting we’ll get a monster/monster/robot brawl next issue. Sounds good to me.
Next time — Daredevil dukes it out with a dangerous duo!