owie

It’s probably legit that Godzilla would win in a pure grappling/fist-fight contest, with his tail, bite, and ferocity, if we didn’t take anything else into consideration. He’s focused more on the physical combat game than Terminus.

BUT—I don’t think Godzilla would be able to actually do much in the way of physical damage to Terminus, so the pure “who’s a better fighter” question isn’t really relevant.

Terminus can also overrun the area with Stage 3 Termini, who can be major distractors and knock Godzilla down, assisting in the pummeling department. Still, that’s not where the fight will be won.

That’s the energy game, which Terminus will dominate.

Godzilla’s own energy projection is not as powerful or versatile as Terminus’s, and Godzilla’s energy absorption hasn’t really been shown. Godzilla’s breath isn’t any worse than the energy attacks Terminus has withstood before.

In short, Terminus will tank whatever physical punishment Godzilla can dish out (if he’s even at ground level, since he can just fly out of reach) and will constantly distract him with Hercules-Lite Termini to upend him. Meanwhile, his energy field will damage Godzilla and absorb his energy, ultimately leaving a husk of a lizard on the ground.

Yes, Terminus is a villain, so he has losses. So does Dr. Doom, but he’s still a major threat.

I wouldn’t say Godzilla has no losses though. Just for example he is caught and shrunk down and put in a cage. That’s silly and not really worthy of Godzilla’s majesty, but it’s no different from the idea of a team of Mighty Avengers (who are weak compared to other Avengers teams that have specifically noted they couldn’t defeat Terminus) beating Terminus off panel.

Godzilla beating Dum Dum Dugan in hand to hand combat at 9’ tall is not exactly surprising. Yes, Godzilla is shrunk. But he still has significant enhanced strength and durability. It would have been ridiculous if Dum Dum had beaten him. I get what you’re saying about Godzilla using some brawling techniques instead of just pure animalistic violence, but it’s not like he needed skill to beat Dum Dum.

And the Thing didn’t use his fighting skill on Godzilla, or vice versa. Thing just tussles around with him a bit, then he and Johnny back off.

Godzilla's bite doesn’t seem to do a lot of good. I’m sure it’s strong but when he bites that ape guy it doesn’t seem to do any damage (one, two). Meanwhile that other monster bites Godzilla and the teeth visibly penetrate Godzilla’s back as you said.

The tail would be useful though. Still, Terminus fought another Terminus who had a tail, and had teeth. That Terminus ripped its own tail off to use as a lance, and the main Terminus beat it anyway. So Terminus does have some experience fighting giants, including those with teeth and tails.

But I do generally concede that as a fighter, Godzilla has more experience fighting large monsters and he has both the bite and tail, which give him some advantage in physical combat. I buy that.

But the problem is, Godzilla wouldn’t be able to actually do any physical damage to Terminus, as we can see in Godzilla's scaling to Herc, so any better fighting ability is moot. Godzilla might keep smacking Terminus with his tail, but wouldn’t actually hurt him. Remember that Terminus’s insides are actually a weird energy/mechanical/metaphoric environment, so there’s not really any organs or whatever to physically beat up anyway.

One objective way to measure Godzilla's strength is that when he is stuck in his small size, he can’t break out of the thin bars of this cage. Yes, Godzilla is small, and that means his strength would be less. But if Godzilla is as strong as he’s made out to be at full size, then proportionally he should be able to bend those bars. They’re still not very thick in proportion to his size. Any super-strong character, for instance Spider-Man, could bend bars that are that size in proportion to his body, whatever size that body is. Big body/big bars, or small body/small bars, it's the same proportions either way. But Godzilla can’t get out. This means that if he was his normal size, and had bars that were that proportion to his normal-size body, he presumably couldn’t break them either.

But let's move to the more consistent full-size Godzilla.

You say Godzilla is the same strength as Thor because they were both pushing against the same building. But Godzilla was pushing with both arms with his legs stabilizing him on the ground. Thor was hovering in midair with his hammer whirling above him and pushing with one arm. So AT MOST Godzilla is half the strength of Thor—two arms against one. And really, Thor isn’t pushing with his arms, either, he’s pushing with the momentum of his whirling hammer, which isn’t particularly quantifiable but certainly less than his arm strength. So this feat is very helpful in clearly defining Godzilla’s strength as being well below Thor.

