This review is dedicated to Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh (the writers of GODZILLA- KINGDOM OF MONSTERS). First let me say to you two, please keep your political affections away from my childhood innocence. By that I mean, do not dare taint a beloved centerpiece of my childhood-GODZILLA- with your obvious political bias….unless of course it lends itself to the story. However, you two make political dialogue fit as seamlessly into this story as smoothly as a round peg fits into a square hole.
Alright, now that that’s out of my system let me start reviewing the comic. I caved yesterday and bought all 6 back issues and the current one. It cost me $38.95 because back in 2006 legislators here in New Jersey decided that periodicals, such as comics, needed to be taxed…somehow newspapers got a get-out-of-jail-free-card, but that’s a whole-nother article for a different website. So anyway , while I’m sitting in the supermarket parking lot about to buy more beer, I’m a able to polish off all 7 issues. That’s 7 issues in less than 30 minutes….that works out to a little more than a $1.00 a minute….should’ve just called a 1-900 number. The first thing that struck me was the penciling of Phil Hester….it’s absolutely horrible. Now if you’re a fan of the mid-to-late 90’s DARK HORSE COMICS version of GODZILLA, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Mr. Hester’s drawings ranged from primitive to grossly inconsistent. It’s either this man didn’t use enough reference material or he is a third string artist – you know, the kind that gets woken up out of an ignorant lethargic stupor with a call to action and he looks up with glassy liquid eyes and says “I don’t know where my pencils are. Have you seen them?” By issue #5 the artwork gets a little better but that’s because the artist changed from Phil Hester to Victor Santos. My gut feeling is that Santos is a great artist but he was under orders to maintain a sense of continuity between him and Hester and therefore had to lower his own standards.
Now let’s get to the writing of this story. As I have already stated I believe this comic is rife with political ideology and the ideology that I mean is that of the far left liberal mindset. You have president Ogen, who is clearly meant to be Obama, complaining how the far right wing paints him as a Muslim who brain washes babies. Then of course there is the moment when Sgt. Steven Woods over hears some national morning talk show aid say if Republicans are in power they’ll throw gays into a concentration camp. The problem here is that the political bias is so glaring that it clashes with the overall story. I am not against a political or social message in a story. I would just demand that it blend seamlessly into the narrative. Take the movie AVATAR for example. It was obviously drenched in the dogma of environmentalism but at no point did I feel like I was being preached at…it just fit well with the story. This all aside, there are some elements to the story that are quite absorbing. The narrative of the two evil French twins who can talk to monsters is semi transcendent and certainly film worthy, Sgt. Woods affection for the lost little girl is endearing, and so far the build up to King Ghidorah has been suspenseful. Okay but more than anything here is my real problem with the story so far…it’s been 7 #$%&ing issues and we’ve only seen 3 monster fights.
1. Godzilla vs Anguirus
2. Godzilla vs Mecha-Godzlilla
3. Rodan vs Battra
Ramp it up guys, ramp it up!
We don’t know any origins of the monsters yet (except for Rodan), so it might be too early for me to flip out that Godzilla’s existence has not yet been attributed to radiation from a nuke.
I look forward to seeing what IDW does with Godzilla, but so far nothing really gives me much hope that they’ll do anything really inventive to deepen the mythos.
So far I give it 3 out of 6 empty bottles.