Art by: Brian Churilla
Colors by: Jay Fotos
Letters by: Chris Mowry
Published by: IDW Publishing
So here we have it, the third installment of the magnificent Godzilla and his battle to save the world. The trouble is that the story is running a little on empty now and the evidence is becoming more and more apparent. One of the problems with Godzilla in the glaring lack of dialogue – so to compensate in the book you have to focus on the human element. While Godzilla is a majestic creature, the humans are a little more than filler. The other aspect that lets the book down is the insufficient story for the writer to work with. You pick up the book and before you realize what’s happened you’ve finished it, barely a brain cell has been stimulated by anything. There were some fun elements in the opening issue and that’s now sadly waned as we reach the third part. The elements of peril and danger cannot sustain the book.
While the absentee plot is a let down, the art doesn’t dig the book out of the ‘mediocre’ section. Rarely, other than in some hallucinogenic nightmare has Godzilla been depicted with the kind of sappy puppy eyes that is more befitting Toothless from the How to train your dragon movies. Strike two comes in the form of the showdown between the behemoths – the choreography is more farce than ferocious. We have two giant beasts smashing each other apart yet we are given slapstick. While the roots of the Godzilla story relies heavily on men in rubber suits looking ridiculous, this book doesn’t come across as paying homage to that aspect, though it possibly should have been aimed at that level.
There are times when reading comics you have to really ask yourself what the hell were people thinking about. Why did they sign off on this issue, why did professionals in comics put this together, is this really the quality that comics aspire to? Is this the very best effort of Fialkov and Churilla? If it is then they need to start looking for new jobs.
