NEAR-MYTHS: JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. GODZILLA VS. KONG (2023-24)

 

Now THIS is what JLA cluster-crossovers should be: valiant superheroes battling colossal monsters, and monsters battling other monsters, and villains trying to control the monsters before being taken down by the heroes. 

One thing I like about JL/G/K is that even though the DC-verse depicted here is not entirely congruent with the mainstream one-- for one thing, three regular villains and two regular heroes take the dirty nap-- there's no pretense by writer Brian Bucccelato that this is some amalgam universe where the Justice League and the Legion of Doom occupies the same world as the cinematic "Monsterverse." Buccelato possibly realized that it provided more opportunities for exposition if the Legion stumbled into the Monsterverse and brought back its progeny to menace this version of DC-Earth. 

The only icons directly imported from the Monsterverse are Godzilla, Kong, Mechagodzilla, and the Skull-Crawlers, though some new ones are invented to take the place of various Toho-titans. There were no such restrictions on the use of DC characters, so this is not a story for noobs, who really won't be able to tell the players without a scorecard. There's even a scene with some heroes breaking up a supervillain jailbreak in which I, expert though I usually am, strained to figure out some of the obscurities given a few panels here and there.

Characterization is understandably simple since the primary story is about stopping giant monsters, but Buccellato works in some pleasant dialogue nonetheless, and Christian Duce does a fine job of imparting the sense of monolithic hugeness to the big beasts. Sometimes there are continuity goofs because everything's so rushed. When in the story did someone bring the Teen Titans into the mix, and why is the Big S almost killed by Godzilla's atomic fire? If the Legion contacts Deathstroke to employ the League of Assassins, why does Ra's Al Ghul get into the thick of things? But since it's a one-off universe, the blips don't get in the way of all the looney hero/monster/villain fun.          

NEAR-MYTHS: "THE GOOL STRIKES" (MARVEL TALES #93, 1949)

The cover of MARVEL TALES #93-- which was the first issue of that title, taking over its numbering from MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS, one of Timely Comics' major superhero mags-- seems to introduce a standard horror story. But the story inside anticipates the vogue for titanic monsters mutated in some way by radiation, which for most pop culture mavens started with 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. That film in turn spawned the far more consequential figure of Godzilla within the next year. I'm not sure how unique the Gool was in 1949. It's quite possible that there were many titan-sized critters bustling around horror comics prior to 1953, since so few stories from this period have been collected. I'm aware of a story from the 1950s incarnation of Timely's Human Torch (not published by Marvel until 1968) in which the hero encountered a colossal alien called "the Un-Human." But this beastie was not said to be the result of an atomic mutation. 

Though the titular creature's name on the cover bears the familiar spelling "ghoul," all through the story inside the monster is called "the Gool." No writer is billed, and GCD theorizes that the pencil artist may have been Ed Winiarski.

The story opens on a conversation between an American scientist, Professor Clark Dane, and the commander of a detachment of soldiers on a Pacific island, apparently assisting the doctor in some unnamed research project. The light-orange humanoid figure of the Gool-- so named by the caption-maker-- steps onto the beach, and is immediately attacked by army gunfire, with no effect on the monster. Dane then belatedly reveals to his confidante that his whole purpose in being here was to investigate consequences of the atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll, beginning in 1946. On barely any evidence, Dane insists that the spongy-looking being must have emerged from "the inner core of the earth," and then he takes time out for a long flashback. This segue mixes Dane's reminiscences with the narrator's observations as to how the Gool was awakened by the atomic testing. However, it's suggested that the Gool may be intelligent, or else that he had intelligence and lost it, for he doesn't just push his way to the surface like Godzilla and his fellow beasties. Instead, the Gool has a drill-machine with which he ascends to the surface, despite the fact that the captions just told us that the being "possessed no sense or intelligence." Possibly the idea was that the Gool was, like his possible model the 1933 King Kong, the last survivor of a species.

As it happens, the subterranean denizen, dimly thirsting for some sort of "conquest," emerges just in time to be struck by an atom bomb test on the Atoll. Dane makes the scene afterward and remarks that if anything survived blast, it would be "supercharged with electro-rays"-- a gobbledygook way of saying that the radiation would mutate said survivor. 

Then, the story jumps back to the present, showing again that no modern arms can stop the juggernaut. But the writer, realizing that he has no more pages to spare, delivers a deus ex machina by having the Gool encounter Professor Dane. The Gool sends a telepathic message to Dane, but all he communicates is, "I am the Gool" (making him only slightly more locquatious than Groot of the Galaxy Guardians). The Gool makes no demands and issues no explanations, and then just wanders back into the sea (again, like Godzilla), though a final caption warns that he will re-appear "in the next issue of Marvel Mystery." (Guess the editors didn't inform the writer of the title-change in advance.) However, there were no sequels to the Gool's rampage. The story definitely fits the pattern of "atomic hubris" stories of the time and actually catches that doomsday mood better than BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.

Oddly, the only other named person in the story is an older scientist who exists merely for Dane to talk with, and by an amusing bit of luck, the older fellow is named "Doctor Kirby." Since Jack Kirby had been absent from proto-Marvel for about seven years prior to this story's publication, the use of the name is probably coincidence. But it's amusing because the first popular works Kirby produced for almost-but-not-quite Marvel in the late 1950s were numerous giant monster-stories, most strongly indebted to the Godzilla template. 

Oh, and just because I looked it up, here's the Torch's slightly later foe The Un-Human, who unlike The Gool gets the chance to tear up some city-property, possibly written (though not published) a little before Godzilla got to ravage Japanese real estate.

ADDENDUM: And as long as I'm mentioning gigantic comic-book characters who tear up real estate, I would be remiss not to mention Jack Cole's size-shifting villain The Claw from the late thirties and early forties, discussed here.

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 3

 At the end of A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PART 2 I said I would next discuss "non-distinct replacements," but a better term would be "non-differentiated replacements."

