Superman Through the Ages! Forum

It's hard to think of enemies that Superman hasn't fought at one time or another.

What about Multi-Man, enemy of the Challengers of the Unknown? It would be a natural to introduce this guy into Superman's existence: just state that he is curious about the properties of Red Kryptonite, and that perhaps it may be something that can allow him to change form predictably, or control his transformations, or perhaps create a new robotic Multi-Woman.

In fact, many of the Challenger Enemies may be interesting to battle Superman. Volcano Man and Kra aren't credible threats, but it would be interesting to see someone like, say, that one guy whose thoughts can become reality. The most interesting thing about a battle like that is that at first, it wouldn't be obvious that he is responsible.

A Doom Patrol enemy that it would be interesting to see battle the Man of Steel would be the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (possibly the most powerful of the Doom Patrol's foes), with his ability to become any animal, plant or object. He can become Kryptonite, and perhaps some quick-growing Kryptonite plants. Superman might have room in his supplies for the Anti-Decay Ray.

Is it possible that the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is somehow related to Jimmy Olsen? Jimmy Olsen is of Swedish descent (he even has a Swedish castle). There may be a connection to Sven Larsen. Are they related? Blood enemies from centuries past? What?

Then you have a being like the Construct. He wouldn't be the first JLA enemy to "jump" to Superman alone: Amazo already blazed that particular trail. Because of the Construct's ability to transfer bodies and his non-corporeality, for Superman, battling the Construct may be a question of brains and good old American pluck; he's not someone that Big Blue can just circle around. (In the aftermath of Busiek's JLA, the Construct may be something wildly different than how Englehart presented him back in 1977, and it might be interesting to see the Construct used as a non-villain.)

Doctor Light is another JLA foe that Superman alone can conceivably battle by himself. Most of Superman's battles with Light are based on a kind of cat-and-mouse game, one that Light triumphs in as a result of ingenuity and overly clever deathtraps.

Lots of the Green Lantern villains (with the exception of yellow or gun-toting guys like Goldface or Sonar) would be plausible challenges to Superman, and in fact, it's strange in many ways that Superman and Sinestro have yet to meet apart from big villain crossovers. Sinestro is a big, unsubtle cosmic enemy; he appears in a space sector with a giant battleship and hundreds of thousands of thunderers at his back; he's the kind of interstellar, "brute force" villain that a smarter Superman can triumph over as a metaphor of brains over brawn.

Then you have Krona, who seeks forbidden knowledge, and is a great outer space enemy. He's a natural for a space opera guy like Supes to come into conflict with at some point or another.

Suoerman Vs. Galactus - 'nuff said.

When someone invokes Galactus' Ultimate Nullifier, Pre-Crisis Superman emerges.  :)


Superman vs. Ming the Merciless would be fun.

I was going to make the same suggestion, but then I wasn't sure whether or not this had already been done in a JLA/Avengers crossover.  And wasn't there a Silver Surfer/Superman cross-over a while back?  Surely Galactus must have been in it.

I'd also like to see Superman vs. Doctor Doom, who is pretty similar to Lex Luthor but ultimately far more competent.

Dan Jurgens wrote a sloppy Superman/Fantastic 4 crossover some years back in which Kal became Galactus' new herald.

I'd like to see some old enemies from Superman comics make it into Superman comics. Busiek has been doing this lately, but there is a very interesting-yet-ignored back catalog of villains in Superman's rogues gallery.

While not exactly from another comicbook, I wouldn't mind seeing Superman go up against any version of the space monster Baltan from the various Ultraman series. It'd be cool to either see the Bronze Age Superman team up with the original Ultraman or maybe the modern version with Himeya Jun/Ultraman Nexus.  ;D

Yes, there was a Silver Surfer/Superman Crossover but I never read it.

Superman Vs Thanos?

I don't know. I can't think of anyone  :-\

I'd get a severe kick out of a Superman vs. Godzilla book.

Superman tearing through the Supreme Power universe (smacking down Hyperion type stuff) would also be fun.

Speaking of Supreme, I wouldn't mind to see a battle there on that one.

My personal favorite classics are the Cap'n Marvel battles.

I really liked Superman vs. Dr. Doom back in the 2nd Spiderman team up - that was very cool, however, since the 1970 and revitalized late 90's Kirby-verse integration into the Superman mythos, practically any Kirby creation would be a welcome storyline in a Superman team up or book.  They seem to work well together for some reason.

However, Superman team ups with pulp and early 30's guys (Buck Rogers, Shadow, Phantom, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, et al.) would also be a very welcome series.

Ah, so much potential, so little time and creativity... and soooo much legal-ese.

The real figt will be between Superman and Loki,it's gonna be interesting because in DC universe the real ancient gods are much less powerful than the New Gods...

YES! That would be a blast! Personally, I would use the Heisei-era Goji so you could have G-Force present and Superman could mainly interact with Miki. But I'm partial to Miki because the Heisei era is the only time they ever had a reoccuring human character in a Godzilla film series.