Since you pointed out that Herc and Thor’s strength is approximately the same, and we know that Godzilla is approximately half as strong as Thor (or even if he was the same strength as Thor), and we know Hercules can’t rip Terminus’s armor, then we also know that Godzilla can also not rip Terminus’s armor. Which means Godzilla is not a threat to Terminus in physical combat.

Or to put it simply:

• Hercules = Thor </= Godzilla

• Hercules cannot damage Terminus

• Thus Godzilla cannot damage Terminus

Speaking of Hercules, I’m glad you showed that scan of Hercules tossing Godzilla because I was going to do it myself. This shows that someone in Herc’s general strength class can overturn Godzilla by pure strength, even if they’re human size.

This nicely ties in with the mini-Termini. Let’s recap how Termini work.

Stage 1: bacteria. Terminus can put this out in the environment.

Stage 2: animals that eat the bacteria (as seen in Terminus Factor) or just get infected seemingly by touch or air (in Fantastic Four or Avengers 2023) and become robots. Since the city our battle takes place in is populated, this means numerous people could be turned into Stage 2 Termini.

Stage 3: some stage 2 Termini merge together upon contact with radiation, which will abound in this fight, and become stage 3.

A single Stage 2 Termini can trash Machine Man and is a threat to Iron Man.

Stage 3 Termini are strong enough to be a physical challenge for Hercules—certainly when there are several of them.

This means that numerous Stage 3 Termini will be running around the battlefield, not just nipping at Godzilla’s feet, but able, in large enough numbers, to actually upend him and toss him to the ground.

Godzilla's Cold Durability

Cold damage isn’t really going to come up here in this fight, but 1990s Iceman’s cold damage is nowhere near the absolute zero of space.

Godzilla's Heat/Radiation Durability & Human Torch Scaling

Let’s be clear, a lot of the basis for your heat durability are scaling arguments from the Human Torch, and they’re almost all based on his nova flame.BUT THE TORCH NEVER USED HIS NOVA FLAME IN THE FIGHTS. You can’t just assume he did because it was a hard fight. The Torch is in hard fights all the time where he doesn’t use his nova flame.

He doesn't use it very often. It severely weakens him. If he’s not seen explicitly saying he’s using his nova flame, then he didn’t use it. If he does use it, you’ll know, because he’s gonna make sure you hear him shout it out, like he does this time when he has basically no effect on the Hulk. It’s like Thor’s belt of strength—Thor could double his strength any time with his belt of strength, but almost never does, in part because it weakens him after. So you can’t assume that just because Thor’s in a hard spot that he would have used his belt of strength off-panel. Same with Johnny and his nova flame.

So all that scaling for Godzilla’s heat durability goes entirely out the window.

You have provided no proof that Godzilla can take the same levels of heat that Terminus can, whether that be re-entry from space or living for months or years in the Earth’s core (which is as hot as the surface of the sun).

Godzilla'sOther Durability

Godzilla gets hurt, or is shown to be in danger of being hurt, fairly often, just looking at the scans you’ve shown or the stories they’re from, without even doing further research.

Godzilla is in danger from the monsters spinning bio blades: one, two.

Godzilla is pierced by the monster’s teeth.

Godzilla is hurt by the rat! It gets in two solid bites: “This rat-monster has injured him…injures him still.” Yes, Godzilla is shrunken down, but he should still have enhanced durability compared to a rat of the same size. I want to emphasize that the rat is shown as BEING GODZILLA’S MATCH. The normal assumption is that Godzilla’s strength and durability are enhanced beyond what any other creature at Godzilla’s size would have. What this rat fight shows is that that’s not true. That at small sizes, he has the durability of a normal animal of that size. This is the same point I made about his strength and the bars of the cage.

Godzilla is hurt and knocked headfirst into the ground by Reed Richards punching him: one, two. Reed Richards punching him!!! Reed Richards! Punching him!

Godzilla is knocked backward and growls in pain by missiles from Mechagodzilla, showing that he is vulnerable to conventional weaponry.

A normal street power line is enough to help revive him, so he is fairly vulnerable to being affected by electricity.

Godzilla is hurt by Red Ronin’s sword.