In Part 2 I mentioned two examples of differentiated replacements from comic books: the forties hero The Black Owl and the Marvel villain The Molecule Man. I paid particular attention to the latter, noting that even though the first and second versions of The Molecule Man had no personal names in their debuts, and barely any personal history, they are nevertheless differentiated in that the reader assumes that they are living human beings with distinct backgrounds. Such differentiations are harder to make, though, with respect to non-human entities, because their non-human nature confers an aura of otherness that obscures differentiation. 

The most visible example of such a non-differentiated replacement is that of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. The first monster to go by this name perished at the end of his debut film, presumably because his creators had no idea that he was going to be bigger and more sequel-worthy than any other giant monster from any country. When the 1954 GODZILLA scored big, Toho Studios quickly followed up with GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN. Instead of finding some way to reconstitute the dissolved body of the original King, the producers simply had another "Godzilla-saurus" emerge from the bowels of the Earth, and for the remainder of the original series, this pinch-hitter became, to all intents and purposes, the only Godzilla whose adventures anyone followed, even though hardcore viewers were entirely aware that the first rough beast had long passed on. A much later film purported to revive the first Godzilla, but for a couple of decades, no one cared about the debut creature.

Aliens are even more susceptible to becoming non-differentiated characters. The Martians of H.G. Wells, the archetypal alien invaders, are not differentiated from one another in either the original novel or in latter-day creations like Marvel's KILLRAVEN serial. Thus if Killraven fights a horde of Martians in New York, and then travels down to Tallahassee to fight a separate horde, both sets of Martians are essentially coterminous. The same principle applies from the ETs from the ALIEN film franchise, even though there are some morphological differences between particular representatives of the species, such as the male warrior from the first film and the Alien Queen from the second. 

The ETs of the PREDATOR series have the potential to be more individualized, though the hunters in the first and second films are not significantly differentiated from one another. I recall one comic-book story which made a minor attempt to distinguish two Predators within the context of that story, making one a "hero" and the other a "villain." But from what I can judge, the Predators' appeal lies in the fact that they're cookie-cutter menaces, whose raison d'etre stays the same regardless of any particular movie, even when played off against another "swarm" type of ET in the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR films.

Other examples include the various sharks in the JAWS franchise, at least two loosely related "killer bee" movies, and assorted fantasy-creatures like Al Capp's Shmoos.

Of course, it's not impossible for one film to coast on another's rep, using the name of a somewhat-established monster but substituting a beast with a different origin. The producers of the 2000 DTV film PYTHON in 2000 came out with another giant snake film, BOA, in 2002. Then the filmmakers engineered what looked like a crossover of the two serpentine beasties in 2004's BOA VS. PYTHON. However, though the Python used was essentially coterminous with the one from the 2000 film, the modern Boa had no connection to the prehistoric giant from the 2002 film. However, the two Boas are still the same species, and so it's arguable that the second one is a non-differentiated replacement of the original.  

A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS PT. 2

My first crossover-category is that is THE HIGH STATURE CROSSOVER. This is usually a crossover of two or more characters/presences that have embodied PRIME stature in earlier narratives, though there are some exceptions to this rule.

An early example of a literary crossover is that of Rider Haggard's SHE AND ALLAN, in which Haggard's two most famous characters encountered one another for the course of one novel.

In comics, of course, Timely Comics provided a major model for the future when its editors crossed over two of its continuing features, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner. However, the character's intermittent encounters were not limited to one interaction, but went on for much of both characters' original runs.

These characters also briefly crossed over in the very short-lived team title, ALL WINNERS SQUAD-- which factoid leads me to mention that I've reversed the position I expressed in THE LOGIC AND APPEAL OF CROSSOVERS, where I said that I did not deem "hero-teams" to be crossovers. Now I tend to say that they definitely are when the majority of the team-members maintain their own separate features. The principle may even extend to characters who had moderately substantial features of their own before being revived by other publishers. Thus the Golden Age character "Miss Victory," who lasted for about five years as a backup feature in an anthology comic, was "ret-conned" to stand alongside a bunch of newbie characters in the Americomics title FEMFORCE (which would later pursue many other similar public-domain revivals).

All of these characters are incidents of two Primes interacting. However, in some cases a Prime may appear in another Prime's series in such a way that the former becomes a Sub-- but without a concomitant loss of charisma. For instance, Donald Duck was conceived as a 1931 animated cartoon character long before Uncle Scrooge appeared in a 1947 comic book. Yet whenever Donald and his three nephews appeared in the UNCLE SCROOGE stories, Scrooge was the Prime, as the stories were primarily about him. Yet in a sense Donald and the nephews were an integral part of the Scrooge mythos, in part because regular readers always had some knowledge that Donald existed in his own cosmos alongside that of Scrooge.

To conclude this post, I'll add that on occasion an iconic character will be partly revised for the needs of a later crossover. The original King Kong has but one story, at the end of which he perishes, never to return, at least not at the hands of his creators. However, when the company that owned Kong leased him out to Toho Studios, Kong was revised in many respects-- most significantly, making him large enough that he could stand toe to toe with the Big G. This Kong is not really the original Kong, but there exists a sort of "crypto-continuity" between the two, so that I regard this crossover as a crossover of two Primes, simply because Kong II is meant to be a strong echo of the original icon.

More to come.

QUANTUMS OF SOLIPSISM PT. 2

The “longer formulation” of quantum literary theory that I mentioned in Part 1 represents an attempt to apply the insights regarding the master tropes of the combative mode, expressed in 2019’s GIVE-AND-TAKE VS. THE KILLING STROKE  to the discourses of the four potentialities. In 2017’s GOOD WILLQUANTUMS PT. 2  I wrote that “the primary criterion of ficti onal excellence in any potentiality” was that of “density/complexity,” which criterion was merely a conflation of two covalent terms I’d used separately over the years. Not until late 2018, with the essay CONVERGING ON CONCRESCENCE,  did I decide that the authorial process of creating complexity merited its own term, and that this process, called concrescence, pertained to any work, no matter which of the potentialities proved dominant in the author’s intentions. I devoted one 2019 essay, CLANSGRESSION COUNTDOWN, to listing fifty separate works, all of which dealt with similar subject matter, and then showing how each work emphasized one of the four potentialities more than it did any of the other three.