You're talking about the cute psychic girl that started raising Junior?  Yeah, that'd be neat.  I'd be really partial to the Millenium GMK Goji myself.  The whole "ghosts of Hiroshima" Goji thing would be a very grand scene scape for our MOS, and the type of moral dillema (won't kill him, he's really the unrested spirits of WW2, but need to save Japan) thing that Supes really shines in.

Funny, But I don't think of Godzilla as a villain ;)

Marvel released Essential Godzilla:

Book Description
"You have your fear, which might become reality. And you have Godzilla, which IS reality." -From Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956) And what a reality it was! For two years, Japan's greatest export was one of Marvel's biggest stars, and the King of the Monsters upheld his title against some of the best and worst the House of Ideas had to offer - including the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Nick Fury and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.! Godzilla shrinks, goes West, travels through time and hosts one of Spider-Man's most gratuitous guest-shots ever! Plus: aliens, mutants, mad Scientists and almost a dozen MORE giant monsters! It's so big, you can't miss it! Collects Godzilla #1-24.

Lemme see... giant radioactive lizard tromping though my neighborhood?!?

Just on the principle of my real estate values and my house payment I'd be cheering Superman on to fry 'zilla in a heart-beat. :P

Well like Superman, Godzilla has been around for quite a long time and has been handled by different creators. Sometimes a hero, sometimes a wacky monster, sometimes a omnious villan, sometimes he is just himself.

I think Godzilla is best when he is handled like a force of nature. Not really good or evil, he simply IS and you gotta deal with it. So wether he's a villan or a hero really kinda depends on the needs of the story. His existance is a reminder of "the folly of man" (as Blue Oyster Cult put it) yet he does exist and the Earth is home as well so any threat against it is also a threat against him. As I seem to remember a line from one of the more recent put it and I liked it, when a kid asked why Godzilla attacks an old man simply says "..because man burned the Earth. (refering to nuclear experiments) Godzilla remembers, and he will never forget."


Yep that's her. She is cute indeed. I couldn't really get behind the whole ghosts of Hiroshima thing in GMK. It kinda seemed like overkill to me, I don't know.

The whole Millenium Goji thing took some getting used to.  My point wasn't so much the living embodiment of Hiroshima as much as that being one of the best Goji costume mockups I've seen since Goji #1.  This one moved his neck the most and the white eye thing was really cool.  The story would basically be Superman needing to stop Goji because he's up to world menace status.  The ghosts thing would be a little pathos in the background - but add to the epic aspects of it.

Belive it or not, I am actually just as big of a Godzilla fan as I am a Superman fan!!!

Shockingly I haven't seen Godzilla: Final Wars due to lack of funds (not so shocking).

Whatever happens get Art Adams to draw it! I'll but it!

(http://images.darkhorse.com/covers/300/d/dhcgdz.jpg)

Until then you can read these comics:

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Flame_Dragon
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Snagriff

There's a little bit of Godzilla in all of us.

No one knows this better than Godzooky!

Just read "The Gross: the Summer that Ate Hollywood" by Peter Bart.  It deals in part with the series of bad decisions that resulted in the production, promotion, critical backlash and relative flop of the U.S. Godzilla movie in 1998.  Riveting stuff for those interested in the new Hollywood and the economics of the blockbuster economy.  Not so riveting for those of us who love Godzilla.

That Godzilla wasn't really Godzilla.

What were they thinking?

Heh. There's a scene in Final Wars I think you'll like.  ;)

That's my favorite part of Final Wars. Hail to the king! 

Also in GMK (2001), there's a funny little discussion about 1998's Zilla not being the real Gojira, classic.

Final Wars - what poetic justice in less than 1 minute time.  That was funny.

Apparently, American Godzilla has earned the name "Zilla", as in his official Toho name.  However, I sincerely wouldn't mind seeing Superman smash Zilla into the ground.


As to that, I have somewhere, a little Art Adams sketch of Supe's facing the big G! - with a little caption - who would win?  It was either an issue of G-Fan I have or an issue of Wizard when Dark Horse started their series.

Wow - I actually didn't realize we had so many G-fans.  Maybe we should start a site called Godzilla Thru The Ages.  I'll write it and host it.

One of the oddities in Marvel comics is that, technically, Godzilla IS "canon."

The most obvious example was Godzilla's appearance during the CHAMPIONS series by Bill Mantlo, but there were other references. When the license was lost, if they wanted to use Godzilla, they found neat little ways around it: there was an issue of iRON MAN featuring Tony Stark battling what was quite obviously Godzilla, but the kicker is, they never give his name: Iron Man calls him "my old enemy." SHIELD headquarters on many occasions has had a graphic of Godzilla in the background.