All of these attacks are things Terminus can replicate or go beyond. His punching power is certainly beyond Reed Richards’ (Reed can’t punch Thor into orbit like Terminus can) and Terminus’s lance is far more powerful than the SHIELD laser, Mechagodzilla’s missiles, or Red Ronin’s sword.

Let’s focus a bit on Cyclops. Cyclops blast is powerful, for sure. Some of those are legit—the iceberg for instance. But some are also visor-off (the Sentinel/crater), which is not the case when Adaptoid fights Godzilla. For the one example in the Danger Room, they’re just guessing how durable Godzilla is, so Cyke's observation is unreliable. Some of them are also hyperbolic statements that aren’t backed up by feats. Cyke has never done anything like pulverizing Adamantium, for instance, and ten trillion volts or ripping a planet in half is absurd. If his best on-panel feats are doing things like knocking down a forest or making a crater, then ripping a planet in half is obviously hyperbole. The best of these feats is Cyke blasting a path in a mountain, which is definitely impressive, but it also knocks him out (which doesn’t happen in the Godzilla fight, so Adaptoid is not using it at that level), and that blast is still not at the level of Terminus effortlessly blasting 1000’ gorges in the Earth. So Terminus’s power is well above Cyclops.

Think of all the times Scott has fought Wolverine, and blown all the flesh off his bones but Wolverine keeps coming, or he keeps pushing his hand forward through Cyclops’ beam, despite the fact that it’s a concussive blast that should knock him backwards. Cyke’s beams unfortunately have all kinds of anti-feats like this.

You might argue that because the Adaptoid was grown into a giant by Pym particles, that his eye beams would be proportionally more powerful. But no, the beams are energy. Energy doesn’t grow from Pym particles. Cyke’s power just works by opening a window to an energy dimension and letting that energy blast out into the world. Pym particles have no effect on that. It's the same energy coming out.

The ’86 OHOTMU, incidentally, says Cyclops’ most powerful blast has an impact of 500 pounds per square inch. He could knock over a tank truck or puncture 1” thick steel. Anything that can’t knock Wolverine’s muscle-less skeleton backward, and can only puncture 1” steel, probably can’t make a hole in either Godzilla or Terminus.

Terminus's Durability

Now let’s compare with Terminus’s durability. Here’s some highlights, some of which are new:

Herc is “down” after just bouncing off other Stage 4 Terminus. Terminus is so hard-shelled that Herc almost knocked himself out by slamming into him.

Another Stage 4 Terminus is not affected by Torch’s flames. (Stage 4 is the level of the “real” Terminus, who beats this other Stage 4 Terminus, so the real one can do anything he can.)

Iron Man says “my repulsor rays are doing him as much harm as a water pistol” and the other stage 4 Terminus is “brushing off the Torch’s fireballs like so much mist.”

Dazzler blasts the Garokk-piloted Terminus, who is less powerful than the real Terminus, but can’t hurt it: she says she is “pumping every photon I can through this beam, guys…and it’s doing nothing.”

Havok says (about the weaker Garokk Terminus) “Dazzler’s force beam didn’t faze him” and blasts him himself, but the “creep doesn’t even look scorched”

Storm’s lightning knocks the weaker Garokk Terminus to his knees but he’s fine.

Thor and Danvers blast Terminus and he yells but is fine.

Danvers blasts him and he’s fine.

Danvers and Iron Man blast him and he’s fine.

Thor hits him with lighting and he seems somewhat stunned but still standing. (Godzilla has never been hit by Thor's lightning.)

Thor throws Mjolnir and next we see, Terminus is punching him into the ground.

Beyond the ones above, if we compare Thor’s strikes on Godzilla and Terminus, they’re about the same:

• Thor on Godzilla. Hits him once in a fairly standard strike. Causes Godzilla the greatest pain he’s ever felt, but doesn’t damage him.

• Thor hits Terminus 4 times, which he barely even notices, before doing damage on the fifth.

My take is, Godzilla is lucky Thor only attacked him once. Whereas Terminus has rebuffed Thor multiple times.

Quasar (who, remember, couldn’t even cut Terminus’s lance), Dazzler, Havok, Danvers, Thor, and Iron Man are all more or less capable of the same damage output as Cyclops (or more). Many times the attacks don’t just not hurt Terminus, the characters specifically note that they are like water pistols, mist, etc. They are nothing to Terminus. And again, he actually lived in the Earth’s core like it was nothing.

