Today’s Comic> Godzilla #1

“Oops. That was the Legendary Pictures building. My bad.”

Godzilla #1

IDW Publishing (May, 2012)

In Mexico, a man named Irv loses his husband on their wedding day thanks to Kumonga’s appearance. The monsters have returned, and Godzilla’s arrival in DC leads a bodyguard to take his young charge on the run…only to have her killed by a bunch of morons who think they can kill Godzilla with rifles. I will complain about this later, but Boxer contacts his old friend Irv because now it’s personal and he’s planning to take on Godzilla.

What they got right: Duane is going for the modern action hero genre with this story, and while I’m a bit more old school in my action movies, it’s a well done start. Every review I’ve seen of this during my downtime has noted Boxer is based on Jason Statham and this is probably his kind of action movie. The monsters are well drawn

Sidebar: Just a few days before picking up this series I was wondering why there wasn’t a gay action star, just the usual stereotypes. Now for obvious reasons I’m the wrong guy to create such a character or care, but I’m surprised today’s Hollywood hasn’t done this yet.. And here we have Irv. How over-macho (a requirement of today’s action heroes) he will be we’ll probably find out next issue. I just find it interesting.

What they got wrong: Assuming that this continues from the world of Kingdom of Monsters, and really even if it doesn’t, why would somebody be so wrong stupid as to not only think they can take down Godzilla–who has taken a nuclear blast and just gained the worst halitosis ever–with rifles, but to have such poor aim at a forty-story monster that a teenage girl gets shot? There are Stormtroopers in the Star Wars and G.I. Joe franchises who have better aim. It’s just an excuse to make Boxer swear revenge (after something similar happened to I think his daughter in flashbacks) when they could have somehow used her in the story or just have the appearance of Godzilla be enough seeing the death around Boxer. She seemed to be the rare annoying teen girl that was almost fun to watch make fun of the hero. This was stupid and pointless. Oh, and she’s Asian so I kind of want to call her Lian Harper even though Lian isn’t Japanese.

Recommendation: I’m not usually a fan of modern action flicks for a bunch of reasons. However, I’m also not into Japanese (or Hong Kong or whatever they were going for) crime dramas but Gangsters & Goliaths won me over. At any rate they’re off to a good start.

It should be noted that both the used cover and this scene take up two pages but I don’t have a lot of time considering how long I’ve been out of service. You get the point, though.