Marvel still has the rights to the non-Toho characters created for the miniseries, sort of like how the House of Ideas doesn't have the rights to Conan, but still has the rights to the villain created for his series, Kulan Gath. There was an issue of AVENGERS WEST COAST by Englehart that featured a giant caveman monster that the Big G wrassled during his comics series.

Godzilla, I'd argue, is one of those side properties that very much belongs in the Marvel UnIverse. Don MacGregor's KILLRAVEN is a confused fit at best, Kirby's ETERNALS doesn't belong in a cosmos where the ACTUAL Olympian and Asgardian deities reside, and it's laughable to imagine US-1 happening anywhere at all, much less the MU. But Godzilla is a big, scary superhero menace, right up there with guys like Giganto and Fing Fang Foom.

I found FINAL WARS to be considerably worse than the American Zilla, as strange as it sounds, and the weird part is, it should be something custom-tailored for a guy like me: they had references to Gorath and the Super-Atrigon, and King Seesar in a cameo.

Yet, as unwatchable as the "Plot Does Matter" Godzilla film was, at least it didn't have nearly half the length of the movie be Matrix Kung Fu battles in bullet time.

FINAL WARS reminds me much less of some big "everything but the kitchen sink" comics story like the Avengers/Defenders War, and much more like EPIC MOVIE, only not a parody.

I think also still has comics publishing rights in America to alot of the classic Japanese Super-Robots. Great Mazinger, Raideen, Combattler V who were used to create "Shogun Warriors".  ???

Final Wars is a really mixed bag. It's basically two movies with only one being a G flick. You have the big Godzilla movie and then the faux-Matrix movie. It's like far too wacky to be Heisei but too dark to be classic, and not divorced enough from previous movies to fit in with the self-contained 2000 movies.

For myself, I enjoyed the Godzilla stuff and the character of Captain Gordon. Some of the martial-arts stuff I dug but that's prolly more because I dig kung and wire-fu movies as well a henshin hero shows like Kamen Rider and the Super Sentai shows that get turned into Power Rangers. But overall Final Wars ..it's like it IS fun but I think Toho's beancounters prolly had too much imput on the actual script.

I have no idea what Toho is up to regarding anything most of the time.  "Final Wars" was a send off of the big G for the next many years until they do some more.  I've always found Goji's popularity to go in waves - but always there.  Even here among the board, although we're all Supe's fans, the prospect of Goji elicited an interesting topic.  Final Wars was as Julian stated, one big smash-bang slam fest that just rolled along.  Still I had a blast watching it.


This is probably food for another thread...

The fact that Atlas produced a plethora of giant monster menaces during the 50's is the key reason I'd agree on Goji being a member of the MU.  But on the topic of "giant menaces", this is a developmental aspect of the days of Atlas I always wondered about, their beating the Comics Code Authority with tame "horror" stories and how Goji might have played a role in it.  If I'm not mistaken, I think it was Goji that reinvigorated the whole "giant monster" genre with a nuclear or atomic "nature's response to man's damage"-type angle.  (As opposed to the earlier silent films and "King Kong" which were of an explorer and huge forces that can't be tamed by man-type sub-genre.)

Were the Atlas monsters really Marvel's attempt to capatalize on the popular thing - e.g. Goji, or what?  "Well, big monsters with a moral message won't offend the CCA?"  What I come down to is Goji's wake created the kaiju/movie monster + radiation gimmick that spawned the Atlas monsters, which in turn spawned renewed interest in monsters as anti-heros in the flavor of Frankenstein's monster - to Hulk, and Thing, et al.  I would say in a case like this, considering the giant monster thing was apparently Kirby's idea, that Kirby was a brilliant, brilliant man riding a wave that he saw coming.

By the way, that "caveman" monster Goji fought, that later turned up in the WCA was actually a Bigfoot.  "Yetrigar" they shall call him.... (Neat Toho name.)

This is the same position that Superboy is now in, and that Superman will be in in a few years. DC owns the rights to Lana Lang, Luthor, Pete Ross, Smallville, and every other super-supporting character.

During the late bronze age, a Superman/Star Wars crossover would have worked very well, because the style of both comics was similar. I'm not sure whether such a crossover would work now, but it would be interesting to see Superman go up against the emperor.

I remember an issue of the Paul Smith-era X-Men involving Kitty's pet dragon being enlarged and flying over Japan.  There were Japanese kids with "plane-spotter"-type books with the profiles of all the monster island denizens (but also a page devoted to the Hulk).  A slight Toho homage from 1980s Marvel that seems to imply that Godzilla et al are canonical.

Now I must check out Godzilla Final Battle.

On a related note: I've been trying to track down a U.S.-produced Toho-style giant monster movie from the early 90s for years.  No idea of name or anything else besides the fact that I saw a mention of it Filmfax and it involved giant Azrec statues (or something) duking it out.  Any guesses?

I never considered that as an idea - although it would be rather neat.  Heck - if they could do it with Aliens, why not?