DALLAS — Godzilla vs. Texas, a 48-page anthology comic featuring four writer-artists with roots in the state, will be released in comic shops across Texas on Wednesday. The book is divided into four interpretations of Godzilla wreaking havoc across the Lone Star State, with separate stories from Matt Frank, Devin Kraft, Joe Eisma and John Lucas.

The release is one chapter in the ongoing series Godzilla vs. America, which has previously featured the monster battling in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. It marks the first time Godzilla has been pitted against an entire state rather than a single city.

"Unlike a lot of other states, Texas has a lot of really big cities, but no one city really represents the state. I think Texas has a unified identity that a lot of other states don't. Plus, it's just a great title." said Matt Frank, a comic book writer who has worked on Godzilla titles for more than 15 years. Frank is originally from San Antonio and now lives in Austin.

Frank's story includes a podcaster character who argues that Godzilla is a hoax. "There's a lot of people who try to take advantage of people's skepticism or baser instincts in order to profit off of them, and that was definitely something like Godzilla would be ripe for someone to say that's not real," Frank said.

The anthology also draws on the state's response to natural disasters. "Whenever there's a big natural disaster in Texas, Texans — by and large — tend to come together, tend to lock arms and help each other out. It was also an excuse to have Godzilla destroy a bunch of landmarks," Frank said.

Among the locations reimagined in the book is Big Tex, the 55-foot cowboy figure that welcomes visitors to the State Fair of Texas each year. In a segment by Dallas native Joe Eisma, the figure appears as a mecha version called the Tex-Mech. The character's first spoken line in the comic is "alright, alright, alright."