Godzilla scholar Graham Skipper has previously documented how everyone’s favourite irradiated lizard (as well as the rest of his fellow kaiju over at the Toho stable) has been able to seamlessly adapt to different art forms over the years.
In his book The Official Guide to the King of the Monsters, he argues that the so-called “Monster Cinematic Universe” was well ahead of the curve as both a kind of proto-MCU and a mixed-media empire that successfully evolved to suit multiple formats. Yes, it may have got its start in the movies, but it wasn’t long before the scaly characters were popping up in everything from Saturday morning cartoons to theme park attractions, edutainment programming, anime, video games, and even erotica. Don’t ask!
One side-hustle that the franchise absolutely excelled at was infiltrating the comic book market. About this, Skipper writes: “The Japanese began adapting Godzilla into black-and-white manga almost from day one.”
In the early stages of this diversification, any comics that were printed tended to be straightforward novelisations of Toho’s films, changing only minor details in the translation from screen to page. While not especially creative, these faithful retellings did still serve a useful purpose. They let fans experience Big G’s exploits from the comfort of their own living rooms.
No longer would they have to wait for a theatrical re-release in order to get their fill of Godzilla duking it out with Mothra or the Xiliens. Instead, they could vicariously experience all those thrills again while sitting on the John!
Of course, once home video became more ubiquitous, people didn’t need to turn to manga as a substitute for the real deal anymore. Which, in turn, freed up the writers to get a little bolder and to finally start telling their own stories.
Flash forward to the modern era and Godzilla comics are just fucking weird! No concept seems to be too outlandish. No crossover too absurd. No retcon too sacrilegious.
Indeed, if you’ve picked up a book from IDW lately (the custodians of the brand as far as print is concerned), you’ll have been exposed to some of the wackiest takes on the King of the Monsters imaginable. He’s been sent to hell (both Norse and Catholic), corrupted by the Venom symbiote, fought 16th-century pirates, and been the subject of a geopolitical conspiracy that triggered the respective assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Bugsy Siegel and Abraham Lincoln. Some of those things all happened in the same batshit story!
2026 alone has been sheer lunacy for the titan, as the Monsterpiece Theatre one-shots had him gatecrashing numerous works of classic literature. You might have seen him getting caught up in a tussle between the feuding clans of Montague and Capulet, for example, or disrupting Odysseus’ long voyage back to Ithaca (in a way that curiously didn’t provoke outcry from those who are all of a sudden very invested in the authorial intentions of Homer).
For better or worse, then, these comics have become “anything goes” territory. Some of them are delightfully silly. Some of them are just plain silly. But they’re all generally silly in one way or another.
Which brings us to The Horror of Godzilla, a new four-issue miniseries that aims to strip away all that gimmickry and go right back to basics. Taking place in 1954, it transports us to a time before kaiju were an accepted part of everyday life for the citizens of Japan and attempts to capture the shock and awe people felt when they first laid eyes on an extinction-level threat towering 250 feet above them.
As the evocative title suggests, this is being pitched as a scarier interpretation of the material that has far more in common with Ishirō Honda’s original film than it does, say, Godzilla vs Fantastic Four. Here, the titular beastie is depicted as a dreadful force of nature that tramples all over our cities with chilling indifference — its soulless white eyes betraying a complete lack of regard, empathy, or even scorn for the meagre ants scurrying around its feet. To this version of Godzilla, we’re nothing but insignificant specks whose futile efforts to avoid being squished by elemental colossi don’t register on any level.
The story being told around this more primal, existentially terrifying depiction of the creature is similarly intense. It’s framed by a Chernobyl-esque inquiry that has government officials trying to agree on who will be the patsy they hang out to dry when the public starts looking for someone to blame after a recent catastrophe left Tokyo in ruin.
The best candidate to be this fall guy (or, more accurately, fall gal) is Dr. Olivia Morrison, a scientist who was commissioned by an unnamed think tank to discover new renewable energy sources for the benefit of humanity. Or perhaps for the benefit of corporate interests. That much is not yet clear.