I wrote GIVE-AND-TAKE in late 2019, but that essay was the culmination of many years of meditating on the different forms that the combative mode took in fictional narratives, with special reference to forms which did not end with a “give-and-take” of energies between combatants. Apparently, I was reasonably satisfied with these makework terms for the two tropes throughout most of 2020. However, during 2020 I finally read PROCESS AND REALITY, and this caused me to re-interpret some of my critical parameters in terms of the “vector metaphor” Whitehead used in PROCESS. Thanks to this process of re-interpretation, I gave further thought to the two tropes of GIVE-AND-TAKE in terms of vectors.

With the trope originally designated as “the killing stroke,” recently renamed “the deathblow,” I noted that the combative energies could flow in one of two directions:

From inferior force to superior force, as with the humans who blind the mighty Cyclops as well as the humans who vanquish mighty Godzilla with an “oxygen destroyer”—

Or from superior force to inferior force, as with Dionysus’s destruction of Pentheus and with the Spectre’s destruction of pestilential criminals.

However, with the trope originally designated as “give-and-take” and renamed “deathmatch,” the flow of energies must be on roughly the same plane. Often the deathmatch-trope takes place between just two entities of roughly equal power, such as Aeneas and Turnus, or Orion and Kalibak. A second variation would be that of two formidable warriors taking a larger number of opponents with some disadvantages (Odysseus and Telemachus vs. the suitors, who lack full armor and weapons, Batman and Robin vs. gangs of armed hoods who lack any special combative skills). A third popular variation is that of a huge assemblage of combatants vs. another huge assemblage of equally skilled opponents (the Greek gods vs. the Titans, the Justice Society vs. the Injustice Society), and a fourth can pit a large assemblage of heroes against one superior opponent, as with the Greek gods fighting Typhon and the Teen Titans battling Trigon. But all of these variations are subsumed by a vector showing energies flowing in both directions.

Because the “strength-quanta” energies of the deathblow-trope focus upon a vector going only in one direction, I choose to label this trope as *univectoral. *

However, because the “strength-quanta” energies of the deathmatch-trope flow in at least two directions at minimum, I choose to label this trope as *multivectoral. *

In GIVE-AND-TAKE, I erred on the side of caution by stating that I wasn’t yet certain that the two combative tropes were the only significant ones. However, having rethought the tropes in terms of vectoral analysis, I’ll now state that these two are the only principal tropes for “strength-quanta,” and that everything in between the two is simply a variation of one or the other.

Now, how does this affect potentialities whose tropes deal with different quanta? I will submit that excellence in all of the other three potentialities arises from a concrescence of energies that also follows either a *univectoral * or a *multivectoral * process.

Some loose examples:

In a work dominated by the dramatic potentiality, the work might be *univectoral * if it focuses only upon how one character’s “affect-quanta” influences other persons, as with Ibsen’s HEDDA GABLER. Another work might be *multivectoral * if it focused on how a group of characters influenced one another with their quanta, as would be the case in the same author’s ROSMERSHOLM. Similarly, one might have two works dominated by the didactic potentiality, one in which the author wishes to expatiate only one ideology, while in another the author wishes to oppose at least two ideologies in order to show one as superior to the other. Both Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE and Jack London’s THE IRON HEEL concern the ideology of socialism. But London provides an argument for the counter-ideology of capitalism, while Sinclair does not.

As for the mythopoeic potentiality, the one that arguably receives the greatest attention on this blog, I may as well use as illustrations the last two mythcomics I analyzed here. “Ixar, Sinister Statue of the Cyclades” is *univectoral,* in that all of the symbol-quanta are invested in the giant statue’s recapitulation of the myth of Orion and Cedalion, while all other characters, settings and plot-actions in the story are symbolically nugatory.

In contrast, the two-part story “PublicEnemy/Lifedeath” is *mutivectoral.* The first part begins by showing the interactions of two heroes, Storm and Rogue, as they overcome their initial conflicts and forge a bond of superheroic sisterhood, in part thanks to Rogue being able to “become” Storm by assimilating Storm’s command of natural forces. The sequence then concludes by showing a different set of symbolic interactions between Storm and potential lover Forge. Forge, an incarnation of the de-mythifying power of science, accidentally brings about the eradication of Storm’s godlike mutant abilities. Because Storm does not know that Forge is responsible for her loss, she comes close to being seduced both by his virility and his state of wounded-ness (missing leg replaced by a mechanical substitute). When she learns of his culpability, she rejects any bond with him, except in the sense that she swears to overcome the state of abjection he’s forced upon her, promising that she will find a way to “fly” again, if only in a metaphorical sense.

Time will tell whether or not I will explore other potentialities in terms of their vectoral nature. If so, I would have to devise trope-names appropriate to the other three potentialities, since “deathmatch” and “deathblow” apply only to the kinetic.

IN MEDIA RESOLUTION

The essay's title is a pun on the Latin expression "in media res," "in the middle of things," which is generally only directed at stories that don't begin at a standard beginning, but start at a theoretical middle and then fill in the blanks about what went before. "Res" by itself denotes "a particular thing," as one sees in such Cartesian terms as "res extensa," and the word "resolution" is traced from the same root.

My response to the Scott novel IVANHOE was the proximate cause for me to write KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 2-- in which I examined the novel as an exception to the general principles exposed in the 2013 essay PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX. However, IVANHOE was not the first time I'd ever taken note of combative works which did not actually conclude with an act of combat.

Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS is arguably the most influential combative fantasy-work in which there's a great deal of fighting throughout the early and middle parts of the epic, not unlike IVANHOE. Yet none of the battles can unseat Sauron, who for some critics is really the titular "lord of the rings." Only by Frodo's action-- casting the One Ring into the inferno of Mount Doom-- can Sauron be destroyed. But Frodo's attempt to complete his act of renunciation fails, as his will bends to the ring's insuperable power.