And all of them can do as much damage as we’ve seen from Marvel Godzilla’s breath. So Terminus is not in danger from Godzilla’s fire, and he can take anything Godzilla can, or more.

(For context for the lesser-known ones, Dazzler cuts off Apocalypse’s arm, cuts off Master Mold’s hand, toasts MODOK, wipes out a group of Sentinels, fights off Nightmare in his own realm, when pumped to her maximum sound energy by Galactus she has the power to level a city. Havok melts a door similar to Adamantium, destroys a plane, destroys a space station from Earth, destroys a Sentinel, causes the Hulk enough pain to force him to do what he wants, destroys a satellite from Earth. I assume I don't need to show feats for the others.)

Even with the mini Termini, Stage 3 Termini are “soaking up everything we hit them with” from Nova, Namorita, Speedball, Vance Astro, and Firestar—and Nova, Vance, and Firestar have some pretty decent energy output. Another horde of Stage 3 require the attention of the X-Men “Extinction Team” of their heaviest hitters. Godzilla is going to have his paws full just trying to hurt them, let alone Terminus himself.

Overall, Terminus tanks more actual, direct on-panel attacks than Godzilla.

Healing Factor

Most of your examples of Godzilla’s healing are kind of vague and don’t really show much of an explicit healing factor. The one with the Hulk/Hedora does, though. But all it really shows us is that Godzilla can’t heal fast enough on his own to deal with Hedora’s acid. We don’t know what it actually can heal.

Godzilla heals faster than the Hulk heals because Godzilla is amped by Hulk’s powers. So of course he heals faster. He has his own healing plus the Hulk’s healing. That’s the whole point of that part of the story.

But really, if we compare Godzilla’s healing to 1970s Hulk’s healing, Hulk didn’t really do much healing back then. At least as far as I am aware, they didn’t really bring in the idea of the Hulk having a healing factor, as opposed to just being invulnerable, until the 80s and 90s when Wolverine made healing factors popular. I remember 2 early instances, one where Wolverine fought Grey Hulk and he healed from a lot of stabbing (Hulk 340, 1988), and then later where Vector from the U-Foes blew off all of the Hulk’s flesh down to the bone, and he healed (Hulk 398, 1992). Those are the first two major instances of super-healing that I’m aware of. So well after the 1970s when this crossover Godzilla story takes place. It would be incongruous for Hulk to super-heal in this story if he’s supposed to be the 70s Hulk.

But also, Hulk’s strength, durability, and even total gamma energy level has not always been as amazing as we sometimes think. He got KOd, beat up, and drained all the time back in the day. A lot of these examples are from the 70s:

Here’s the Hulk being stomped into the concrete by Hellcat, here’s Hulk being KOd by the Sons of the Serpent, here he’s blinded by them, here’s Hulk being KOd by Ruby Thursday, here’s Hulk being temporarily beaten by a rando teeny alien, here he gets drained by Doctor Spectrum, here a random guy takes him out with gas, here Hulk is knocked out by the Wrecker, here he’s knocked out by Atlantean sonics, here Dr. Strange reverts him to Banner and here a rando scientist in Spider-Woman reverts him to Banner.

So any scaling chains involving the old-school Hulk can be a little suspect. I would not rely on “he can heal better than the Hulk” as a great example of how tough Godzilla is, or how much energy he has. (More on his Gamma energy below.)

In terms of the Oxygen Destroyer, it doesn’t say anything about how Godzilla came back from that. Maybe he did heal over a very long time. Or maybe, like in the movies, the Godzilla seen after the Oxygen Destroyer was actually a second Godzilla and the first one really did die. It could be anything, Reed has no idea, he’s just guessing. Comic characters survive seeming or actual death all the time; Terminus himself is a great example. So for Godzilla and the Oxygen Destroyer, frankly the movie explanation that there are multiple Godzillas, just like there are multiple Terminuses, is probably the most likely.

What Terminus Does

Sorry for any confusion, Terminus only destroys the surface of planets. We’ve never seen him do it to an entire planet on panel but we’ve seen him start it on Earth three times: in the American West with the Fantastic Four, in the Savage Land, and again in America when he became Ulterminus, at which point the East Coast Avengers, West Coast Avengers, and Great Lakes Avengers were unable to beat him except by BFR (I’m not using Ulterminus in this thread).

