'Monsters rule the world in this compendium collecting three graphic novels--Gangsters & Goliaths, Cataclysm, and Oblivion!
'In Gangsters & Goliaths by John Layman and Alberto Ponticelli, Detective Makoto Sato is on a quest to bring down the Takahashi crime syndicate but Sato's efforts earn him a one-way trip to a tropical getaway, courtesy of the Tokyo criminal underworld--MONSTER ISLAND! Alone and facing death at the hands of both gangsters and goliaths, Sato must use his wits to survive--and enlist the aid of some unusual friends.
'In Cataclysm by Cullen Bunn and Dave Wachter, years have passed since a monster apocalypse nearly destroyed mankind. Now it is merely a distant, nightmarish memory for Hiroshi, an elder in one of the few remaining tribes of humans. Little does Hiroshi know that the apocalypse is not over, and that his memories of the past may yet save the future!
'In Oblivion by Joshua Fialkov and Brian Churilla, a scientist has created a portal to another dimension--one where monsters rule supreme! An expedition begins into a world where hope has died and Godzilla is the unrivaled King of the Monsters. But what happens when a baby kaiju hitches a ride back to the original, monster-less dimension?'
Godzilla: World of Monsters is the latest graphic novel release from IDW Publishing that collects together three of their Godzilla series into one bumper, Kaiju sized collection.
The first story in the book, 'Gangsters & Goliaths' is written by John Laymon with art by Alberto Ponticelli and Jay Fotos is the more traditional of the three stories presented in this volume, as it's set in a much more recognisable world to ours; and feels very much like the kind of stories that appear in the classic films.
The plot follows Detective Makoto Sato, a member of the Tokyo police working to bring down the head of the Takashi crime family; who's been busy taking over much of the city's organised crime. After being warned off the case by his captain, Sato and his partner continue on their mission to take Takashi down, leading them to walk into a trap on the docks. Takashi murders Sato's partner, and takes SAto prisoner on board his ship. Sailing out to Monster Island, Sato is brutally beaten and abused by the criminals before he's able to make an escape, swimming to shore.
Not wanting to leave it up to the giant monsters that inhabit the island to finish the job, the criminals pursue him but are quickly dispatched by Godzilla; who also injures Sato. Sato wakes up inside a small hut on the island, where a monk has taken him to recover. He learns that this is the home of the twin fairies that communicate with Mothra. Knowing that he can't stay on the island, Sato kidnaps the fairies and returns to Tokyo, where he will use them to summon Mothra to help him destroy Takashi. Unfortunately, this leads to other monsters following her to the city, and carnage out of control.
'Gangsters & Goliaths' is a really fun story, and was easily my favourite in this collection. It was nice how it felt familiar in a lot of ways to existing Kaiju stories, but still did something new. Some of the best Kaiju stories are the ones that have a compelling and engaging human story to go along with the big scale monster destruction, and this certainly fit that bill. Sato proved to be an incredibly flawed protagonist, one that was bordering on cruelty at times as he was willing to go to extreme measures to reach his goals.
Over the course of the story Sato comes to realise that his methods do not justify the end goal; even before the other monsters arrive in the city to reign destruction down on everything. It was at this part of the story that the character felt like he could have gone in very different directions, that he could have easily just walked away from what was happening and leave the city to the fate he'd brought it; but in the end he stepped up and decided to try and set things right. It was a great moment of growth, and one that led to a conclusion on the final page that actually felt quite earned.
The story also had a lot of cameos and appearances from other familiar monsters and things from the series. Whether it was seeing well known creatures like Rodan and King Ghidorah storming across Monster Island, lesser used monsters like Kumonga and Battra trashing the city, or fan favourite Mecha-Godzilla being deployed by G-Force to help save the day; there's something here for fans of the franchise to get excited about in every issue.
Ponticelli and Fotos do great on the art too, being able to make the smaller, more intimate character driven moments feel dynamic and engaging, as well as the scenes of giant monster carnage being spectacular, especially as they demolish recognisable landmarks in their rampage. The monster, the real stars of the book, also looked brilliant, with a ton of attention going into the details.
'Cataclysm', written by Cullen Bunn with art by Dave Wachter, takes a very different approach to the first story, instead focusing on a world where the monsters have already destroyed everything, leaving humanity behind to try and survive in the ruins left behind. A quick flashback at the start of the issue shows a huge fight between Godzilla, King Ghidorah, Mothra, Manda, and Anguirus, fighting amongst the ruins of a city, setting up the idea that the fight between the monsters continued across the globe; destroying all in their path.
After this the story picks up in the ruins of Japan, where an old man is the only member of his community who really remembers what life was like before the Kaiju destroyed everything. Everyone else was too young to remember, or has been born into this ruined world. Their small shanty town is built from pieces they've scavenged from the ruins, and life in this new world is hard; they're forced to hunt for food, as well as searching for anything useful in the ruins of the old world, whilst always in fear that the monsters could return one day.
We meet two young members of the community, Arata and Shiori, who are scouts for the village. When venturing into the ruined city one day they come across strange plant-like growths that have started to spread everywhere. Whilst investigating their group comes under attack by a swarm of Kamacuras, large mantis like creatures. When the monsters are suddenly attacked and torn apart by the plants growing around them they discover that the plants are part of Biollante. If this wasn't enough, Godzialla arrives on the scene and starts fighting the giant plant monster, destroying the majority of it. However, Shiori manages to save a small part of the creature.
Now with the Kaiju having returned, and the restorative properties of Biollante being the answer to the devastation around them, the community must band together to try and find a way to survive, whilst the eldest member faces the ghosts of his past and the part he played in the destruction of the world.