When this search led Olivia to the abyssal depths of the ocean, her team’s blundering operations inadvertently roused the slumbering Godzilla and let loose a biblical disaster upon the island nation of Japan. So, she’s as good a scapegoat as any!
With the context outlined, we then flit back and forth between the courtroom drama side of things and the guilt-ridden doctor’s account of that fateful day when man first met monster. What follows is a powerful tale about the devastating impact of tragedy, about mankind’s self-destructive race towards Armageddon, and about what it means to take accountability for one’s role in shaping seismic, history-changing events. Kind of like Oppenheimer, only this time the nuclear genie that’s been let out of the bottle comes with a set of razor-sharp teeth.
Scribes Ethan S. Parker and Griffin Sheridan deserve a good deal of the credit for how effective Horror of Godzilla’s debut chapter has turned out, as they take their uncompromising vision seriously and resist the impulse to soften any of the nastier edges. This is, after all, a story where countless innocent civilians are wiped from existence in the blink of an eye, where our protagonist’s hands are stained with the blood of thousands, and where neither pregnant women nor children are afforded plot armour. The tantalising cliffhanger it ends on is especially dark and tees up a future instalment that promises to lean further still into pure horror.
Backing up this pitch-black tone, there’s an adult quality to the writing that’s greatly appreciated. Treating the reader with respect, the issue starts in medias res and asks you to keep up with who’s who and what their various motivations are. And it does so without ever giving way to inelegant exposition dumps.
Parker and Sheridan likewise refuse to dumb down their weightier themes and make sure there’s ample time for the more introspective moments to breathe, at least as far as they can within the confines of a 30-page comic. Not that it’s a guarantee of maturity by any means, but there are even a couple of f-bombs organically woven into the dialogue that feel natural, as opposed to edgy for edgy’s sake.
Godzilla comics have a propensity to over-narrate and spell out what their kaiju are doing at any given moment, and, again, the writers have nicely sidestepped that clunky trope of the genre too. Instead, if there’s no reason for any of the characters to be supplying a running commentary, they simply let the pictures do the talking.
And what pictures they are! Artist Tristan Jones’ panels are all beautifully textured, and he creates some indelible, albeit frightening, images here. He truly nails Godzilla’s sense of scale, which is so often lost in print, and pays close attention to little environmental details that make his movements feel visceral and the damage left in his wake all the more tactical. Without going into spoilers, he also does a masterful job with those harrowing final pages that are bound to sear themselves into your brain.
Jones’ work is perfectly complemented by that of colorist Josh Burcham as well. In an inspired stylistic choice (and yet another connection with Oppenheimer), the latter uses his hues to delineate between the flashforward and flashback sequences of Horror of Godzilla. The parts of the comic that take place in the hearing are all vividly tinged, while the flashbacks are depicted in stark monochrome — save for the eerie green of Godzilla’s atomic breath, which here scorches the sky and casts an apocalyptic glow on proceedings.
Letterer Tom Napolitano then completes this end-of-the-world vibe with onomatopoeic sound effects that cleverly integrate with the action and form tangible shapes that give you a deeper impression of what’s happening. Raindrops land with delicate, imperceptible “plips”, while cars roar past with elongated “vrooms” and thunderous footsteps resonate with a literal “DOOM” that spans multiple panels.
All in all, the whole project is a textbook case of a creative team being utterly in sync and aligned on what they want to achieve. This is Toho’s franchise at its most visceral, nightmarish and sensory, which is an impressive feat for a piece that is in an entirely visual medium.
Godzilla’s history in print may stretch back decades, but, if this auspicious first issue is anything to go by, then we might be on the cusp of getting his best outing to date. Bring on issue #2 and the follow-up to that excruciating cliffhanger!
Published by IDW, The Horror of Godzilla #1 is available now.
