It was on November 3, 1954, that the atomic-powered dinosaur Godzilla made his big-screen debut in Japan as the king of the monsters in the now-classic kaiju film Gojira (which became Godzilla when it reached the United States). And today, 68 years after Toho Studios first unleashed their monster, he’s still as popular as ever.
At its heart, Gojira is a metaphor for the horrors of radiation sickness and widespread destruction experienced by the Japanese citizens as a result of the US dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to force an end to World War II. But it didn’t take long for audiences to look beyond the message and also recognize it as an outstanding monster movie, and to make Godzilla a worldwide icon.
So, how can you celebrate this special day? Well, you could have your own, personal movie marathon. In addition to the original Gojira and the long list of Toho-produced films that followed (including Destroy All Monsters, King Kong vs. Godzilla, The Return of Godzilla, and the most recent, Shin Godzilla), you can watch Legendary Pictures’ trilogy of Godilla (2014), Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). Plus there’s the Toho-Netflix animated trilogy Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017), Godzilla: City on the Edge (2018), and Godzilla: The Planet Eater (2018). There’s plenty of Big G adventures to enjoy.
With regard to the original Godzilla movies, the art you see up top is by my friend Bob Larkin, who you might recognize as the cover painter for the Pan novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign. Bob did this cover for Marvel Comics’ Monsters of the Movies, a short-lived series that was meant to be their answer to Famous Monsters of Filmland, which was the gold standard of horror entertainment magazines covering movies and TV shows from the 1950s to the early 1980s. This particular image was done to promote issue 5’s cover story, “Godzilla: Tokyo’s Greatest Nemesis,” an overview of the Toho movies from the original up to 1973’s Godzilla vs. Megalon. Bob provided covers for five of MotM’s eight issues.
And speaking of the talented Mr. Larkin, if you’re a fan of great art, Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, has a book you might just be interested in…
The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is a collection of some of the incredible pencil drawings by the legendary cover painter for Doc Savage, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Star Trek, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, and many other pop-culture icons. What you’ll discover when you see this collection is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really is little that he hasn’t painted.
The sketchbook features three pieces created especially for it: the Pandora Zwieback cover art you see here; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!
The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.