When Monsters Roamed the Page: A Love Letter to Pulp, Cryptid Chaos, and Bigfoot
Before cinematic universes and billion-dollar box office runs, there was the pulpy madness of comics – where monsters walked among men, gods wrestled with morality, and the jungle hero or misunderstood cryptid was always just one panel away from tearing through your imagination. This list isn’t just a nostalgic stroll through back issues; it’s a blood-slick safari through the weird, wild, and gloriously unhinged side of comic book history. From Kubert’s Tarzan raging against divine obsession to Marvel’s kaiju-era Godzilla and even Bigfoot finding himself reborn as Frankenstein’s heir – every issue here captures the thrill of paper, ink, and primal storytelling.
These aren’t your clean-cut superheroes or sanitized myths. These are stories about survival, obsession, and the savage poetry of creatures caught between myth and man. Whether it’s Sasquatch punching aliens, mutants brawling through snowstorms, or the King of the Monsters turning the Grand Canyon into a graveyard, this collection celebrates the chaotic energy that made comics a playground for the monstrous and the magnificent. Strap in – this is pulp evolution at its most feral.
10. Tarzan Vol 1 Issue #227 (1974)
In Tarzan #227 (DC Comics, 1974), the King of the Jungle dives headfirst back into the madness of Opar – a decaying city crawling with half-human zealots and ruled by the dangerously devoted La. What starts as a gold run to rebuild his family’s fortune quickly turns into a battle for survival when La’s obsession with Tarzan boils over into full-blown vengeance. Captured, betrayed, and surrounded by the snarling hordes of Opar, Tarzan does what he does best – tears through the chaos with primal fury, escaping collapsing temples and divine wrath like a man born from the wild itself.
Brought to life through Joe Kubert’s unmistakable, pulse-pounding art, this issue hits that perfect mix of pulp grit and emotional depth. Tarzan isn’t just wrestling monsters – he’s wrestling what it means to be human in a world built on power and obsession. The backup feature, Brothers of the Spear, keeps that fire burning with royal intrigue and loyalty tested by blood. Together, they make Tarzan #227 a vintage jungle epic that still swings harder than most modern adventures.
9. Journey Into Mystery Vol 2 Issue #13 (1974)
In Journey Into Mystery Vol. 2 #13 (Marvel Comics, 1974), the horror anthology machine fires on all cylinders with “A Titan Stalks the Tenements!” – a grim little fable about an ordinary man who craves power in a city that’s already forgotten him. When he stumbles upon a crashed alien device, it grants him size, strength, and the illusion of control. But power never comes clean in these stories. His transformation into a towering monster quickly becomes a nightmare, crushing the very world he wanted to rise above. By the time the alien energy consumes him, it’s not heroism that’s left – it’s a cautionary tale written in rubble.
The backups, “The Man Who Vanished” and “The Collector,” keep the mood dark and ironic – one about a scientist who literally erases himself out of existence, the other about an art dealer who learns he’s the final piece in a cosmic gallery. Journey Into Mystery #13 is classic 70s Marvel horror – short, sharp, and dripping with poetic justice. It’s the kind of comic that reminds you why the monsters back then didn’t need capes – just bad decisions and a cruel twist of fate.
8. The Phantom Issue #1643 (2013)
In The Phantom #1643 (Frew Publications, 2013), the Ghost Who Walks trades the steamy jungles of Bangalla for the misty forests of North America in “Bigfoot.” When logging crews start vanishing and whispers of a hulking beast echo through the pines, The Phantom steps in to separate folklore from foul play. What he uncovers isn’t a monster born of legend but a cover-up powered by greed – a fake Bigfoot used to scare workers away from illegal operations. Of course, that doesn’t stop the story from dangling the supernatural just out of reach, teasing that maybe there’s more truth to the myth than anyone wants to admit.
Told with moody tension and pulp grit, “Bigfoot” feels like a campfire story with a conscience – a mix of mystery, myth, and moral reckoning. The Phantom isn’t just hunting monsters; he’s exposing the human rot that hides behind them. And by the time that shadowy figure slips through the trees in the final panel, you can almost hear the question hanging in the air: was it justice he found… or something older watching from the dark?
