Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #9-12 by Eric Powell and Tracy Marsh (Comic Review)

As with the last book review this is posted in full on http://thefoundingfields.com and this is simply a preview. If you want to see it in full then please follow the link through to there.

Godzilla has ultimately been an extremely hit and miss franchise. In terms of quality it really is all over the place with various films being infamously clunky, reliant upon big screen effects and suffering from multiple reboots, not to mention the problems it had with human characters. Believe it or not the Roland Emmerich’s adaptation wasn’t the worst when it came to bad characters, an insane plot or… well lots of problems. While most of what IDW has produced since getting the license has been stellar, Kingdom of Monsters is one of the less outstanding examples.

Set in an alternate universe of the Heisei era, Kingdom was a twelve issue series which tried to show the monsters on a global scale and having a much greater impact upon the world. Rather than retreating back into the sea each time they appeared, the kaiju in this universe went on a rampage. They weren’t going to be quiet or kept to one island and would quite happily trash every city they ran into. Yeah, Godzilla himself didn’t stop at Tokyo in this story; he kept going and slaughtered everything in his path. To try and combat it, the American military deploys their own newly developed war machine, Mechagodzilla, which proceeds to go rogue once it falls under the control of Sergeant Steven Woods. A soldier with a severe chip on his shoulder and desiring revenge against the monsters.

One thing worth praising is that despite this collection consisting of the tail end of the series, there’s no continuity lockout preventing you keeping up with what’s going on. While a few things are left unexplained, the opening pages are quick to bring anyone new up to speed. Never going into the “as you know” conversations which hamstring the story but making sure anyone picking up the trade knows what’s going on while giving details that would make anyone want to go back and read the whole story. The way it’s delivered feels a little archaic, like something you’d find in comics from the late 90s to early 2000s, but it works well.