Geneticist Douglas Birely
used his genius to transform ordinary human beings into super-humans, and to
create giant monsters! Whoa! His first appearance was in
Godzilla: King of the Monsters #4, where he
had established a base on one of the Aleutian islands. He had created 4
monsters -- Batragon, Ghilaron, Centipor, and Lepirax, but Godzilla arrived and
killed them. S.H.I.E.L.D.,
who had been following Godzilla, arrested Demonicus, but an alien helped him
escape, leading to his appearance in Shogun
Warriors.
He then had a run-in with
S.H.I.E.L.D. (Shogun
Warriors #14) and then popped up to menace
the Avenger Tigra, who
had crashed on a Pacific island in a Quinjet (IM
#193). He loosed a huge lizard (who apparently
actually is Godzilla, but couldn't be called thus due to licensing
matters) onto this island that threatened to stomp the natives like pancakes.
Tigra assisted as much as she could, but thankfully Hawkeye,
Mockingbird and Tony
Stark in his Recovery Armor
showed up to lend a hand!
While hoisting Demonicus' monster lizard out
over the vast Pacific, the Recovery Armor's jets
burned out and Stark and armor alike sank like a
stone! But Tony managed to save himself, successfully making it to one of the
Avengers' Quinjets. A few issues later (IM #196),
Doc Demonicus popped up again, this time in the Recovery
Armor itself -- which Tony had to ditch in the
drink in order to survive. Tony stopped him, of course, using only spare parts of his armor!
The Doc later appeared in issues of the West Coast Avengers where he
actually raised his own Pacific island, which he named
"Demonica" and declared independent, and founded a
group dubbed the Pacific Overlords.
You might be interested to know that Dr.
Demonicus' monster in that issue is royalty. He's Godzilla:
King Of The Monsters! How? In 1977, Marvel
acquired the rights from Toho Co. Ltd.
to do a comic series staring their famous monster, Godzilla (or
Gojira as they call him in Japan). The series ran
for 24 issues, written by Doug Moench
and drawn by Herb Trimpe.
The series sold well, but Toho's licensing fees became too much. Thus, the
series ended.
According to fans of Godzilla, Dr.
Demonicus, who again debuted in Godzilla
#4, captured him and transformed
him into the monster seen in Iron Man.
You'll notice he calls Godzilla "my old enemy." Godzilla later appeared in
The Thing #31.
Also, this wasn't the first time Godzilla met
Iron Man. In the two-issue
finale of Godzilla's series, he fought the Fantastic
Four, the Avengers, and
SHIELD in New York. Iron
Man was among them. He made an appearance earlier
in the series as Tony Stark, whose company was building a huge robot, Red Ronin, to combat Godzilla
for SHIELD. Ronin later appeared in Avengers
#197-199, rampaging through New York under the
control of an insane scientist.
First ever appearance: Godzilla #4.
First IM appearance: Iron Man #193.
(Thanks to Douglas
Ketcham for additional info.!)
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