Godzilla - Rise Of Red Ronin!

The storytelling problem with a character like Godzilla is to find something or someone who can offer up a credible threat to the King of Monsters. In the movies we get King Kong, Hedorah, Megalon and the like.

Godzilla meets Mecha-Godzilla

 In later of the flicks the threats become more technological with the advent of Mecha-Godzilla.

Godzilla, Jet Jaguar and Friends

There is even a straight giant robot superhero type called "Jet Jaguar" in the tradition of Ultraman and suchlike. Red Ronin seems to be something of a blend of these two types of characters, a humanoid robot built much along the lines of the massive Mecha-Godzilla.

Marvel introduced such a character when they unleashed Red Ronin in the pages of  Godzilla. Red Ronin was a giant one-hundred foot robot built to the specifications of Dr. Tamara Hashioka and Dr. Yuriko Tagaguchi. Tagaguchi was a veteran scientist who had been on site when Godzilla first appeared many decades before.

He and Hashioka came to the United States along with Tagaguchi's grandson Rob who it turned out became the pilot for Red Ronin though that wasn't the plan. The young Rob often disagreed with the adults as he felt Godzilla was misunderstood.

But the Red Ronin programming forced him to confront Godzilla despite Rob's intentions and the two battled. 

Following the battle between these two, which proved inconclusive, Godzilla went into the great spaces of the American west, specifically Las Vegas where he proved devastating to the economy of the bustling desert resort and especially the hopes of one degenerate gambler in particular.Ironically most of what Godzilla demolished in his turn through Vegas no longer exists having been renovated out of existence as the city gets every larger and glitzier.

Following his rampage through the bright lights of Las Vegas Godzilla came into conflict with Yetrigar.

This latest opponent is actually a species of the American "Bigfoot" who by a series of complex coincidences was affected by radiation through the earth and became a giant able to go toe to toe with Big G.

The two battles furiously, and then were joined by Red Ronin and the match became a three-way dance with Godzilla as usual coming up the better monster.

These particular issues of Godzilla seemed most like the then recent movies from Toho which had featured big old fights between monsters, not unlike wrestling matches. In the spaces of the American frontier around the Grand Canyon are there was land enough to properly house such slug fests.

Red Ronin appeared went on to appear in some really dazzling issues of the Avengers where the great robot met his demise.

For the record Yetrigar too appeared in an issue of Avengers, specially the West Coast version. 

But Godzilla's tour of America was not over, not by a longshot. More to come next week when the "Mega-Monster" arrive.

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