Godzilla Didn’t Make It to Houston, but Here’s What Comics Did

Back in May, one of the biggest buzzes in the comic book world surrounded a brand-new miniseries featuring Godzilla attacking Texas, appropriately titled Godzilla vs. America: Texas (Godzilla vs. Texas on the covers). One of the most recognizable fictional characters on Earth, the King of the Monsters would tromp through the Lone Star State fighting other kaiju (Japanese for “giant monsters”) while wrecking beloved institutions. One variant cover by Austin-based artist Matt Frank promised Godzilla vs. Houston, with the monster eating a space shuttle over I-45’s iconic “Be Someone” graffiti. But it never happened.

Godzilla decimated Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and Dallas (twice), but didn’t find time in his busy mayhem schedule for the state’s largest city. What gives?

Dylan Dusebout, marketing manager and event organizer for Bedrock City Comics, originally requested the variant cover from Godzilla vs. Texas’s publisher, IDW. He recruited Frank to make it as an homage to Houston (Frank began making Godzilla fan art in 2007, before becoming arguably the monster’s best-known official artist in America). But when Dusebout asked IDW if ‘Zilla would ever hit here, the publisher evaded the question. IDW did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s really a shame that Houston doesn’t appear properly in the book,” Frank said in an email. “As I understand it, the other artists weren’t locked in until kind of late in the process, and two of them happened to be Dallas residents (hence the repeated location). I suggested a few Houstonian artists when the initial plans were discussed, but IDW could have been looking for a particular combination of artistic styles, experience, and availability.”

Houston often ends up left out of comic pages. A mention of Space City is so rare that its entire history as a comic book location fits in a single article. As far as our research could uncover, the city first appeared in Marvel Preview #4 in January 1976, which also marked the first appearance of the future Guardian of the Galaxy, Star-Lord (aka Peter Quill). His original incarnation is far darker than the irreverent outlaw actor Chris Pratt plays in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Quill’s father dies of a heart attack while trying to kill him as a baby with an axe, and alien invaders later kill his loving, mentally ill mother. 

Grown-up Quill moves to Houston to undergo astronaut training. Bitter and angry, he makes many enemies despite his excellence. Eventually, he leaves Space City for actual space—and his ultimate career as a superhero. And that would, more or less, be the last time Houston mattered in comics for nearly two decades.

That changed when local creator Terry Moore self-published his serial Strangers in Paradise. From 1993 to 2007, the story tackled the love lives of queer Houstonians involved with an international assassination organization. Strangers in Paradise is one of the most influential comics of all time, paving the way for modern, creator-owned indie publishing and LGBTQIAP+ representation. Everyone from Brian K. Vaughan (co-writer of Dune 3) to Stjepan Šejić (writer of the DC Black Label Harley Quinn comic Harleen) was inspired by Moore, but none of their stories ended up in Houston. The town that made Strangers in Paradise come to life was still a wasteland.

Indie comics give Houston the most attention. Filmmaker Gary Watson, who grew up here, conceived of his dystopian story, After Twilight, after witnessing the growing appreciation for Christian nationalism in the early 2000s. He released a short-film version in 2004 and adapted it into a self-published six-issue comic in 2012. In the series, the entire state of Texas is under an authoritarian theocracy, and an underground resistance made up of marginalized people takes up the fight. After Twilight also eerily predicted SB 8, the 2021 Texas law that rewards people who turn in those who have any involvement with abortions. It includes a gruesome scene where a sexual assault survivor is stoned to death.

Watson says Houston’s diversity was a key factor in his decision to set the story in his hometown. “If anyone were to ask me which city in Texas would be most likely to have a multicultural movement rise up against a dystopian state government, Houston…would be my best bet,” he says. “I’d imagine some of the population of Houston would embrace this new government, but it would be rejected by many others, especially those who would be marginalized by a patriarchal theocracy.”

That same year, Watson published After Twilight, and Houston returned to the pages of Marvel comics in a big way with its first dedicated Big Two superhero. Kaine Parker began as a murderous Spider-Man clone before a redemption arc sent him fleeing the country. On his journey south of the border, his stop in Houston became a series of heroic deeds as the latest incarnation of the Scarlet Spider.

The series bearing his name ran for 25 issues. It was definitely fun to see a web-slinger try to cross Houston’s flat landscape with comparatively fewer skyscrapers than other big cities. Kaine often hitched rides on top of cars on the freeways, swearing at the traffic. Writer Christopher Yost and artist Ryan Stegman were keen to set a story outside New York City and even traveled to Houston to study the city. In an Outsmart interview, the two found eager fans on social media who suggested cool locations like River Oaks and the Houston Rodeo.

It wasn’t technically the first time Spider-Man had landed in H-town. In 1982, Foley’s paid to use Peter Parker and the Hulk in a comic-book-style advertisement that appeared in the Houston Chronicle. It featured a short brawl at the Rodeo, but it was never listed in the official Marvel database.

Building off the legacy of Strangers and After Twilight, a fair amount of Kaine’s supporting cast is queer. In fact, one could argue that LGBTQIAP+ themes are the defining aspect of Houston’s role in comics. Virtually every major appearance of the city involves queer representation—even, technically, Star-Lord’s, though he wasn’t revealed as bisexual until 2020.

That’s certainly true of the 2022 Made in Korea collection by writer Jeremy Holt and artist George Schall, the most recent story set in the region. The graphic novel takes place in a near future where childbirth is extremely rare. Desperate couples have instead turned to raising android children, including Jesse, who gets shipped to a Conroe couple after a secret augmentation grants her full sentience. Unfortunately, freedom of thought leads her to befriend a pair of disturbed school shooters. Holt’s life inspired much of the storyline. As a child, they moved all over the country for their dad’s oil-industry job, which included a stint in Montgomery County.

As Holt broke into the comics business, they recall struggling to tell stories that resonated with audiences. Writing about Houston, however, was the catalyst that finally unlocked their full potential. “I had to take a long, hard look, and I realized I needed to write my own experiences,” Holt says.

Texas sort of haunted Holt. It was where they lived and worked as a non-binary person and the first place they experienced active shooter drills in schools while working in IT—experiences that strongly influenced Made in Korea. In the book, Jesse undergoes a series of gender evolutions. If the book had been a bigger hit, Holt says its sequel would have explored that aspect more.

But ever since Made in Korea, Houston has gone dormant again. Godzilla said he’d visit but never did. Holt and Frank believe that the concentration of writers and artists in Austin is keeping Houston from making a bigger splash. Still, Houston has a rich comics history, including an attention to LGBTQIAP+ representation that is unique. It’s a place of novel stories and strange possibilities, on the rare occasion that someone sets a tale here.