The only thing that saves Middle-Earth from subjugation is the accidental intrusion of another hobbit, even more obsessed with the ring than Frodo. Gollum springs upon Frodo and bites off the finger on which Frodo has placed the ring, after which Gollum conveniently falls, "precious' and all, into the lava pit below.

Oddly, this essay makes clear that at one point Tolkien did consider a fully combative conclusion, which would have included Frodo and Samwise battling one of the Ringwraiths on Mount Doom. But this does not change the fact that Tolkien did indeed choose the less combative ending, even as Scott did with IVANHOE.

Thus, both of these are exceptions to my general rule that the narrative value of the combative mode arises when there exists "some sort of spectacle-oriented struggle at or very near the climax." I still believe that this formulation applies to the great majority of combative works. but that it's also possible for the mode to manifest at least when such spectacle has appeared in the middle portion of the narrative.

In truth, I'd already deemed some narratives to be combative even when they, like LORD OF THE RINGS, featured most of the spectacular violence in the middle and concluded with a menace being defeated by some "Achilles heel" maneuver. After the armies of man fail to vanquish the 1954 Gojira, the apocalyptic beast is defeated with a comparative lack of spectacle when he's dissolved by "the oxygen destroyer."

At the same time, there's a transitive equivalence between the mundane weapons of the military and the super-weapon. I made a similar point, without invoking the transitive effect, when discussing the 1956 film FORBIDDEN PLANET in this essay:

To be sure, when the Id Monster is defeated, it isn't because of the clash between the weapons of Earth-science and the power of the Krell machines.  The Monster is defeated by undermining the source of its power in Morbius, who is in essence the Monster's Achilles heel.
Nevertheless, without the clash of energies that establishes how potent the Id Monster is, there would be no narrative perception of the need to seek such a vulnerable point. 

An intransitive effect, however, rears its head in the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS adaptation of H.G. Wells, as I wrote in this essay: 

In the film as in the Wells novel, what saves the human race is not some last-minute strategy or new weapon, but a lucky break having nothing to do with Earth's defenders.  In the book, Wells stresses only irony in the fact that the Martians perish from Earth-bacteria, while the 1953 film reverses this ideological interpretation, regarding the bacteria's presence as an expression of divine providence.  But regardless of which interpretation is favored, in neither case can Earth's defenders take any credit for the Martian defeat.

Another corollary to this formulation is that some of the works that have violence "in the middle" are, like WAR OF THE WORLDS, not really deeply concerned with the spectacle of combat. My main example of such a film in PASSION FOR THE CLIMAX is 2002's MINORITY REPORT, which has one spectacle-scene inserted into a middle section, and my "in media" formulation does nothing to change REPORT's subcombative status. In the end, it comes down to something of a judgment call, not unlike my ruminations on "active and passive shares," in which the critic must decide how important the elements of spectacular violence are to the narrative.

WEAKLINGS WITH WEAPONS PT. 3

I discussed another type of "weaklings with weapons" in 2013's OUR ARMIES AT WAR, WITH MONSTERS. Though a lot of "giant monster" films are combative primarily in pitting two or more behemoths against one another, there are also those in which the primary conflict is between one behemoth and the amassed armed forces of a particular country.

KING KONG, the first major "giant monster" film, concentrates the early part of its narrative on showing how Kong is "king" over all the rival creatures in his own domain, but then concludes by having him shot down by American biplanes. 1953's BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, whose filming might have been encouraged by the successful 1952 re-release of KONG, came up with a giant reptile. But the filmmakers knew that the amassed power of the U.S. military could've blown away any old dinosaur, so they had to come up with a reason for the military to avoid attacking the critter directly. 1954's GOJIRA reversed that conceit. Whereas an atomic bomb simply woke up the Fathom-Beast, it both awakened and empowered Godzilla, making it possible for the giant monster to stride fearlessly through cannonfire, airplane missiles, and electrical fences. In my review I mentioned that Godzilla was, on one level, the symbol of any martial enemy of Japan, so that in a strange way, this most Japanese of monsters bears some resemblance to the forces of the Allied invaders, whose might is represented by the atom bomb itself.

Later Godzilla films always followed Kong's trope of pitting the Big G against other colossi, but the 1950s and 1960s included a smattering of giant-monster films in which the monster's only opponent was humanity's armed forces-- American in THE GIANT CLAW and IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA, British in GORGO and THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, Danish in REPTILICUS, and Japanese in such non-Godzilla films as RODAN and MOTHRA, and THE X FROM OUTER SPACE and GAPPA THE TRIPHIBIAN MONSTER.  In addition, DC Comics made a major contribution to the "soldiers vs. dinosaurs" trope in its "War That Time Forgot" series, which ran for eight years in STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES.

I've read none of these stories, so it may be that none of them muster the necessary "spectacular violence" necessary for the combative mode, the same way BEAST WITH 20,000 FATHOMS fails the test. The 1950s flicks TARANTULA and THE DEADLY MANTIS also fall short for one reason or the other.

Now, on occasions, human soldiers are aided by some weapon that's just as metaphenomenal as the monster. The original Godzilla is vanquished by the "oxygen destroyer," and the Giant Claw, one of the few American monsters immune to military weapons-fire, is undone when scientists reverse the protective "meson-field" about the creature. But the use of an "achilles heel" weapon may not give rise to the combative mode, either.

In the end, the reason that the nameless soldier-hordes can qualify as combative entities is because there is a necessary connection between the warriors and their weapons, whose use the soldiers have implicitly mastered. But there must be diegetic evidence of such mastery, which I find in REPTILICUS but not in DEADLY MANTIS, as discussed here.

RALLY ROUND THE ROGUES' GALLERY PT. 3

Repeating my end point from Part 2, I'll assert that in general one cannot have a "monster rally" if one has just one type of monster versus another type of monster. Examples of these would the meeting of "werewolf star" Waldemar Daninsky with assorted vampires in FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR, or the encounter of the Big G with one-shot nasty insect Megaguirus in GODZILLA AGAINST MEGAGUIRUS.

