In 2011, the comicbook publishing company known as IDW released their first Godzilla series, called Kingdom of Monsters. I don’t follow IDW that much, but I do like their Transformers comics. So, naturally, I was curious to see what this was like. For your information, this is my first time reviewing comicbooks, so bear with me.
Kingdom of Monsters is pretty much an accurate representation of how society would react to gigantic beasts destroying the world. Everything turns into a complete mess, governments are falling apart, and chaos is spreading throughout the globe. It doesn’t focus too heavily on the monsters, but it still manages to entertain.
After having the 3 volumes of this series and looking over them a few times, I can conclude that this is one of two things. It could be seen as a poorly written comic, with a cluttered storyline, going all over the place…. but it could also be seen another way.
I think the story is supposed to be cluttered, there’s supposed to be things that don’t make sense, the plot is supposed to go all over the place. If the world did fall into a complete mess, it wouldn’t be a perfectly paced and well thought out story. There would be a lot of stuff going on, and it would be hard to follow. The kaiju are the catalysts for the epidemic. They might cause a lot of destruction, but the humans cause more harm to themselves in the long run. Maybe this is what the writers were going for, but maybe not. I could just be looking too deep into this. I blame English class in high school. That’s all they teach kids to do with stories! Overanalyze everything!
Other than the questionable storyline, the series is alright. The artwork is decent, but it doesn’t work that well for some segments. For parts that are supposed to be serious, the artwork doesn’t give feel of a serious moment. It looks like a bunch of cartoon characters that belong somewhere else. Godzilla’s design isn’t consistent either. On most panels, he looks like his 90’s version, on others, he looks really bad, and sometimes resembles a cat. But overall, not a bad start. It delivers some good laughs, and definitely doesn’t take itself seriously. The makers knew what this was, so they had fun with it. Although I would like to see a Godzilla comic that has a more serious tone, I can’t say this one was too bad.
I would have liked a bigger focus on the kaiju. Like I said, they’re treated like catalysts for the chaos, much like the zombies from the Walking Dead. But the Walking Dead has good human characters to keep people interested. All this comic has is a bunch of parodies of celebrities that only exist for comedic value, and a crappy side plot about a war vet caring for a stupid little girl. And it does get a little too preachy on political matters.
In conclusion, I think this series is worth it. It’s funny, and the fights are nice.
I give it 3 / 5.
Next up is the ongoing series, simply titled Godzilla. It’s a direct sequel to Kingdom of Monsters, taking place some amount of time later. The world has partially recovered during this time. The governments are stabilizing, everything seems positive… then the kaiju come back. In response, a group of ex-military bad@$$es take the responsibility of hunting down all the kaiju… because a 4 person team is more capable of defeating 160 foot tall beasts than several armies of highly trained military forces, right?
Surprisingly, yes. I think it’s because Jason Statham is in command of the group. Don’t believe me? This is directly from the comic.
It’s Jason freaking Statham in a Godzilla comic…. that is awesome. I wonder if the real Jason Statham is aware of this? What would he think?
As ridiculous as the premise sounds, the series is great! It’s hilarious, it’s full of action, and tons of fun to read. I have all 3 volumes of it. Volume 3 has the most action in it, and it is great. I don’t know how or when Gigan, Spacegodzilla, or Monster X came to Earth, but I don’t really care at this point. There’s so many great moments, like when the team hijacks Kiryu, and gives Kumonga a ride across the country to New York. The fight between Godzilla and Hedorah is full of references to the movie they first battled in. But by far my favorite moment of volume 3 is in the big finale, set in New York City.
The entire fight is priceless, but the moment that sells it for me is when Rodan flaps his wings so hard that the sonic boom blows Keizer Ghidorah’s middle head clean off!!! It’s one of the best moves Rodan has ever done. Heck, it might just be his #1.
I liked this series a ton more than I did Kingdom of Monsters. Good art, good characters, good humor, and outstanding fight sequences give this series a solid
4 / 5.
I cannot give a full review of this next series, because I don’t have all of it. It’s recent, and only the first two volumes have been released. I only have volume one, and I don’t want to put off this review much longer to wait for Amazon to deliver it. So, I’ll just give my thoughts on volume one.
The first thing I need to say is how much I absolutely LOVE Matt Frank’s art! I can’t get enough of it! If there’s anyone I want the drawing skills of, it’s him… and Alex Milne. I’m also glad that the people are finally referring to the monsters as kaiju! It’s about time! Kaiju is a much cooler term than ‘giant monster’... even though they both practically mean the same thing.
The best part is the fights. I heard that these fights made it on quite a few ‘best of’ lists for 2013. They do deserve it. The confrontation between Godzilla and Zilla is spectacular. The only thing better is the battle with DESTOROYAH!!!!! I swear, Matt Frank should draw DESTOROYAH in everything involving the character from now until the day he retires. He’s literally that good.
I liked how the plot thickened with the involvement of aliens. That’s the rule for Godzilla. Whether it’s video games, movies, or comics, there always needs to be aliens. It could be an invading race, or one lone kaiju of mysterious extraterrestrial origins, but no matter what… Godzilla NEEDS to fight aliens at some point. If the Legendary Godzilla movie gets sequels, they better follow that rule.
Another impressive feat IDW accomplished was getting the rights to a lot of Toho's other kaiju. They now have Manda, Gezora, Varan, Jet Jaguar, Orga, and a few others. They only give the multi-million dollar film company, Legendary, the rights to ONE kaiju, but the smaller scale publishing company gets their hands on a ton of them. I guess I could see why. With Legendary, or any filmmaking company, they would have to tweak the designs in order to update them for the mass audiences. But IDW is pretty respectful to the original source material of a lot of different franchises. They have barely changed a thing, and so far, it's gone pretty well.
I’m loving Rulers of Earth so far. I can’t wait to get volume 2 in the mail. I might think of reviewing it after I get it.
I’m also loving what IDW has done with the franchise, It may have started out a little iffy, but now it’s great. I would suggest picking these up. They’re a lot of fun.
I know there are a couple other comics I didn’t get to in this review, even though I have copies in my possession. I figured I would just review the main story arc of the IDW series, and post part 2 later. I didn’t feel like attacking my readers with a gigantic wall of text. So, coming soon are my reviews of Godzilla: Legends, and Half Century War.
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