The old argument, which was probably never all that true but has that certain air of truthiness that Stan Lee was so adept at selling, was that Marvel comics were generally about realistic-ish people dealing with realistic-ish situations (with the powers and villains often being metaphors, or at least easily interpretable as metaphors), while DC comics were big and operatic and the heroes were larger-than-life figures dealing with cosmic threats like the armies of Apokolips or unknowable primal terrors like the Joker.

And if there has ever been a comic that contradicts all of that, at least as far as DC is concerned, it’s Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong issue 1, a relatable story about Superman dealing with a very human issue and some very human anxieties. Wait, that can’t be right. Surely this must be a comic about the Justice League fighting Godzilla fighting King Kong! That’s what the title says!

Actually, while Godzilla shows up early in the book, the rest of the comic is spent in a flashback to the events leading up to Big G’s arrival — and most of those events involve Superman preparing to propose to Lois Lane while the other members of the Justice League weigh in on his decision. The Flash is like “I’m jealous, my girlfriend doesn’t even know my secret identity,” the Green Lantern is like “don’t do it, bro!,” and Batman is like “I’ll lend you some money if you need it.” Meanwhile, Superman is like “I don’t really need input from any of you,” and you have to wonder a little bit why he’s friends with such weirdos.

It’s an interesting setup to a comic book, and it somewhat calls to mind the phenomenal double date issue from when Tom King was writing Batman (the best thing he’s ever written and let’s just leave it at that), but it’s not what you’d expect from something called Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong. Still, it’s a nice way to establish what sort of headspace these people are in when Godzilla does finally show up at the end of comic. You’ve gotta have some kind of human stakes in a monster story, or else you just root for the monster.

As that stuff is going on, a B-plot involving the Legion Of Doom is where the actual monster story comes in. It’s some comic book nonsense that involves briefly hopping to a different universe (something akin to the Monsterverse from the Hollywood Godzilla movies, but not necessarily the canonical Monsterverse), and then Toyman insisting that all of the kaiju in that world are toys and that he wants to be able to play with the toys in his regular universe. (Lex Luthor briefly questions why he brought Toyman along at all and, yeah dude. What the hell.)

So it’s not really a small stakes, relatable story about superheroes having relatable human issues. But that stuff is (kind of) in there! In fact, there’s more of that stuff than there is Godzilla and King Kong, at least in this first issue. So maybe it is a relatable human story? Comics are cool!

I don’t know yet! Feel free to suggest some ideas. Should I finally talk about Transformers comics? Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s Daredevil work? This newsletter is as much yours as it is mine, so I’d love to hear what YOU want to read. (I’m speaking figuratively, of course. This is my newsletter.)