Taking a break from the SPACE reviews to look at a fairly well-hyped recent release.
Title: Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters
Issue: #1
Date: 2011
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Eric Powell, Tracy Marsh
Penciler: Phil Hester
Inker: Bruce McCorkindale
Colorist: Ronda Pattison
Letterer: Chris Mowry
Editor: Chris Ryall
IDW's new Godzilla book featured one of the greatest gimmicks in comic history. They created a custom cover art for any store willing to order 500 copies. Each cover showed Godzilla's foot stomping the store that placed the order. Marketing genius! Now you can see your local store get flattened by the King of the Monsters, and if you're really obsessive, there are 75 store-crushing cover variants (not to mention four cover variants for those stores who didn't pony up the bucks for the custom cover deal).
This issue also contains thumbnails of all (79!) covers, and the "standard" cover art is also reproduced in full size on the back cover.
Oh, and there's also a story in between those covers. Well, a bit of one, anyway.
Godzilla awakens and begins stomping things (by "things" here, what we really mean is "the city of Tokyo"). And people are upset about that. To be continued. This seems to be a complete reboot, rather than a "return" storyline such as many Godzilla revivals have done. There is even an "origin" sequence for Godzilla's radioactive fire breath, which involves what has to be the quickest and least agonizing decision to use a nuclear weapon in comics. Because the Japanese are certainly not the types to spend any time worrying about the possible consequences of using a nuclear weapon. Anyway, to that list of consequences, you can go ahead and add "granting radioactive breath powers to monsters".
There is also an appearance by President Obama, and an attempt to make "You have got to be %$@#ing kidding me!" into a kind of recurring catchphrase (those are the book's curse-marks, not mine). What is lacking are any sympathetic characters (Sorry, Mr. President!) other than possibly Godzilla himself.
And while there is plenty of destruction, most of it is in isolated pinup-style pages with little actual effort at transition from panel to panel. The whole comic book felt like it was rushing to get the readers past the dull stuff that they'd already seen a million times and get on with the real story, which starts next issue apparently.
I'm not sure this is the way to score points with the die-hard Godzilla fans who are plunking down their money to see Tokyo wrecked.
The artwork is quite nice, and does a good job of capturing Godzilla's size, something that has been difficult in past attempts to bring the big guy to life in comics.
The series promises more monsters (and Toho even included their little monster logos on the inside cover). Maybe with additional monsters will come likable characters and a plot.
Rating: 6/10
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