A potentially different situation arises even when one is dealing with more than one centric monster of the same nature, as seen in GODZILLA'S REVENGE. Since Godzilla and his "adopted" son Minya share a common biology, they are virtually identical, just like the vampires in BLOODY TERROR. However, this film is still a "monster rally," given that the two allomorphic monsters take on at least three other creatures on Monster Island. This scenario also appears whenever a single non-centric opponent comes up against a multiplicity of centric monsters. The latter case appears in the Toho film immediately preceding REVENGE: DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, wherein most of Toho's monsters take on King Ghidora.

However, a one-on-one "monster rally" is possible if one is dealing with a situation where the two creatures have sustained their own "centric" stories. KING KONG VS. GODZILLA was one of the few Toho films that qualifies for this "honor," while others include FREDDY VS. JASON and ALIENS VS. PREDATORS.

It's also possible to see the narrative structure of the monster rally when there is one "starring monster" allied against several non-centric types. FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR does not qualify, but 1969's ASSIGNMENT TERROR, which pits the wolfman against both a mummy and a doppelganger for the Frankenstein Monster.

It's also possible to see "teams" of monsters opposed to ordinary humans, as in 1943's vampire-and-wolfman team for THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE.

Or conversely, one may reverse this structure. In ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, where the demihero-characters played by the comedians are the centric stars of the show, and the three monsters are their non-centric opponents.

A similar dynamic holds for heroes as well as demiheroes. Marvel superheroes are the stars of the one-shot comic MARVEL MONSTERS: MONSTERS ON THE PROWL, but it's still a "monster rally" because they're pitted against a mess o'monsters who originally had separate story-arcs in old monster-comics.

There are also a number of situations where the story concerns a team of "good monsters' versus a team of not-so-good ones, as seen in the game-turned-cartoon DARKSTALKERS.

However, if you've got one team of monsters for good, you don't need a team for evil to have a monster rally, as witness that salute to 1950s fiends, MONSTERS VS. ALIENS.

All of these examples involve some strong life-or-death conflict. However, there are also various stories which follow the "domestic comedy" pattern. Thus, in one cartoon special, the demiheroic Flintstones meet a monstrous family in THE FLINTSTONES' NEW NEIGHBORS.

And this, of course, was a direct swipe of one of the earliest "domestic monster rallies" in popular fiction, THE ADDAMS FAMILY.

So, in all, I count ten distinct storytelling variations which manage to cross over more than one distinct monster-types-- which is probably the most attention that anyone has ever devoted to this perhaps deservedly arcane subject.

ADDENDUM: I should add that there's one exception to my rule about "fairly distinct characters." This is when the monsters all have the same origin, but they are BASED on originals who were distinct. Thus in the movie SCOOBY DOO 2, a scientific process creates monsters who look like some of the costumed villains who appeared in earlier SCOOBY DOO TV episodes. This also applies to dreams, in which a dreamer simply dreams about a bunch of monsters that have their own existence in the "real life" of the ongoing narrative, or when human agents impersonate a bunch of monsters that were supposedly real at some time-- which itself sounds like a SCOOBY DOO episode.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTRICITY OF THE NARRATIVE

In EGO, MEET AFFECT I adapted the aforesaid terms, presented by C.G. Jung in PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES, for the purpose of applying them to narrative:

I suggest that the distinction between a psyche being "ego-oriented" or "affect-oriented" also applies to narratives.

In that essay I illustrated this difference in orientation by comparing two famous Rider Haggard novels, but both novels contain just one focal character who is either the center of all "ego-oriented" or "affect-oriented" narrative attention.

Prior to that essay, I had discussed in some detail the concept of the "ensemble," here and here.

ENSEMBLES ASSEMBLE established simply that it is possible for a work to possess two or more "focal presences," who may work as a team (the two alleged vampires in 1935's MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, various superhero groups) or may be utterly opposed (1934's THE BLACK CAT, 1968's WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS).  The latter is an important point in that the concept of "mortal enemies" pervades most if not all literary genres in one way or another. Usually either a "hero" or a "villain" alone is the focal presence, just as one sees with the examples from Haggard: the "heroic" Allen Quatermain and the "villainous" She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. 

It's usually easy to identify when a team of heroes- or even demiheroes-- constitutes the narrative's focal presence: they're often the featured characters with whom the reader identifies in an "ego-oriented" manner. Villains and monsters, who are dominantly types set against the welfare of a given community, are usually treated like "She," as fascinating affects, but they don't tend to form "teams" quite as often.

In CREATOR AND CREATED ENSEMBLED HE THEM I set forth my meditations regarding several famous interdependent "creator-and-created" characters from the horror genre: Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, Frankenstein and his monster, and Doctor Moreau and his beast-men.  Though all are "affect-oriented" types, I determined that only Frankenstein and his monster shared "ensemble status" in their original appearance. Stevenson's original Mister Hyde was a "created" being who did not share ensemble status with his creator Jekyll, while to the contrary monster-maker Doctor Moreau was the sole focal presence of Wells' novel, with the beast-men rating as no more than "excresences."  However, I also pointed out that any of these narrative arrangements could change in an adaptation of the same characters, and provided the example of the Universal Frankenstein series, which tended to emphasize the Monster far more than the creator.  Other critics have pointed out that the Hammer Frankenstein series pursued the opposite strategy.

Now, as to my method of making those determinations, I must admit that I deem this a "pure deductive" judgment that cannot be proved analytically.  This sort of judgment is not notably different from most judgments about literary structure and/or merit.  The closest I can come to concretizing this abstract process is to say that the thing that makes one or more characters occupy the imaginative center of a story may be best compared to the crossing of a threshold, a metaphor I used earlier here.

During the last year, in my reviews on my movie-review blog, I've been pursuing with some diligence the nature of that subgenre of horror/SF called "the giant monster film."  Almost without exception, any time there is but one giant monster in the narrative, it will be affect-oriented, as I wrote with regard to 1933's KING KONG.  The same dynamic applies to Kong's most successful cinematic imitator, GODZILLA.