As far as Kaiju stories go 'Cataclysm' feels really different. This isn't a story where giant monsters show up to trash a city whilst humanity tries to fight back as best they can; in this story that fight has been and gone a long time ago, and humanity lost. In a lot of ways the story feels more like a mash-up of giant monster movies and a zombie apocalypse style story where a small community has come together to try and survive post apocalypse. But instead of having to worry about zombies it's giant insects and living plant monsters.
Talking about living plant monster, it was great to essentially see Biollante as the good monster here, as the force that will ultimately be able to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction. She's always been presented as something of an anti-villain, but her being a full on force for good is a great move in this setting. It's also interesting to see Godzilla being made a lot more evil than usual here, as he's a character that has definitely fallen more on the side of good over the decades. There is a good reason for his apparent shift, however, and the slow reveal of this information across the story is played well, with just enough given early on that you can come to your own conclusions before all of the blanks are filled in.
The book also makes some good use of monsters that don't often get a lot of time. As well as Biollante, Mothra makes a few appearances across the story, but the biggest surprises outside of the flashback scenes are monsters like the Kamacuras, as well as Megaguirus, and Destoryah; who makes a big showing in the conclusion of the story. Some of these monsters are used more often than others, but some of them are ones that I've not really seen utilised too many times, and it's nice to see them here; especially as there seems to be a big bug theme going on.
It's fun to see a Kaiju version of a post apocalypse story, one that showcases a lot of action and adventure, whilst also putting people squarely at the centre.
Dave Wachter's art is a great fit for the story, and he's able to make the ruined remains of the world look incredibly interesting and detailed, and it feels like you could spend a load of time examining the panels, looking for small details and clues hidden around in the background. His monsters also look great, with the more insect-like creatures looking particularly vicious and spiny.
The final story collected in this volume is 'Oblivion', written by Joshua Fialkov, with art by Brian Churilla and Jay Fotos, is probably the strangest story of the three. Set on a world where Kaiju don't exist, we follow a group of scientist as they build an interdimensional portal. Powering on the device for the first time, the scientists and their financial backer are able to travel to another version of Earth.
Upon arriving on this other earth, however, they're shocked to discover that it's in ruins thanks to constant attacks from giant monsters. After learning that the humans of this world are barely surviving and fighting back from a group of soldiers, the scientists try to make their way back to the portal and their own earth before something awful happens. Unfortunately, they're not quite fast enough, and one of the monsters, King Ghidorah, manages to follow them through the portal.
Ghidorah is left to run rampant across this new earth and the people of that world struggle for a way to fight back against the giant monster. After a handful of weeks the scientists responsible for letting him loose on the world as tasked with recreating the portal and travelling back to the other world to try and find some kind of weapon or technology there that can help them in their fight. They learn that the only thing that has been able to stand up against Ghidorah is Godzilla, so come up with the wild plan of bringing him across to fight the monster.
The plan works, and with Godzilla's help they're able to destroy Ghidorah. Unfortunately, they now have an enraged Godzilla on their hands to deal with. Their solution to this is a squadron of miniature Mecha-Godzilla, as well as transforming the remains of Ghidorah into Mecha-Ghidora. It's definitely an odd plan, and one that keeps seeming to make things worse and worse as humanity are left constantly having to escalate things as every solution they come up with makes things even more difficult.
This is definitely the weirdest story in the lot, and I think it's a lot of the jumps in logic that make it a lot less enjoyable to read than the other two. The people of the first earth choose to unleash Godzilla in order to fight Ghidorah, but as soon as Ghidorah's down and they're left to fight Godzilla they deploy a squad of Mecha-Godzilla. So why not just use the Mecha-Godzilla to begin with, especially as out of the two Ghidorah seems like the much easier monster to have to deal with.
In a few ways the way the story keeps escalating and things keep getting worse because of ill thought out decisions makes me think of that joke from The Simpsons where the town is overrun by lizards, so they plan to release snakes to eat the lizards, then gorillas to eat the snakes, then allow winter to kill the gorillas. The plans in this story seem to very much be 'lets make things worse in the long term for quick solutions'. This might be an intentional thing, some kind of distant commentary on how the development of nuclear weapons was used to force Japan to surrender was an ill thought out solution to World War Two that made the world infinitely worse, especially in the world of Godzilla where it was these weapons that brought the monsters. But is that's the case it's so thin commentary that it's one that I didn't think of until days after reading it and whilst trying to work out my thought on the story for this review. As a casual reader I wouldn't have thought that deeply about it and would have just dismissed it as odd writing.
Sadly, I didn't really like the art on this story much either. Whilst Jay Fotos provided the colours on the issue and I can't fault their work on this the line work by Brian Churilla felt a bit too stylised and cartoonish for me to really enjoy. People looked like odd caricatures of real people, who sometimes looked different from panel to panel, whilst the monsters themselves were at times very basic depictions. In the other stories in the book Ghidorah, for example, was drawn in great detail, with the scales covering his body lovingly recreated, whilst here he just has lines drawn across him in a grid pattern, hinting at scales but being incredibly basic. It felt like the art on the issue was being produced in a rush; and this really detracted from the experience.
Overall Godzilla: World of Monsters offers a bit of a mixed bag of stories, three tales that all feel quite different from each other and offer the reader a different experience. The beauty of this is that there should be something in this book for everyone; the downside is that you may not like each story equally, and may be left feeling bored by some parts of the book. that being said, despite a few issues here and there with small parts I generally had a really good time reading this collection, and think that a lot of Kaiju fans will too.
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