Godzilla: Complete Rulers of Earth

There have been a number of comics I’ve looked at for these Graphicalex posts involving media franchises that have been adapted into surprisingly good comics. I’d single out the Aliens and Simpsons titles as being the most impressive. I think they did a really good job with those.

Godzilla isn’t as well served in this long-running series. I’d be inclined to cast some of the blame on Godzilla himself, as he’s just a big lizard who gets angry and goes on destructive rampages, but (1) that hasn’t held the movies back from being successful, and (2) that’s as much “character” as the Xenomorphs have, and the Aliens comics are great.

So I don’t know why I didn’t enjoy these Godzilla comics more. They’re not bad, and they do tend to follow in the spirit of the movies, but they just don’t work all that well for me.

The story arc, from writer Chris Mowry, has a bunch of shape-shifting aliens (I think they’re called the Cryog) coming to Earth looking to wipe out the human population and take it over for themselves. In this mission they find allies in an undersea kingdom of Devonians who look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The way they plan to achieve their goals is to unleash a massive kaiju attack (kaiju, in case you don’t follow these things, are giant monsters). In general these big guys line-up on two sides, though there’s no real reason they should. On “our” side we have Godzilla, Mothra, Jet Jaguar, King Caesar, Sanda (the good Gargantua) and Mechagodzilla. On the other side is everyone else. Gigan. Destoroyah. Varan. Biollante. And a whole bunch of other critters whose names I didn’t catch. “I don’t know how you remember so many of these names,” one of the army guys says to a scientist at one point. I could certainly relate.

Yes, the gang’s all here. Though they don’t have much to do except slug it out and then wander off. No matter what happens they seem to be immortal, able to re-form themselves even after exploding. So it’s hard to feel as though much is at stake. In addition, the fights between the kaiju are hard to follow visually. At least I didn’t know what was going on a lot of the time. And, as with the movies, this is what you came in for so it’s kind of important. But at least we get a full buffet of sound effects. Here’s a transcript of seven pages of one battle. Obviously there is no dialogue as it’s all just the big guys:

THOOOMPF, KOOM, KOOM, KOOM, RRNGK, RRRMMMMBLLL, MIRRAWWW, GRRRONNK, WHAM, SKRREEEEEE,THOOM, SLKLRRCH, SLSHH, FZZZT, SKRRREEEEOOONMNGK, THWACK, GRRRNN, GROOONGK, ZZLSSH, MRRWWARRRN, THOOM, KZZT, KATTHOOM SKRRNNGK, MIRRRAWWW, KZZT, FSSSSSHH.

If this isn’t your thing then, aside from my wondering why you’d be reading a Godzilla comic, there’s always the human story. But as with the full slate of monsters I thought there was too much going on here too. Basically there’s a military outfit known as the CKR (Counter-Kaiju Reaction force), and a bunch of youngish science types known as the Kaiju Watchers. The tough CKR leader and one of the scientists seem to have a romance growing, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Ain’t nobody got time for that when there are monsters to be dealt with. Of slightly more interest is the fighting between the Cryog and the Devonians, who have a falling out over who’s going to inherit Earth once they get rid of all the humans. This would have made a decent storyline on its own, though hardly original.

In general, fans seemed to like it. I’m a bit of a Godzilla fan though and I didn’t think it was anything special. Basically Mowry was running a conveyor belt with as many action figures as he could think of coming along to do their thing before moving the story on to the next big fight. The thing about the other franchise tie-in comics I started off mentioning though is that they didn’t restrict themselves to this kind of fan service. They came up with stories and art that added a lot more. That doesn’t happen here and I came away not so much disappointed as indifferent.

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