If I had a nickel for every time I picked up a comic recently in which a woman grows giant-sized and fights a kaiju while nude, I’d have three nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened thrice.
Or is it?
It’s no secret I’m a fan of Godzilla and other giant monsters, so of course if a comic promises kaiju action I’ll pick it up. But the nudity, for two of these comics at least, came as an unexpected surprise. I mean I get it, it’s like the old jokes about the Incredible Hulk needing the most elastic pants ever whenever he transforms from Bruce Banner. Characters growing to giant size and the occasional awkwardness that ensues isn’t old at all. This is just that joke on a much larger scale, and I’m more curious than anything else about how each of these three comics handle the same thing.
In the first two comics, this joke is brief. In issue two of Jenny Zero (2021), written by Dave Dwonch and Brockton McKinney, illustrated by Magenta King, colored by Dam, and lettered by Dave Dwonch, we open on our titular character Jenny Tetsuo having transformed into a giant alien form, not unlike Ultraman, but completely nude.
Some context: Jenny is the daughter of deceased superhero Mega Commander Zero. She was once involved with the giant monster fighting team he was a part of, the Action Science Police. After her father’s death, she left the team, fighting her grief and anger with booze, drugs, sex, and her super rich best friend whose fortune she was living off of until the ASP came back begging for her help against an incoming monster.
It’s basically Ultraman, but gritty and mature, and not exactly to my taste. The art is nice, though.
Transformed, Jenny is pissed off, but not necessarily embarrassed. More than anything, she’s shocked to learn that she has her father’s powers, something kept hidden from her all her life. When it comes to the jadokai (as the monsters here are called) she was sent to fight, she takes them down violently and happily. She is also, well, drunk, so keep that in mind for the scene too.
From what I can tell having skimmed the other issues (this second one is the only one I own), this incident is never addressed again, it’s just a thing that happens to Jenny and she moves on from it quickly, as does the story. She’s also seen nude in the first issue briefly after a fling with a guy she meets at a club, and I feel like both scenes are just a little gratuitous more than anything else.
Let’s look at an actual Godzilla title next! Caroline Cash wrote and illustrated a short, ten page comic in IDW’s Godzilla Vs Chicago (2025), wherein a woman drinks something sketchy from a bodega as Godzilla attacks the city. The drink causes her to grow to Godzilla’s size, and she winds up taking on the king of the monsters to protect her city. No embarrassment here, just a bit of aloofness and attempt to wear a flag out of practicality, it seems.
This is more fun than Jenny Zero was, largely due to the cartoony art style and the lead’s chill attitude towards everything happening. I love how she ends up beating Godzilla.
Finally, we get to the main reason I started writing this. Naked Kaiju Woman is written, lettered, and published by Adriano Ariganello, illustrated by Rafael Chrestani, and colored by JP Jordan. There are two issues released, both of which were funded through successful Kickstarter campaigns by Ariganello’s Pesto Comics. Frankly, I’m shocked that I did not come up with this comic myself.
The comic turns what was a momentary gag in Jenny Zero and a short encounter in Godzilla Vs Chicago into its full-blown premise: Claire has the unusual ability to grow to colossal size and strength, losing her clothes in the process, and uses this ability to protect her city from giant monster attacks without a hint of embarrassment or modesty. Her fellow citizens have differing opinions on this, and the first issue focuses on that: protesters call her a slut and billionaire CEO Tilo Trost shows up at her door to personally tell her to stop fighting.
I really love this first issue. For one thing, Claire doesn’t want to actually hurt or kill the monsters she fights, and does her best both to subdue them and to reduce the amount of collateral damage caused in doing so. Her sympathy for them is right out of Ultraman and early kaiju films. It reminds me of the famous quote from Godzilla director Ishiro Honda: “Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.”
Trost and the protesters (led by a charismatic priest) have Claire questioning herself, but in the end she finds unexpected support and continues to fight nude, as it’s who she is and she doesn’t want to hide that. It’s a truly nudist theme!
This element does vanish in the second issue as a new character is introduced: Zayden, a man with the same abilities as Claire, someone who seems to understand her better than anyone else. This leads to a whirlwind romance between the two, one that ends in quite an unexpected way.
While I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first issue, I like Claire a lot as a character and I’m excited to see what the next issue brings based on the final page tease. I think there’s ample opportunity to have more fun giant monster action and for nudity to be a more involved part of the story and themes.
I do also feel like there’s room for improvement with the art. While the nudity here (or in the other titles) is never really sexualized, Claire’s proportions remind me more of a Barbie doll than a real person, and the action lacks weight. There’s also so much bloom lighting going on in the coloring, and I’d like to see the colors themselves go in some more expressionistic directions, but that’s a matter of personal taste more than anything!
Are there any other comics that handle this trope which I might have missed? Did you pick up Naked Kaiju Woman? What are your thoughts? 🪐
I love the idea of Naked Kaiju Woman, I may have to pick this up later.