He uses his lance to convert all the resources on the surface, including at least the top layer of the crust, to energy and absorbs it. So for instance in the Savage Land, he destroyed the whole Savage Land just by walking around, melted the top layers of rock, and killed everything in the area. His goal on each planet is to render it uninhabitable for the races that the Celestials had judged as worthy.

And again, he has successfully done this to something like a thousand planets. So his record of success, and his capacity for destruction, is vastly greater than that of Godzilla. Marvel Godzilla could not destroy the entire surface of the planet.

Ghidorah

From the description, it sounds like Ghidorah did something similar to what Terminus does, although I get the sense that maybe Ghidorah just killed all the life instead of actually destroying the geologic surface layer of the planet itself. But Ghidorah isn’t Godzilla.

I appreciate the way you tried to scale non-Surfer-amped Godzilla to non-Galactus-amped Ghidorah, but it doesn’t work. It works for the amped versions, but not the baseline versions. The problem is that different heralds have different levels of power and we don’t know how much Galactus gave Ghidorah. Firelord, Nova, or Airwalker are not as powerful as the Surfer, Morg, or the Fallen One, for instance. So we could have a normal Ghidorah who is (just making these numbers up as an example) for instance normally a 6 out of 10 in power, and he gets a 4 upgrade from Galactus to become a total of a 10. Whereas maybe Godzilla is a natural 4 and gets a 6 upgrade from the Surfer to also become a 10. We just don’t know the amount of the boost in either case. We do know, however, that Ghidorah could lay waste to his entire planet, and Marvel Godzilla has shown no evidence of that ability whatsoever, he’s never even destroyed a whole city, so it seems pretty clear that Ghidorah and Godzilla did not start at the same base level of power.

Godzilla's Breath

These are examples of Godzilla’s breath as shown in your scans or from those stories.

You say his breath is as good as Terminus being able to casually draw thousand-foot-deep holes in the ground as he signs his name on the Earth’s surface, or makes mile-wide craters in one shot, because Godzilla “vaporized thousands of feet of mountain.”

No, he did not. He melted a pile of boulders from an avalanche on a mountain. That is a huge difference. And that, and melting some Mechagodzillas, are Godzilla's best breath feat, as far as I can tell.

Comparison of Godzilla’s breath to Johnny’s flame:

Yes, Godzilla’s breath hurts Johnny. But it’s not because it’s as hot as Johnny’s flame, and definitely not as hot as his nova flame (since Johnny wasn’t using it). It’s because Godzilla’s breath is also radiation, as you have pointed out.

Godzilla’s breath hurting the Thing:

When Godzilla was around 9’, he breathed directly on Thing and it just made him get mad. Another time Godzilla blasts Thing he just makes him say “yowtch!” Yes, Godzilla’s breath would be less powerful than normal because he’s shrunken down, but if his normal breath is as destructive as you’ve been claiming, then it should still do a lot more damage than just cause Thing a little pain.

Godzilla’s breath was not able to break Sue’s shield:

In the modern FF crossover, Godzilla blasted Sue’s shield, and the shield held. Yes, it’s impressive to strain the forcefield. Sue’s shields are very good. But they are by no means perfect. Sometimes they’re amazing, other times they break—particularly if we focus on the 60s. See the FF scaling section below. But basically, there are all kinds of things that have broken her force field, while Godzilla’s breath was unable to do so. I’m just going to go over the facts again: this blast could not make 1000’ holes in the crust. It could not make a mile-wide crater. It could not destroy the entire environment. It is not even vaguely proof that Godzilla's breath is at the level of Terminus’s energy blasts/field.

Godzilla’s breath vs Thor, Iron Man, Vision:

Yes, Godzilla’s breath slowed them down. That’s to be expected. But they seem fine the next time we see them. Meanwhile Terminus’s blasts do the same to 2000s Superman, who’s durability is way higher than 70s Iron Man.