However, the original Godzilla series shows far more variability than either of the aforementioned Frankenstein series-concepts.  In the first sequel to the original GODZILLA, the script instituted a practice derived from the 1933 KING KONG but different in its permutations. Just as King Kong battled assorted giant monsters who did not share "ensemble status" with the titular monster, in  GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN the Big G fights a second monster, one Anguirus.  I doubt that anyone would question that Anguirus plays a secondary role in this role, that he does not enjoy ensemble status.

However, the very next Godzilla film creates a team of "mortal enemies" who do share that status, and I remarked on this in my KING KONG review:

Some "affect-oriented" works even offer two focal presences for the price of one, as in Japan's 1962 KING KONG VS. GODZILLA. 

The same was true of the next Godzilla entry, MOTHRA VS. GODZILLA, even though structurally speaking the film seems more of a sequel to the first MOTHRA.

The next two films in the series presented the first "monster teams" in the series, with the narrative interest in the ensemble consisting of Godzilla, Rodan, and (in only one of the two films) Mothra, as they battle against common enemy Ghidrah. Afterward the original "Showa" series varied between using Godzilla as a "solo star" opposed to some other monster or monsters, or teaming him up with either a new character or with an old standby.  Even Anguirus, who was a simple monster-antagonist to Godzilla and was killed off in his first outing, was revived to serve as part of an "all-monster squad" in 1968's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and even becomes part of a two-monster team with his old enemy the Big G in 1972's GODZILLA VS. GIGAN.

In contrast to this practice by Japan's Toho Studio, most American studios, when they were doing giant-monster films at all, confined themselves always to the pattern of having just one giant affect-oriented creature who had to be destroyed by story's end.  Only the fantasy-films of Ray Harryhausen and a few imitators attempt to create "monster mythologies," though none of these were employed for more than one.  Arguably the culture of the Japanese, given their polytheistic heritage, may have provided more fertile ground for such mythologies than any comparable attempt from the United States or the handful of European countries that contributed works to this subgenre.

APES AND ANGELS PART 2

Having coined two new terms-- "idealizing will" and "existential will"-- in Part 1, I'll proceed to give examples of how they apply to characters in fictional narrative.

I should have said earlier that these two forms of will, these "two souls" that seem to dwell in every human's breast, only appear in fictional characters to the extent that their creators choose to emphasize one or both.  It is possible to have characters who are purely devoted to glorious ideals, or purely devoted to the persistence of ordinary existence.  It is also possible to have combinations of the two, but one form of will must dominate over the other, by the same logic I pursued in JUNG AND SOVEREIGNTY and other essays with regard to the admixture of mythos-elements in a given work.

Consider the Hulk.  He is possibly the most famous comic-book icon to combine aspects of both the negative "existential will" of the monster-- in that he both yearns for normalcy even as he rejects its demands on him-- and the positive "idealizing will" of the hero.  I've commented here that one of the factors that causes audiences to regard him dominantly as a "superhero" is because he has a rogues' gallery:

However, it must be admitted that some characters best characterized as "monsters" may also have, if not a rogues' gallery, an assemblage of colorful opponents.  Godzilla has one group of foes in his movies, another in his 1978 cartoon, and yet others in his Marvel Comics adaptation.

However, most of Godzilla's foes tend to be either rival giant monsters like himself, or aliens, who may also be considered a species of "monster" depending on their treatment.  Their motive for fighting the Big G usually come down to variations on the theme of persistence: the other behemoths resent someone trespassing on their territory, or the aliens want to get rid of humans in order to enjoy the fruits of Earth. In contrast, most of the Hulk's enemies are villains who desire to rule the world, or to become famous for kicking the Hulk's ass, and other such glory-based motives. 


Both the Hulk and Godzilla are called "monsters" in their respective texts again and again.  There's no question that both do incarnate the "existential will" in this respect.  However, most Godzilla fans cringe at those films that attempt to directly posit the King of Monsters in a superheroic role, as was seen at its worst effect in the stupefying GODZILLA VS. MEGALON.  This scene of a "heroes' handshake" is particularly egregious:

Arguably some fans' rejection of "Superhero Godzilla" in the 1970s had a decided effect on the film series' development.  Only two more films in the so-called "Showa Series" followed MEGALON, after which that series was followed by the "Heisei Series," wherein "the 'new' Godzilla was portrayed as much more of an animal than the latter Shōwa films." Since then, Godzilla has yet to show heroic tendencies again.  Therefore I think it fair to consider the Big G to be a figure almost completely based in the "existential will."

In contrast, from the Hulk's first six-issue series, he has been portrayed as a character in which "hero" and "monster" constantly struggle.  In this scene from INCREDIBLE HULK #112 (vol. 2), we see the Hulk playing the Good Samaritan as one would not expect of a total monster.

The Hulk's adventures are full of such examples of the "idealizing will," often credited to his alter ego Bruce Banner's better nature.  His sometimes membership in various versions of the Avengers supergroup-- not to mention the Defenders-- also contribute to this reputation.  Thus I would judge that though the "existential will" is present in the Hulk, the "idealizing will" is the one his raconteurs chose to emphasize in most if not all of the character's exploits.

Then we have a figure that was conceived as an overt competitor to Toho Studios' Godzilla, Gamera.

In contrast to the usually ferocious Godzilla, Gamera was given a wholly inexplicable loving attitude toward children, probably because Japanese children became inordinately fond of the turtle-monster, like these two from GAMERA VS. VIRAS:

Gamera, unlike Godzilla, was re-conceived as a defender of Earthpeople early in his career (though not in his initial film).  The giant turtle's motives for fighting monsters on the behalf of humans remained murky in its own "Showa series," but in a later "Heisei" series, Gamera was given a new origin that explained his protective instincts.

