Godzilla: Cataclysm #1 – Review

By: Cullen Bunn (writer), David Wachter (artist)

The Story: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. But they all agree that it will end.

The Review: Though you wouldn’t know it at first glance, IDW’s Godzilla: Rulers of Earth is a direct sequel to its previous two Godzilla series. Particularly of late, I’ve been impressed by how that series’ writer Chris Mowry has handled the continuity, but when you’re dealing with giant monsters, it’s kind of rough knowing that nothing can change that a future series doesn’t have the option to change back. It’s a problem that most comics featuring long running characters face, but perhaps that’s why Godzilla: Cataclysm has such an innate energy about it.

Set twenty years after an all out monster invasion, Cataclysm introduces us to a world devastated by kaiju. Survivors live in shanty towns, hunting wildlife wandering through the ruins of “the world that was”. The whole thing is impressively atmospheric.

Cullen Bunn does an admirable job of giving us a taste of the monster action we came for through flashbacks, though I imagine that some readers will be disappointed with the long wait for a present day kaiju appearance. More important this issue is the human cast. Though the characterization they’re given is hardly conclusive, the attention paid to Arata and Shiori seems to imply that Bunn intends to tackle the frequent problems of human overexposure and irrelevance head on. They could become beloved figures, but for now I’m happy to see that the series has a way to give a human perspective on the age of monsters without propping up its characters like some kind of straw man observer. Of course the character who steals the show is Arata’s grandfather.

Though he appears limitedly, the unnamed old man is the one character who we get to know this issue. Clearly the same writer who gave us the beautiful, if wordy, Magneto, Bunn crafts an impressive monologue for the issue, one that immediately demonstrates the almost mystical power of the kaiju and the degree to which they dwarf human buildings, bodies, and pride. It’s a well written and intelligent way to open the series, but I hope that Bunn has some more original ideas to introduce or it may grow stale.

While the tone and characterization are resonant, it does feel like other elements were sacrificed for them. The world Bunn presents seems a little confused. Despite twenty years of silence and the claim that most people don’t even believe in kaiju any longer, Tokyo remains a ruin. It’s fun to see the gritty post-apocalyptic aesthetic applied to the daikaiju genre, but it doesn’t entirely make sense, nor does it seem the most interesting choice. At the risk of editorializing, I’d be much more interested to see how different parts of the world have dealt with the Cataclysm and the varying ways they’ve rebuilt.

Another problem is the pace. The book changes focus roughly every five pages and, while it benefits from the slow burn approach it takes, not all of these sections mesh with that decision. Particularly during action scenes it becomes apparent how significantly and unevenly decompressed this issue can be. In comics, time and space are one and the same and you only get so much.

Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth #9 – Review

By: Chris Mowry (writer), Jeff Zornow (art), Priscilla Tramontano (colors)

The Story: This is but one of the legends of which the people speak…

The Review: There’s nothing particularly meaningful about a giant lizard, nor anything especially profound about destroying a city in effigy, but while not every Godzilla story aspires to the seriousness of the original film, any great daikaiju story needs to speak to something. There has to be a purpose for the destruction, metatextually or literally. That’s what this issue provides Rulers of the Earth.

A major problem of this series has been a certain aimlessness about it. Godzilla, Rodan, Varan, and their kin have largely been reactive forces, with the story driven by the Cryog and their master plan. Now, with the Cryog gone, the series turns its eye to the nature of earth’s kaiju.

The revelations in this issue are another great shot in the arm for a series that has already been improving, and have the potential to really give fans what they want, however I do have worries about the pacing of the story. RotE was originally approved for only twelve issues, meaning that if things are still holding to the original plan we’re three fourths of the way through this series. I’m not sure that we have enough time to explore the ramifications of these events.

Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth #4 – Review

By: Chris Mowry (writer), Matt Frank and Jeff Zornow (art), Priscilla Tramontano (colors)

The Story: Somewhere Chris Mowry is cursing himself, his love of aquatic Kaiju, and Guillermo del Toro.

The Review: As with the second issue of this series, Godzilla: Rulers of the Earth #4 is almost entirely devoted to a single battle. Because I went to a liberal arts college, I know just enough about math to tell you that that means that almost half of the series has been big mindless kaiju battles. Chris Mowry only has so many pages to tell his tale, but I can’t decide if I can fault him for dedicating so much time to something that a significant portion of his readership thinks is the whole point of the series.

Last month’s issue was an interesting way of providing original stories that still felt at home in a Godzilla comic, and Mowry has done a very nice job of tying the numerous plot points he introduced in that issue together. I would have liked to see more of the still nameless aliens, but they do make an appearance and their handiwork is fairly omnipresent.

Mowry’s writing is still somewhat overwrought, though it is improved from last issue. There aren’t many caption boxes in this issue but, unfortunately, a news crew is present for a chunk of the action. Their commentary may do a decent job of pointing out the futility of human comment on something so vastly beyond their scale, but more often than not it’s just tedious.