Title: Godzilla: The New Heroes
Date: May, 2025
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Tim Seeley, Ethan S. Parker, Griffin Sheridan, Chris Gooch
Art: Nikola Cizmesija, Pablo Tunica, Oliver Ono
Colorist: Marissa Louise
Letterer: Brian Kolek
Editor: Jake Williams
IDW's Free Comic Book Day offering for 2025 soft-reboots their Godzilla universe, which is not the same universe as Legendary's Monsterverse, and actually ends up feeling an awful lot like Pacific Rim, with some elements of the Toho films.
There are three stories here, each previewing a new series. The flagship Godzilla title introduces G-Force USA, which immediately feels like more like a superhero team than a military/science operation, and only becomes more so with the addition of "G-mutant" Jacen Braid. Also on the team is Jet Jaguar (from Godzilla Versus Megalon; I'm not sure if he's made previous comic appearances), who is inexplicably providing comic relief by (*checks notes*) speaking only in rhymes that are apparently set to the tune of its theme-song. Let's just say that I've met Etrigan, and you, sir, are no Etrigan.
Building on the mutation theme, the second story introduces the Dead Zone, an area of the Pacific Northwest that has been turned into a mutant-populated wasteland by kaiju attacks. We really just get a glimpse of the setting here, but if you just picture "mutant-populated wasteland" you've pretty much got it. A mysterious being called the Wanderer is shown battling a maybe T-Rex-sized kaiju, but we don't get too much beyond a basic peek.
The third feature is Starship Godzilla, but it really seems to be Starship Mechagodzilla, and it feels a bit like Guardians of the Galaxy with a heist in space and Mechagodzilla as the getaway vehicle.
I wanted to like this, but it all felt a bit off from what I think of as a Godzilla story, and while I commend IDW for trying some different directions, none of it felt all that original either. Everything felt too reliant on superhero-team tropes, space-opera tropes, and post-apocalyptic tropes. Just a lot of tropes here, and only five pages of actual Godzilla. I think there's potential for this to still come together, but this was not as strong a start as it could have been.
Rating: 4.5/10
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