Energy Draining

Why is Surfer sensitive to being drained by Terminus? Ben suggests that it’s because the Surfer, as a holder of the power cosmic, and a herald who sought out planets for Galactus, is especially sensitive to life. These two pages are all that explains it. I would say that it’s also a matter of just being a high-energy being that is sensitive to the energy-draining nature of Terminus. It’s not worth it for Terminus to drain lower-energy beings, but someone like Surfer is energy-rich. As is Godzilla. Godzilla also fulfills the whole “sensitive to life” thing since Godzilla is usually understood as the living form of nature’s revenge on humanity for its scientific excesses. Godzilla is life’s revenge. So I think Terminus would feel him as an obvious source of energy.

In terms of Godzilla being able to re-drain his energy back from Terminus, you didn’t show much actual energy draining from Godzilla. Your one example of Godzilla absorbing energy is actually the Hulk intentionally transferring his energy to Godzilla through his blood. Godzilla’s not doing it, Hulk’s doing it. And Godzilla eventually collapses from the toll of having too much Gamma radiation. So trying to absorb all of Terminus’s energy, which is way more than 70s Hulk (again see the feats above for the many times 70s Hulk was drained of energy and reverted to Banner), would also overload Godzilla. I don’t see any other examples of Marvel Godzilla draining energy.

Is Terminus’s energy field radiation, and thus a form of energy Godzilla could absorb? It’s not really described. I would guess it’s more of a unique form of energy given that it both breaks down/melts the environment and absorbs it. It also moves lightspeed, which doesn’t seem like radiation.

I do agree, and said myself, that the example of Terminus absorbing Thor’s energy was unusual because Thor was inside Terminus. I’m just making the point that if Godzilla did somehow puncture Terminus’s armor, it could actually backfire against him, since it could be a location through which Terminus could absorb nearby outside energy.

I think you've got a solid case in Godzilla on his own, but then you just make these wild claims, I'm just sticking these all in one place.

“Thor and Hercules ca also destroy life on Earth fine as shown in the scaling section and Godzilla was more powerful than either.”

What?!? I sure did not see that in the scaling section.

I’ll say it once more—Terminus isn’t just described as being “like” the power of a million exploding suns or any standard hyperbolic language. He is known for actually destroying the surface of many worlds. Hercules of all people is not capable of destroying all life on Earth.

“Thor was also able to fight Celestials in the 70s and did so fine.”

“Fine” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and you don’t back it up. You did show Thor try, and totally fail, to attack them.

“Thing is unlike Terminus, Godzilla is stronger than Hulk, Thor, and Hercules.”

If so, you haven’t shown any examples of it. The only direct comparison you’ve made is that Godzilla is at most as strong as Thor’s one arm.

“Brushes of SHIELD's most powerful Laser Canon at the time of comics. I mean this is late 70s with laser canon feats in comics wiping out cities in power level as threats.”

You showed no feats for this cannon at all outside of this blast, and definitely nothing at city level. It’s a SHIELD laser cannon, it’s not even vaguely as powerful as Terminus’s lance that was designed to raze the surface of a planet.

As I’ve said, while I am generally fine with your high-end-only scaling of these 1960s-80s characters, because if you scale world-lifting-level Thor and Herc to Godzilla, you can also scale them to Terminus, there is a point where I have to puncture this bubble. I’m going to do it for the Fantastic Four because of the claims you’re making for them.

Your Thing strength scaling chain is basically Thor = Hercules = Hulk, who are all able to lift worlds or Jormungandr etc. Then you throw in that Thing = Hulk due to their repeated fights. But those fights always show that Hulk is stronger while Thing is faster and more skilled. And Hulk still wins the majority of them. So I want to clarify where Thing’s normal strength level is at the relevant time period, because it is not Hulk level.

To get a good range of everyday Thing fights, I pulled a bunch from an early-70s FF collection I read recently. This is after the 1960s era where they fought Godzilla in the contemporary crossover and at the same time as the original '70s Godzilla series where they fight a shrunken version of him, and then helped against the full-size version. So these fights are very appropriate for getting a sense of the FF’s power at the appropriate time.

The Thing of this era (1986 OHOTMU: 85 tonner) fights folks like Thundra (OHOTMU: 60 tonner), Professor Power (OHOTMU: 10 tonner), and Darkoth the demon (OHOTMU: 50 tons)—none of whom are close to class 100. These are not planet-busting strength levels. They all give as good as they get against the Thing. I’m only showing a few pages from each fight because they go on for many pages, but those links are indicative of the way they go in general.

