Do you remember what playtime was like as a child? When you’re playing with toys, licensing deals and corporate ownership doesn’t matter. You can combine superheroes from one company with characters from an entirely different universe.

For example, as a kid I had Godzilla toys, and I would regularly have him fight the Justice League. I didn’t have an official Kong figure, but my sister’s stuffed monkey substituted. The battles were epic, and it didn’t matter that they were all from different studios.

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong takes me back to those magical early childhood adventures. The recently concluded collaboration between DC and Legendary Comics—which is now available as a hardcover collection—pits the Justice League against the biggest threats of the Monsterverse. Yes, they’re all here. Not just Godzilla and Kong, but also Mechagodzilla, Tiamat, Scylla and more. It’s an awesome story that vastly eclipses any of the scenarios I came up with as a kid. (In my defense, I was six.)

It’s great to see Godzilla and Kong in the DC Universe. However, this miniseries shows us why they should ultimately be kept apart, and it has nothing to do with corporate lawyers.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving every page of this event. However, it’s important to note that Godzilla and Kong’s presence throws off the entire balance of the DC Universe. Supergirl breaks it down in Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #5.

“There must not be any metahumans on its [Godzilla’s] world…and coming here upset the balance of nature in its eyes,” Kara says.

“Then Godzilla went after Clark to preserve the natural order of a world it isn’t meant to be in,” adds Lois Lane.

This short conversation breaks down one of the main themes of the series. The Justice League and the Monsterverse creatures can’t exist in the same universe because they each upset the natural balance of things.

As to how they wound up sharing space, it’s due to the longtime Superman villain Toyman, who uses the powerful Dreamstone to merge the two realities. It’s a detail that I really dig because it’s easy to imagine Toyman wanting to mash the shiniest toys at his disposal together, just like I did when I was a child. However, Toyman (and my child self) didn’t count on the way their presence upset the balance of the DC Universe.

The Justice League has fought kaijus before. Heck, Kong isn’t even the first giant gorilla to invade the DC Universe (hi, Titano!). However, the Monsterverse creatures are different. Monsters like Starro are sent back into space, while others like Perpetua can be contained. Even the Kraken of Atlantis is locked up securely.

Godzilla, Kong and the other Monsterverse creatures are on another level. If you’ve seen the movies, you know they’re a part of nature. They are tied to the planet’s ecosystem and can get very territorial. In the films, they usually fight each other with little regard for the human population. Humanity is beneath their notice, unless they feel humans are disrupting their territory. 

But what happens if the creatures wind up in a universe of metahumans? This is where everything gets disrupted. Batman has built a giant Bat-mecha to combat the monsters. Lex Luthor has taken control of Mechagodzilla. As a comic book reader, this is all pretty awesome! However, it also demonstrates how the monsters have thrown things out of balance. The heroes and villains of the DC Universe are escalating things to keep up. What happens when Lex Luthor tries to get a bigger kaiju? Will Batman respond with a bigger robot?

And then there are the monsters themselves. Look, I’m obviously Team DC, but we all know territorial creatures like Godzilla and Kong won’t leave the Justice League alone. Godzilla will continue to pick fights in order to assert dominance, and the Justice League will never stop fighting back.

It does give us cool moments like Supergirl taking down Kong with one knockout punch, but it’s not sustainable for either universe. The heroes and monsters will keep fighting, and the stakes will continue to escalate. Eventually, Kong and Godzilla will return to their corner of the cosmos and this chapter of their story will end.

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun before we put the toys away.

Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong by Brian Buccellato and Christian Duce is now available in bookstores, comic shops, libraries and as a digital graphic novel. It can also be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Twitter at @TBUJosh.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Joshua Lapin-Bertone and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.