So was Gamera a hero, in that he often acted as heroically as did the Hulk?  I would say not.  Even under the revised origin of the Heisei version, Gamera is still dominantly a monster first, even if his "existential will" has been channeled into a heroic tendency by his creators, Atlanteans who impressed their "idealizing will" upon the turtle-creature's habits.  Even though Gamera is beneficent, he inspires fear more than invigorating identification, and so he becomes one of the "monsters who do good" even though the vast majority of them have only negative impact.

The Hulk does bad things at times, whether his character is that of the bemused, childish giant or the tougher "Mister Hyde" persona of Bruce Banner.  In fact, he's proven more capable of destructive pique than Japan's genial turtle.  But on the whole, the raconteurs of THE HULK create the expectation that he will usually do the "right thing"-- the idealistic thing.  In contrast, the primary function of monsters is to destroy stuff, whether they do after the baffled manner of a hostile animal (Godzilla) or like an animal trained to be a "watchdog" (Gamera).

OUR ARMIES AT WAR, WITH MONSTERS

Part 1 and Part 2 of DYNAMICITY DUOS I discussed some of the ways in which individual characters, or small groups of characters, might pass from a lower level of dynamicity to a higher one.  With respect to such characters as Ellen Ripley of the ALIEN franchise, I demonstrated how such a character could begin at the "middle" level of dynamicity and then, in the course of the narrative, pull herself up by the proverbial bootstraps to the "high" level.  Even so, in the film ALIENS Ripley remained remained on the low end of that level, that of the "exemplary" as opposed to the "exceptional" level of her alien opponent. Later, ALIEN: RESURRECTION would transform the heroine into something more than human.

I also want to touch on the question of military might, which is often seen employed by large rather than small groups of characters, a might often pitted against the focal presences of giant monster-films.  I also touched on this principle with respect to small character-groups in TWICE THE MIGHT PT. 2, noting:

...whereas the sense of escalation to a final confrontation is absent from ANGRY RED PLANET, FORBIDDEN PLANET builds this sense by virtue of the baffled astronauts as they attempt to learn the nature of their invincible enemy.

To be sure, when the Id Monster is defeated, it isn't because of the clash between the weapons of Earth-science and the power of the Krell machines. The Monster is defeated by undermining the source of its power in Morbius, who is in essence the Monster's Achilles heel.

Nevertheless, without the clash of energies that establishes how potent the Id Monster is, there would be no narrative perception of the need to seek such a vulnerable point.

Prior to FORBIDDEN PLANET, another 1950s SF-spectacle followed essentially the same pattern.  In Ishiro Honda's 1954 GODZILLA, the audience witnesses the incomparable power of the focal monster.  Though the armies of this film are contemporary ones, as opposed to the far-future forces considered in TWICE THE MIGHT 2, the level of force unleashed by the Japanese military is functionally covalent with the forces unleashed by the heroes of FORBIDDEN PLANET.  The monster is at least affected by the intensity of these forces, though on the whole Godzilla is able to overcome everything humanity throws at him, including a huge electrified fence.

However, one genius-scientist, the war-weary Doctor Serizawa, is able to redeem mankind by unleashing a technological weapon which even Godzilla cannot resist: the deadly "oxygen destroyer," which reduces the giant creature to a skeleton-- though the resilient reptile manages to come back for further rampages in the many sequels.  Serizawa's invention is a tangible expression of the force that mankind as a whole can bring to bear.  So the 1954 GODZILLA qualifies as a combative film, since it both centers upon the results of the combat (the narrative value) as well as evoking the sense of sublime power (the significant value).

Consider in contrast, however, the 1953 adaptation of H.G, Wells' novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.  There's no question that the film evokes the grandeur of clashing powers as the American military strives in vain to bombard the near-invulnerable vessels of the Martian invaders.

However, though this would be another example of a work in which the X-level of dynamicity was expressed by both contestants in the significant sense-- exemplary for the military, exceptional for the Martians-- it would not be combative in the narrative sense.  In the film as in the Wells novel, what saves the human race is not some last-minute strategy or new weapon, but a lucky break having nothing to do with Earth's defenders.  In the book, Wells stresses only irony in the fact that the Martians perish from Earth-bacteria, while the 1953 film reverses this ideological interpretation, regarding the bacteria's presence as an expression of divine providence.  But regardless of which interpretation is favored, in neither case can Earth's defenders take any credit for the Martian defeat.

A very different rewriting of this Wells-conclusion appears in the last part of the Moore-O'Neill LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN VOLUME 2.  The starring characters are all involved in the battle against the Martians' second invasion, though neither Nemo's submarine nor Hyde's supernormal strength are able to do more than to give pause to the aliens.  What defeats the Martians in this second encounter is a mutant strain of bacteria developed by the army and dispenses by the League's government contact Campion Bond.  As in the examples of FORBIDDEN PLANET and GODZILLA, this germ-warfare is yet another last-minute "new weapon" which should be racked up to the account of Earth's defenders, even though Moore typically has his characters express horror at its utilization.  Two of the League-members, Quatermain and Murray, are even implicated in this dubious triumpth in that the two of them unknowingly convey the germ-weapon to their commander.
Admittedly the British army in this story is not as central an opponent to the monsters as the armies seen in the 1954 GODZILLA and the 1953 WAR OF THE WORLDS; the members of the League are the central opponents.  Nevertheless, the combative mode is not dispelled simply because the particular triumph comes about because of the actions of supporting characters.  As long as those supporting characters are strongly allied to the central protagonists, they can be viewed as an extension of the central protagonists' unified will.

One sees this "triumph of the supporting ally" in many venues, so I'll confine myself to one from Marvel's IRON MAN #5, where Iron Man's battle against the computer-villain "Cerebrus" (no relation to the Dave Sim character) is concluded by one such support-character.

MONSTERS, DEMIHEROES, AND OTHER WILLING BEASTS

In this essay I said:

In WORLD AS WILL AND REPRESENTATION, Schopenhauer distinguishes between "intuitive" and "abstract" representations: humans share "intuitive representations" with other animals, in that they are based in the body's "percepts." But humans alone have the power to conceive "abstract representations," for humans alone can base representations in "concepts." I will use this basic opposition here, though I'll substitute "intellectual" for "abstract" purely for euphony.