7. Classic X-Men Vol 1 #26 (1988)
In Classic X-Men #26 (1988), Marvel cracks open one of the all-timers from the Claremont and Byrne run – Wanted: Wolverine! Dead or Alive!” The X-Men are en route to Japan when a blizzard forces them down in Calgary, right into the path of Alpha Flight, Canada’s shiny new government superteam. Their mission? Drag Wolverine back to the Department H program he bailed on. What follows is a blizzard-born showdown – claws versus snow gods, mutants versus national pride. Storm, Cyclops, and Colossus trade blows with the Canadian elite while Wolverine finds himself caught between loyalty to his mutant family and the ghosts of his past. It’s superhero storytelling at its most human – a battle as much about identity as it is about fists and fury.
The new backup story, “What Happened to Nightcrawler?”, slows the tempo and turns inward. In a quiet, almost haunting interlude, Nightcrawler reflects on his place in a world that judges him by his face before his faith. It’s the perfect emotional aftershock to the main story’s chaos – proof that beneath all the capes and claws, the X-Men’s real fight has always been for a sense of belonging.
6. Godzilla Vol 1 Issue #10 (1977)
In Godzilla Vol. 1 #10 (Marvel Comics, 1977), it’s monster mayhem in the American heartland as the King of the Monsters collides with the colossal Yetrigar at the edge of the Grand Canyon. What starts as a territorial standoff quickly turns into a prehistoric brawl of teeth, claws, and atomic fury. Godzilla and Yetrigar crash through rock and dust like living natural disasters, their fight shaking the canyon to its core. It’s not about good or evil here – just raw instinct, scale, and survival. When Godzilla finally gains the upper hand, it’s less a victory and more a reminder: no matter what continent he stomps on, the big guy remains the apex predator of chaos.
The issue is pure 70s Marvel spectacle – part kaiju carnage, part pulp adventure. Every page drips with energy as Godzilla’s atomic breath lights up the canyon walls and Yetrigar’s brute strength keeps the outcome uncertain until the final panels. There’s no grand moral, no political undertone – just a titanic throwdown rendered with thunderous power. It’s Godzilla at his best: unstoppable, untamed, and utterly destructive.
5. Bigfoot Frankenstein (2021-2022)
Bigfoot Frankenstein kicks off with a concept so wild it shouldn’t work – but absolutely does. After an entire tribe of Sasquatches is slaughtered, Jude Frankenstein, the last living heir of the infamous family, decides to play god one more time. He stitches together a new monster from the remains of the fallen and sparks it back to life – Big Frank, a hulking fusion of folklore and horror-science. What follows is less a creature feature and more a dark road story about grief, vengeance, and identity. As Jude and Big Frank trek through backwoods America, the duo crosses paths with monsters both literal and human – the kind of redneck cruelty and mythic evil that make the hills run cold.
Across five issues, Bigfoot Frankenstein swings between grim revenge tale and twisted buddy horror, never losing sight of its heart beneath the carnage. Big Frank isn’t just hunting killers – he’s wrestling with what it means to exist when your body is a tomb. From brutal showdowns with boogeymen to the emergence of a “Bride of Bigfoot Frankenstein,” the series builds to a blood-soaked finale that asks whether vengeance can ever resurrect something worth saving. It’s pulp horror done right – weird, sincere, and stitched together with pure monster-movie soul.
4. Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman (2016)
Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman takes the most bonkers premise imaginable – Bigfoot gets yanked off Earth and dumped onto a dying alien wasteland – and leans into it with zero hesitation. Instead of lurking in forests, our mythic fur-covered legend wakes up in chains, forced into servitude under tyrants who see him as nothing more than muscle for hire. That lasts about five minutes before Bigfoot does what Bigfoot does best: breaks free, grabs the nearest oversized sword, and starts carving his path through bug-vampires, desert warlords, jungle beasts, and every pulp-era nightmare the galaxy can throw at him. It’s Conan-meets-Flash Gordon via Pacific Northwest cryptid mythology, and it rules.
