The problem with a Godzilla comic book is that as a character he is really pretty one dimensional. He’s huge, has atomic breath, and stomps around Tokyo a lot and there is only so much you can do with that.
This new series attempts to get around that limitation by focusing on Ota Murakami, a lieutenant in the Japanese Self-Defense force in 1954 when he first encounters the giant monster. The first issue chronicles the initial encounter between the two as Godzilla rampages through Tokyo and it sets the stage for what will, throughout the remaining four issues, explore their fifty years of conflict.
Since the readers are told in the first issue that both of them will survive, there is not much tension to the story and it will be interesting to see what writer/artist James Stokoe can do to keep things interesting. He does an excellent job with the art, its style reminds me of Akira mixed with Vietnam Journal, and he instills the size of Godzilla compared to the city he is destroying.
This is not a comic book for everyone. If you are not a fan this will do nothing to change your mind about the monster but if you are a fan of Godzilla you could certainly do worse and there is the curiosity of where the story will go from here.
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