Yesterday, we ran an advance review of James Stokoe’s upcoming “Aliens: Dead Orbit” #1 which we’re incredibly excited about. In honour of seeing Stokoe tackle another classic franchise, I wanted to go back and look at the last time he created a masterpiece of a licensed comic: “Godzilla: The Half-Century War.”
Read on below for our full review of the miniseries to find out why this is a must read comic.
Written & Illustrated by James StokoeCover by James Stokoe
Introducing a new and exciting look at Godzilla’s reign of destruction, courtesy of Orc Stain creator James Stokoe! The year is 1954 and Lieutenant Ota Murakami is on hand when Godzilla makes first landfall in Japan. Along with his pal Kentaro, Ota makes a desperate gamble to save lives… and in the process begins an obsession with the King of the Monsters that lasts fifty years!
It should be no surprise to anyone who’s ever read a comic by James Stokoe that “Godzilla: The Half-Century War” is easily the greatest Godzilla comic ever made and arguably one of the best Godzilla stories ever told in any medium. That’s high praise to levy in the opening sentences of a review, I know, but there’s something that feels undeniably important about James Stokoe’s work in “The Half-Century War.” It, in essence, distills the storied history of Godzilla through his many film appearances into one chronological retelling from the eyes of one man and his sometime rivalry/sometime kinship with the King of Monsters.
To read “The Half-Century War” is to see the various interpretations and characterisations, the various developments and changes Godzilla has affected throughout his history distilled across five issues. This is a love letter to the history of such a long lived character that only comics could really deliver. Each issue takes place in a new decade, showing the ongoing war that Godzilla initially has with humans and then, eventually, with other monsters. It’s a tale of escalation that mimics how wild the scale of the Toho produced movies eventually got.
Indeed, each issue even corresponds to a different era of Godzilla films. The first three issues take place from 1954, the year Gojira was released, to 1975 and corresponds to the Shōwa era, named so because the films were produced during the reign of Emperor Hirohto. The first issue is something of a retelling of Gojira‘s final act from a new perspective. With the second and third issues, Stokoe introduces other kaiju and shifts Godzilla’s role from destroyer to protector of humanity. The fourth issue takes place in 1987, right in the middle of the Heisei era that followed Return Of Godzilla in 1984. The final issue takes place in 2002, during what would be the Millenium era that would conclude with Godzilla: Final Wars and would be Toho’s final Godzilla film until 2016’s Shin-Gojira.
This is the level of care and attention put into the storytelling of “The Half-Century War.” Stokoe wears his love for this franchise of his sleeve and uses the main character, Ota Murakami, as way of presenting a ground’s eye view of the world as it changes in response to Godzilla’s appearance. From the story of one tank crew rumbling through Tokyo amidst Godzilla’s first rampage through the city to the establishment of a specialised anti-monster task force during the all out war between the monsters with the appearances of the likes of Mothra, Rodan and even Hedorah to the construction of anti-Godzilla mechs, “The Half-Century War” reads like a best of compilation of the movies edited around the story of one man’s obsession with the beast.
That’s perhaps what makes “Godzilla: The Half-Century War” work as well as it does. While most Godzilla films either disregard the human characters in favour of all out tokusatsu brawls or, like both American offerings, almost entirely ignore Godzilla in favour of uninteresting an human cast, Stokoe is able to strike a delicate balance in between. This is largely thanks to the fact that Stokoe can capture the scale and grandeur of a kaiju fight like no other in just a single splash page.
The density of detail Stokoe can pack into his pencils leads to the kind of splash pages like the first full reveal of Godzilla in the first issue or the war of the monsters that opens the third issue. These pages are just stunning and even after reading the series multiple times can still take my breath away. This allows Stokoe to zero in on the more intimate story of Murakami as his journey through life becomes intertwined with the appearances of Godzilla.
Continued belowThe scope with which Stokoe treats the story of Murakami, juxtaposing his personal angst and drive to understand Godzilla with a force of nature that sees him as little more than an ant, brings so much more depth to the story than you might expect from a Godzilla comic. While Hideaki Anno completely reconstructed the nature of Godzilla for Shin-Gojira to reflect the atmosphere of Japan in the 21st century, James Stokoe took the entire fifty year history of the character from 1954 to 2004 and created the ultimate love letter to character across five issues. This is the kind of story that could exist in no other medium. No other medium could tell a story across five decades while still giving each chapter it’s own self-contained story that contributes to the overall narrative.
Honestly, this comic is not only a showcase of James Stokoe’s innumerable talents as an artist and a writer, but also displays a love for a franchise that is generally neglected due to it seeming silly and goofy. From the big rubber suits to the cardboard buildings, the tokusatsu effects of the ’60s through to the ’80s certainly feel closer in tone to an episode of Power Rangers than to a feature film, but Stokoe is able to zero in on the sense of scale created by these powerful beings. To imagine not only what it must be like to be one person amidst the destruction of Godzilla, but to endure fifty years of conflict across the globe with an ever increasing array of kaiju is a unique perspective that Stokoe brings to the franchise.
If you’ve never encountered Godzilla or before or even if you’re a lifelong fan, you owe it to yourself to sit down with James Stokoe’s “Godzilla: The Half-Century War” and let the awe and wonder of those pages wash right over you.