Across the series, Bigfoot doesn’t just survive – he myth-builds. With an alien sidekick chronicling his rise, he goes from outsider to rebel legend, an unstoppable force swinging steel in a world that desperately needs a hero who doesn’t care about thrones or politics – just doing what’s right and smashing whatever gets in the way. By the time he’s staring down the red-skinned tyrant Korovan Muspin, the series has fully cemented itself as a love-letter to pulp sci-fi weirdness and sword-and-sorcery mayhem. It’s raw, it’s wild, and it proves one thing: you haven’t truly seen Bigfoot until you’ve seen him wage war on another planet.
3. Alpha Flight (1983-2012)
In the 1980s Alpha Flight series, Marvel’s northern powerhouses weren’t just defending Canada – they were redefining what superhero storytelling could look like outside New York’s skyline. And at the heart of it all stood Sasquatch – the muscle, the mystic, and the man torn between science and savagery. Walter Langkowski wasn’t your average gamma-powered brute; he was a physicist who accidentally tapped into something older and far more primal – the Great Beasts. Across key issues like #9–10 (his brawl with the Super-Skrull), #23 (“The Unbelievable Secret of Sasquatch”), and the haunting #44–46 arc involving Snowbird’s transformation, Sasquatch became the emotional and mythic backbone of Alpha Flight. His storylines swung from wild, big-monster fights to introspective breakdowns, blending pulp action with eerie, supernatural undercurrents.
Byrne’s run turned Sasquatch into a symbol of duality – not just man versus monster, but modern science versus ancient myth. Later issues like #64–75 pushed that even further, showing Walter wrestling with his own mortality, identity, and the lingering curse of Tanaraq. He wasn’t just the team’s tank – he was its tragedy. Through Sasquatch, Alpha Flight hit a rare sweet spot between superhero spectacle and existential horror, proving that beneath all that fur was one of Marvel’s most complex souls.
2. The Big Bigfoot (1996)
This anthology collects eight different tales all centred on the legend of Bigfoot – the moss-covered giant who lurks just beyond the campfire’s glow. From “Bigfoot vs Donkey Kong” to “Bigfoot in Manhattan,” the book swings wildly across tone and setting: sometimes horror, sometimes pulp, sometimes absurdist myth. Its contributors (writers like Paul O. Miles, Norman Partridge, Phil Hester and artists like Dan Burr and John Bergin) dive into everything from cryptid folklore to city-slick chaos, proving Bigfoot isn’t just a forest monster – he’s a myth-machine.
What binds these stories is the sense that Bigfoot is the silent witness, the out-of-place creature in the human world – haunted, hunted, mythologised. Whether the beast is stalking witches, crashing urban jungles or facing video-game kaiju analogues, the anthology plays with scale and mystery: the giant beast as monster, the myth as metaphor. It’s short, surprising, a bit weird, and completely in love with what hides in the gaps of legend.
1. Bigfoot (2005)
Bigfoot (IDW, 2005) is what happens when Steve Niles and Rob Zombie decide to take America’s favorite campfire story and drag it face-first through the mud. Set in the backwoods of Pennsylvania in the 1970s, it opens with a gut-punch – a family torn apart by something massive, hairy, and far from the gentle forest guardian we grew up hearing about. The lone survivor, young Travis, grows up haunted by that night, and when he returns years later to hunt the creature down, the line between vengeance and self-destruction blurs fast. This isn’t a “what if Bigfoot were real?” story – it’s “what if Bigfoot were a relentless, blood-soaked nightmare that never forgot your face?”
With Richard Corben’s grimy, visceral art leading the charge, Bigfoot is a beast of pure grindhouse horror – part monster movie, part psychological meltdown. Niles and Zombie take the cryptid myth and strip it down to muscle and fear, swapping mystery for massacre. Every panel feels damp with dread, every kill scene hits like a shotgun blast, and by the end, the only thing more terrifying than Bigfoot is the man who can’t stop chasing him. It’s raw, nasty, and cathartic in the way only true pulp horror can be – Deliverance by way of Creepshow, with a scream echoing through the trees long after the last page turns.
Have you read any of these Bigfoot comics?
What’s your favourite comic book scenes featuring the most elusive of cryptids? Let me know in the comments below.