A little later "instinctual" took the place of "intuitive," but I don't think I adequately explained that these representations are not inherent in the hearts and minds of the characters themselves, which is a mistake I find in the opinions of other genre-sussers cited in that essay, such as Jeff Rovin and S.C. Butler.  Rather, these Schopenhaurean representations are narrative patterns imposed upon those characters by their respective authors, irrespective of how "intellectual" or "instinctive" the characters themselves may be.

So I am not claiming that the character denoted as a hero must be intellectual, nor that the character denoted as a demihero must function by instinct alone.  The willing aspects of the characters are to be found in the narrative functions given the characters by their authors, not in the personalities of characters themselves. 

In this essay I defined Vincent Price’s character Dr. Craven as a demihero, saying that he was defined by "instinctive will."  This doesn't mean that instinct alone rules the character; rather, it rules the pattern of his narrative.  Craven is certainly more intellectual than many of the characters that qualify as heroes.  Craven is governed by “instinctive will” because even though he makes a heroic effort to oppose the villain of the story, he doesn’t become a hero.  He remains defined by his own personal goals alone, without any hint of a transcending altruism.

I’ve defined the persona of the “monster” as the generally negative counterpart of the demihero.  Usually the monster is also defined principally by self-preservation, whether the creature is destructive on a large scale (Godzilla) or covets some forbidden prize (King Kong).  Self-preservation and endurance also typify even benign monsters, like Man-Thing, of whom I said in D IS FOR DEMIHERO PT 3: 

A comics-series like MAN-THING portrays its monstrous protagonist doing good not as a conscious act but in response to instinctive tendencies. 

 

And yet there are monsters who do good as a conscious act.  A prominent example is the Incredible Hulk.  In Peter Coogan’s 2006 SUPERHERO: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF A GENRE—referenced here—he denies that Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be a superhero due to his method of “genre exclusion.”  Yet he doesn’t disallow the Incredible Hulk from superherodom despite that character’s clear alliances to the horror-genre.  And he’s correct in the latter instance.  The Hulk, though a character with no more than a brutish intelligence, exemplifies the same “intellectual will” in his narrative function, in that his authors emphasize that he makes conscious choices to battle evil.  While there are various stories in which the Hulk himself proves an unwitting menace to humanity, it’s far more typical to see him engaged in combat with outright villain-antagonists. The Hulk even has a "rogues' gallery," which is atypical for the majority of monsters of purely kenotic orientation.

The greatest exception are those serials in which a monster is drafted to become a hero in terms of plot-function, even though the monster retains the kenotic *character* of a monster.

Some examples include the 1966 KING KONG kid-cartoon:

Not to be outdone, several of Japan's Godzilla films from Toho Studios also cast the Big G in the unlikely role of Earth's protector.  In GODZILLA VS. MEGALON the Zillinator even allies himself with Jet Jaguar, one of the many progeny of UltraMan, in the battle to save Earth.

Toho's competitor Daiei Studios went even further in "super-heroizing" their monster Gamera.  After just one film in which the giant super-turtle proved a menace to mankind, every other film cast him as a heroic monster who acquired a "rogues' gallery" of mostly one-shot menaces.  A later revival even gave Gamera a backstory to explain why he was so darn beneficial.

Hanna-Barbera revisited the "hero-monster" idea in the 1978 GODZILLA TV-cartoon.  To be sure, though every episode Godzilla had to pit his reptillian righteousness against the Monster of the Week, at least the writers kept the sense that Godzilla was a big irritable beastie rather than a crusading hero.  He only protected the show's human regulars inadvertently, because his son "Godzooky" hung out with these mediocrities and the Big G had to put the welfare of his family above any possible preferences to fry the humans like so many ants beneath a magnifying glass.

So are of these permutations of respectable monster-personas "heroes?"  Only if one prioritizes the *dynamis* of plot over the *dynamis* of character.  I first established the separability of plot-dynamis from character-dynamis in KNOWING THE DYNAMIS FROM THE DYNAMIC, but my fullest examination as to this sort of division appeared in RISING AND FALLING STARS.  Examples here focused purely on the opposition of the "adventure mythos" to the "drama mythos," so that:

Observations include:

STAR WARS serves as an unreserved example of the "pure adventure," in which both plot and characters evoke the dynamis of adventure.

...in STARGATE the mythos of drama pervades the plotting of the series, overshadowing characters who would otherwise fit adventure-archetypes.

Another negative example, but one in which the mythos of drama dominates the characters rather than the plot, would be the 1978-80 versions of BATTLESTAR: GALACTICA. The plot, in which noble humans repeatedly faced the menace of Cylon invaders, clearly takes inspiration from STAR WARS, but the characters lack the *dynamis* of the adventure-mythos, tending toward drama in its manifestation of "melodrama." 

DC Comics' STARMAN, in most of the iterations of the franchise, has usually been a "pure adventure." However, the Starman introduced by James Robinson, whose continuing series ran from 1994-2001, exemplifies the type in which the plot is the main source of the adventure-dynamis.

My final example must be one in which characters with the adventure-*dynamis* override a plot with a dramatic emphasis. My choice here is the 1978 American STAR BLAZERS, adapted from the Japanese anime TV-series SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (which I have not seen in its original form). 

I didn't give an example in which both plot-dynamis and character-dynamis were both aligned to the drama.  But in other essays I have mentioned Classic STAR TREK as one such, so I include it to fill in that space for symmetry's sake.

I mention all these mythoi-examples because I propose the same ambivalence applies to the narrative "persona-patterns."  King Kong, Gamera and Godzilla may follow the plots of heroes in these assorted works, but I assert that in terms of fundamental character they still represent "instinctive will," while the not much more intelligent Hulk represents "intellectual will."  So the Hulk does make that hypothetical "wiki-list of all superhero works that fall into the adventure mythos," mentioned in RISING, while the three big honking monsters cited would still fit the persona of the "monster" rather than that of the "hero."