Thundra specifically says she’s stronger than Thing and was able to toss him out of a stadium. The Thing of this era struggled to break Paste Pot Pete’s paste. AND we have multiple examples of Thing lifting weights to exercise in this time period. He (and Thundra) work out using weights that are 500 pounds on each end. Not exactly Godzilla or Terminus level. Another time the Thing is amazed because he’s been able to lift 200 pounds more than the previous week. That’s the kind of scale we’re talking about—where a couple hundred pounds is a noticeable difference. Black Panther gives him a little more credit when he gives him an exerciser where he can press 10 tons. So if 70s Thing can’t beat up a 9-foot Godzilla, it’s not surprising.

Let’s look at Sue’s forcefields. I’m about to show a bunch of feats where her forcefields break, and there are a lot more than these. That’s not to say they suck. She also has great feats with the force fields. But if you want to key her fields to how powerful Godzilla’s breath is, or whether it’s impressive for him to break out of her forcefield trap, you have to take this stuff into account. Also, 1960s Sue’s powers were very based on her willpower, which was, generally speaking, pretty weak frankly. She was always being written like she was a wilting flower who couldn’t keep up her invisibility or shields for too long before she fainted. It was only in the 80s under Byrne that she really became a badass.

A few things that have broken or strained Sue’s shields: Blastaar breaks them, the Brute breaks them, Terrax breaks them with his axe, Annihilus punches through them, Sandman breaks them, HERBIE breaks them, an amped She-Hulk breaks them, Angrir’s hammer flying back to him breaks them, normal Hulk strains them and World War Hulk breaks them, trying to hold the Torch’s flame makes her pass out, the Thing can break them, Victorious breaks them, the Wizard bypasses them, Reed in Doom’s armor breaks them. Now some of these are fairly tough characters, I’m not lowballing. But if these things can break her shields, and Godzilla’s breath can’t, then that puts Godzilla’s breath below these things—none of which are enough to destroy a city let alone a planet’s surface. And if her shields are unable to hold Godzilla in place, that’s not surprising because Sandman, Thing, and others were able to physically break them too. Sue’s willpower in the 70s was just not strong against repeated effort.

You didn’t give any examples of the power of Sue’s forcefields when used offensively, but Sue also uses her force fields offensively against Godzilla without much effect. Here, Sue’s offensive force fields are just enough to knock the wind out of the Thing. Or, Mole Man’s android tanked her offensive force fields.

Now let’s look at Human Torch. How hot are his flames? In the '70s, Reed says he can go up to 1000 degrees in his normal heat. Not even close to the Earth’s core that Terminus shrugs off. Another time Johnny has his flame snuffed by some rando Yeti guys. He even goes up to his “greatest heat” level of “white heat blast” and gets burned out, and it didn’t even hurt the Yeti guy.

Thundra blew out Torch’s fire by waving a clock hand around like a fan and then throwing a handful of snow on him. That’s from the era of Human Torch that fought Godzilla.

So all told, it’s not amazing that the 1970s FF couldn’t beat a 9-foot Godzilla, especially when they put like 5 minutes into the fight, only ever attacked him with two of them at once at most (Thing & Johnny and then Reed & Sue), and they were kind of fumbling all the way through.

You have a statement from Pym that the Avengers and FF can’t stop Godzilla. But the thing is, they aren’t shown using their big abilities. They just do a little boom-bash and zap. This is them at basic levels. Thor is not exactly calling down the biggest storm in history on Godzilla, using Mjolnir to absorb his energy, or BFRing him to another dimension. Vision isn’t using his phasing. Torch is not using his nova flame. Iron Man didn’t even use his Uni-Beam.

I do get that they let Godzilla walk away with Rob, but that wasn’t so much “we can’t beat him, this is the only option,” it was more “if the kid can help him find peace then that’s less work for us.”

On the other hand, we know by deeds that FF knew they couldn’t beat Terminus, because they had to resort to BFR; we know the Justice League knew they couldn’t beat Terminus directly, because they had to resort to having him knock himself out with his own lance; we know Quasar and Cosmic Spidey knew they couldn’t beat Terminus because they had to resort to BFR; we know Thor, Danvers, Iron Man, Vision knew they couldn’t beat Terminus, because they had to call in Alpha.

