What this haul lacks in quantity is made up for in quality.

Groo 25th Anniversary special: I never had a chance to read much Groo since most of my early comics came from the local Lawson’s convenience stores. But there has never been a Groo story that failed to make me laugh and this special continues that tradition. It kicks off with two pages of Sergio and Mark intro magic which lead into the main story called “the PLAGUE.” Groo and Rufferto meet up with the Sage in a village that seems to be in the grips of a cold. Once the Sage figures out what’s causing all of the sneezing, the crew embarks on a quest where they (and the home audience) find out that the village the disease isn’t the only problem in the village. In fact, it may be my favorite story of the year, period. Seriously. It even has monkeys in it, so that’s extra points right there. Mark Evanier takes some time to debunk some ‘urban legends’ about Groo and the staff. We get a tale from Groo’s youth and the special is capped off with the Groo Alphabet. It’s $5.99 and worth every penny of it as it’s good for multiple reads.

Gumby #3… cannot be explained. It starts where issue #2 ended with Gumby’s parents still thinking that their son is a sack of potatoes due to the hypnotic spell of the evil Carnies from who Gumby defeated with ghostly assistance from the Man in Black. From that point it just gets weird. How weird? For one, you get the Bumble Brats, a gang of naughty little kids in matching bee suits. What they do in the first few pages of the comics get them instant “You wrong!” status, but they’re not as bad as, say, Block-heads. With his parents still in zoned-out mode, Gumby has to be the man of the house. Once he answers a call from a telemarketer who claims that he’s won a prize, the whole situation rolls into something a story that I’d ruin for you if I recapped it. The magic of this book is how it makes your brain tingle due to it’s weirdness. Just expect vehicular mayhem, zodiac creature spirits, time share salesmen with appropriate names and the true, unbridled power of Mr. Oppenheimer. And for fans of current, typical comics, there’s even a dead girlfriend in the story. There’s something in this book for everybody!

Thanks to Team Groo (Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, Tom Luth and Stan Sakai) and Team Gumby (Bob Burden, Rick Geary and Steve Oliff) for bringing the laughs after a tough week.

Essential Godzilla - I had a few of the original comics when I was a kid and just had to get the Essential trade with the whole series. Written by Doug Moench and mostly drawn by Herb Trimpe (also the original artist on my favorite Marvel tie-in comic ever, G.I.JOE), it details what something that seems impossible: what would happen if Godzilla existed in the Marvel Universe. Yes, back in the day, many of Marvel’s tie-in books took place in the canonical Marvel Universe .

On the first page of the first issue, breaks out of an iceberg and wrecks up the joint! My friends, that’s how you start off a comic. S.H.I.E.L.D. creates their own anti-Godzilla force led by Dum Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones and Jimmy Woo. They’re assisted by three characters with opinions that correspond to different eras of Godzilla flicks. Dr. Yurkio Takiguchi knows Godzilla as the original destroyer, his 20’s-ish female assistant Tamara Hashioka sees him as the later misguided battler of other monsters while the doctor’s grandson Robert is Godzilla’s number one fan and is much like little Ichiro in Godzilla’s Revenge. Everyone will remind you of a character from an actual Godzilla movie with action hero Woo wooing (I’m sorry!) the beautiful scientist lady and Gabe getting Dugan to admit his grudging respect for the beast. Then there’s the Big G himself who seems to act like a cross between sly, savage monster-battler and the champion of children. So this book is less like a Marvel book that happens to have Godzilla, but a Marvel adaptation of a Godzilla movie with Marvel Characters in it. And I can dig that.

Godzilla’s two year world tour has him trampling a path through S.H.I.E.L.D., the Army, the police, many other giant monsters, Yetrigar (a Kong-sized Yeti), Dr. Demonicus, the original Champions, Devil Dinosaur (who later becomes an ally), the Fantastic Four and the Avengers. He gets shrunken down to the size of a rat (and then battles a rat), travels through time, is pulled into outer space and even gets entangled in cattle rustling story. Yes, I’m serious.The coolest development of the book is the revelation that the anti-Godzilla forces have a secret weapon in the form of a samurai-like Super Robot named Red Ronin. What really impresses me is that Red Ronin was made before Marvel got the license for Shogun Warriors which was also written by Moench and drawn by Trimpe. Either way, you have to give Moench props for even coming up with that. Also, much respect to artists Herb Trimpe Tom Sutton & Ernie Chan. Trimpe had a knack for always reminding you of the insanely large scale these monsters were in. Plus, having to tackle so many random settings and themes in such a rapid-fire rate couldn’t have been easy. issue #23 is one of the earliest comics I remember having (though that comic is long gone now) and is part of the reason that I love thinking about crazy crossovers and shared universe concepts. Godzilla was a crazy comic and I’m all the crazier for it.

It’s not a groundbreaking comic that changes everything forever or a deep examination of how it feels to be loved and feared by a world that will never fully understand you. It’s about Godzilla stomping through the 70’s era Marvel Universe, for @#$%’s sake. If that sounds like your kind of happening, then get the Essential Godzilla from your Local Comic Shop (even if you have to order it through them) or hunt down the individual issues.

BTW: Herb Trimpe has a website and there’s a great fan site dedicated to Doug Moench here.