Godzilla vs. Spider-Man #1

History

The 'Godzilla vs. Marvel' event was announced in December 2024 by The Hollywood Reporter, the product of negotiations Marvel had been pursuing with Toho for several years prior. Each one-shot was built around a different creative team and a distinct era of Marvel Comics history, with this issue assigned to writer Joe Kelly, who publicly stated that he practically leapt at the assignment the moment he heard the premise, calling the 1980s setting a direct connection to his own years as an active Spider-Man collector. Artist Nick Bradshaw handled both the interiors and the main cover, with Nick Lowe editing and Joe Caramagna lettering; C.B. Cebulski served as Editor-in-Chief. The series' individual issues were conceived as standalone stories set on a dedicated alternate-universe Earth (designated TRN1577 in Marvel's internal taxonomy), each designed to be accessible without prior reading of the others, though the Spider-Man and Hulk one-shots were explicitly written to share continuity with each other.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Released April 30, 2025 (cover-dated June 2025); written by Joe Kelly, with interior art and main cover by Nick Bradshaw, colors by Rachelle Rosenberg, and lettering by Joe Caramagna; edited by Nick Lowe.
• Third of six one-shots in the 'Godzilla vs. Marvel' initiative — Marvel's first new Godzilla comic since Godzilla #24 (1979), representing a roughly 46-year gap in Marvel's Godzilla publishing.
• Though Spider-Man appeared briefly in Godzilla #24 (1979), this is the first issue in which Spider-Man and Godzilla actually fight each other in a story.
• The story is set on alternate-universe Earth-TRN1577 during the mid-1980s, immediately after the original Secret Wars event, with Peter Parker wearing the alien black symbiote suit — the same chronological window as Amazing Spider-Man #252–258.
• The Venom symbiote abandons Spider-Man mid-fight to bond with Godzilla, creating a kaiju-scale symbiote host directly connected to Knull (the King in Black) through the Symbiote Hive-Mind — one of the largest-scale Venom host scenarios in Marvel comics history.
• The issue concludes with the first appearance of 'Godvenom': a Godzilla-power-infused version of the Venom symbiote that bonds with Eddie Brock in the aftermath, retaining Godzilla's atomic and physical attributes in addition to the symbiote's own abilities.
• Spider-Man defeats the Venomized Godzilla by repurposing the Shocker's vibro-gauntlets — recalibrated to the frequency of Godzilla's own roar — as a sonic weapon, an in-story nod to Venom's classic vulnerability.
• The issue received a second printing, and shipped with at least 14 variant covers, including a foil cover by Patrick Gleason, a 'Monster Homage' cover by Nick Bradshaw based on Where Monsters Dwell #22, and a 'Godzilla King of the Monsters' homage cover by Jerry Ordway. The complete six-issue series was subsequently collected in the trade paperback Godzilla vs. the Marvel Universe, published September 30, 2025.

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