"[Stan Lee] simultaneously bragged about the greatness of Marvel and expressed such humility that when they screwed up, as they occasionally did, you were willing to cut them a lot of slack." (Evanier, 2003)

"Also, Marvel Time is not the same as real time. Showing four hours of the Thundergod's admittedly hectic life may take four issues and four months of regular time, so that adds to the continuity confusion and creates situations like, having Peter Parker sunning himself in the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN while having a snowball fight in the same month's TEAM-UP or SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN. What we try to do is to occasionally leave time gaps between the end of one adventure and the start of another, so that an imaginative and industrious Marvelite can figure "Ah! the Hulk was in Hohokus, New Jersey, when he polished off Orloff the Orthodontist last issue, but this month's mag opens with him kicking sand in a bully's face on Pismo Beach! Getting there probably took him several days. That could explain why he had time to help Nighthawk and Hellcat in the bean-eating contest several issues ago in DEFENDERS! We think it's one of really fun fringe benefits of being a Marvel fan, and judging from some of the well-worked-out theses that a lot of you keep sending our way, you're in agreement."

"Marvel Time" - which for instance begged the question why Peter Parker hadn't aged that much in 15+ real time years of being Spider-Man - was at the time a hot topic amongst editors and writers at Marvel, along with how much change could or should be brought to certain characters (Stan Lee back in his editorial days had always advocated a mere "illusion of change"), and it almost seems as though this discussion spilled over into this (rather lengthy) Bullpen Bulletins bullet point.

Apart from being informative, though, it also highlighted the Marvel house style of it being totally okay to poke fun at their own characters. It was, of course, an echo and a legacy of Stan Lee's approach - we're amongst friends here, we can have a good laugh together and know we're only joking.

The fact that comic books and real time were always in somewhat of a flux was also made clear by a short by-the-way plug in this Bullpen Bulletin reminding "younger readers and cartoon aficionados that this month sees the appearance of the all-new, all original FLINTSTONES CHRISTMAS PARTY (...) gift-size Treasury Book!" - a clear indication of the three month gap between cover date (February 1978, in this case) and actual on-sale date (November 1977). That last snippet also illustrated how much Marvel was still expanding its range of titles, now even stretching the borders of the Marvel publishing Universe to previously unimaginable genres through licensed characters..

Godzilla has a huge recognition factor, as lots of people of all ages know the name and have a general idea of a city stomping monster, possibly even without ever having seen a Godzilla movie (although recent big dollar films featuring the prehistoric sea monster awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation may have changed that a bit). The original Godzilla movie was made in 1954 by Toho Studios of Tokyo, and became such a success that it spawned an entire franchise of further Godzilla movies (which increasingly also introduced other giant monsters). A heavily altered version of the film was released in the United States and worldwide as Godzilla, King of the Monsters! in 1956, featuring additional footage shot with actor Raymond Burr.

An anecdotal piece of trivia concerning the original Godzilla movie is the fact that - rather than using the classic stop-motion technique employed by other studios at the time - the producers had an actor play the monster wearing a latex costume. In any case, Godzilla movies are a matter of taste - people seem to either like them a lot and or not at all.

"It was a piece of crap, [Doug] Moench recalls, but Stan [Lee] was sitting next to me hooting and hollering and clapping. He went crazy during the fight scenes, shouting, 'Go get 'em, Godzy!' (...) Roger Stern, a Marvel editor at the time, was also at the screening. "Stan was trying to show enthusiasm in front of the Toho execs." (Greenberg, 2019)

The consensus among the Marvel editorial staff present at the screening was that they had just watched a "terrible movie with these awful special effects" (Roger Stern, in Greenberg 2019), but the top brass saw a sales potential and a deal was struck. It was not the first time that the creative talent at the House of Ideas was left to figure out how to make a licensed character work (the Human Fly was another example).

The licensing contract only included Godzilla but none of the other Toho movie monsters which would often fight the "original" - for financial reasons.

"We would have had to pay Toho the same amount for each one [but] it was such a shoestring profit margin that there was no way Marvel could afford them." (Moench, in Greenberg 2019)

Moench therefore simply created his own XXL monsters for Godzilla to battle (such as the bat mutation Batragon) as well as original villains (such as the deranged geneticist calling himself Doctor Demonicus) and weaved all of this into parts of the fabric of the Marvel Universe by having S.H.I.E.L.D. and Dum Dum Dugan play key roles. It was a decision made by the top editorial staff even before signing the contract, but Moench did foresee a problem.

"It's a wonder why we never thought of it at the time or pushed to do it (...) I would have loved to have drawn that!" (Trimpe, in Greenberg 2019)

The end of Marvel's Godzilla came about after 24 issues not due to low sales but rather because Toho decided they wanted to double the licensing fee when the contract for the publishing rights came up for renewal, and as a consequence, Marvel pulled the plug.

"It can’t be overstated just how popular the Thing was during the 1970s. He was just behind Spider-Man in terms of his draw power, the Wolverine of his era. And unlike Wolverine over the past few decades, if you wanted to read a story with the Thing in it, you generally needed to be buying FANTASTIC FOUR. There’d be an occasional guest-appearance in another title here and there, but nothing like the world tour that Wolverine has been on since the 1980s." (Brevoort, 2021)

In order to tap into this popularity, Marvel tried out teaming up the Thing with a different character for a done-in-one story in each issue of Marvel Feature #11-12 (September and November 1973). It was a concept well and successfully established by Spider-Man's team-up title since Marvel Team-Up #1 launched in March 1972. Not surprisingly, given the popularity of the character, it worked with the Thing too. Since the obvious title was already taken, the House of Ideas launched the Thing's team-up adventures as Marvel Two-in-One in January 1974.

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