Galactus Comparisons

Reed’s comparison between Godzilla and Galactus doesn’t really make sense, unless he’s talking about the Surfer-amped version. Which it doesn’t seem like he is. But otherwise, how is this definitively sub-herald (as per the plot) creature a threat to Galactus?

Whereas the comparisons between Terminus and Galactus, or Terminus and the Celestials, make more sense. All three are tall humanoids that go around judging and destroying all the life on a planet. Terminus is not as powerful as Galactus or Terminus, and he doesn’t completely destroy a planet like Galactus, but the parallels are there. It’s easy to see why someone might hear about Terminus, and what he can do, and think, oh, he’s like Galactus or a Celestial.

Whereas nobody who hears about baseline Marvel Godzilla will think, oh I bet he could fight Galactus.

Speed

Agreed, Terminus’s flight speed is not his reaction speed. But he is fast enough to hit all those guys I mentioned, which is more examples than Godzilla. And again, if you want to claim that Thor has lightspeed reaction speed, which is ridiculous, then that’s fine because Terminus hit Thor multiple times.

(Just for the same of completeness: If Thor has lightspeed reaction speed, then so does every Asgardian warrior mook who has hit him in battle, and every fodder demon who has hit him in battle, and Skurge the Executioner, and the Wrecking Crew, and Mr Hyde, and Ulik, and Kurse, and…the list goes on. And then everyone who ever hit every one of those guys must also have lightspeed reaction speed too. Which by extrapolation means pretty much the entire Marvel Universe has lightspeed reaction speeds.)

Size

I think there’s a little confusion about height. I said Terminus is often listed at 150 feet, not meters. So if Godzilla is 300 meters, which is fine, then Terminus would, with that listing, be shorter. Now you said that there’s actually an advantage to being shorter, because it’s easier to hit the other one because they’re such a big target. So that’s fine too. But I also said that despite the 150’ listing, he is actually pictured much taller than that on a regular basis. So I would personally say 300’ each.

Godzilla's Rage Power

I don’t think Godzilla gets an amp in exactly the same way as the Hulk, I think he’s more like a berserker, but I more or less buy this. But it doesn’t really help. He’s presumably operating at those upper levels in his fights with the Avengers and the other crossover characters, so that level of power is already taken into account. And given the general reality that he can’t really hurt Terminus physically, and his breath weapon isn’t any more powerful than the energy attacks Terminus has already faced, and Terminus can just fly up in the air if Godzilla every manages to get too much of a rage amp, it's not a factor.

Godzilla's Roar is Like a Thousand Thunderstorms

Given the fact that hyperbolic language is one of Thor’s most consistent characteristics, this doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. But, if we at least take it to mean it’s like “a lot” of thunderstorms, what does it really mean? Basically that his roar is really loud. It’s a good example of how much energy Godzilla brings to a fight, he’s a force of nature, but it’s not going to change the fight in any way. It could knock back Thor because he was hovering with his spinning hammer, it's not going to affect the giant Terminus.

Mind Control

Mind control via Termini enslavement isn’t a big strategy for me, but if anything, the symbiote example shows that Godzilla is in fact vulnerable to this sort of biological mind-control infection.

While Godzilla did manage to keep his own mind in existence while under the symbiote’s control, he was still under the symbiote’s control. Godzilla only escaped control because of Spider-Man’s sonic attack that freed him.

Is It in Character for Terminus to Use His Omnidirectional Field?

I mean, he used it 3 times, and he’s only got a handful more appearances than that. Pragmatically, he clearly doesn’t use it more often because the editors are aware they gave him a weapon that would instantly kill almost every Marvel character.

Karl Kessel's Letter

I mean, I agree with him, those were awesome issues. I remember when I read them the first time, they totally sucked me in. Great, fun stuff. And I agree, it’s a good approach by a writer to see how a character fares when they lose their greatest advantage. But that has nothing to do with whether the issues were gags or not. They totally were. Godzilla vs a rat? C’mon, that’s there for the humor. Same with him in a trench coat, and so on. This fight with the FF was an intentional farce. It was like the Keystone Cops. And that makes for a fun read, but not good feats.