So, once upon a time this guy named James Stokoe wanted to draw a Godzilla comic. While he couldn’t draw that, he drew a comic about orcs with hidden penises everywhere. But then, in the kingdom of IDW, a command was given and the wish was granted — and we all lived happily ever after with the best damn Godzilla comic around.
True story.
Written and illustrated 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 Lieutnant 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!
Don’t miss the first decade in a tale of a lifetime!
Licensed properties and adaptations are such a tricky thing. Wrapped up in fanboy expectations and burdened by the pressure of living up to any number of iterations, every time a licensed property comes out it’s almost always met with initial cynicism and disdain. That’s just sort of the name of the game, and it’s especially true in comics. Things that work in movies or videogames don’t necessarily belong in sequential storytelling, and vice versa. Maybe the art is subpar or the writer doesn’t seem to “get it.” Even worse, sometimes it just feels like a poor cash grab. Whatever the general cause for disdain is, it’s almost always there, perhaps 8 times out of 10.
It only gets more difficult when you’re dealing with a licensed property that’s decidedly old. As much as we’re living in an age of creativity, there comes a time when even the coolest of giant irradiated lizard monsters just becomes culturally irrelevant and seemingly bankrupt of potential. The character may have been born at a time in which he could stand as both a statement of post-Hiroshima nuclear fear in Japan and a cool giant monster, but Godzilla hasn’t been a mainstay in pop culture for quite sometime, having been proven decidedly “uncool” by the American film with Matthew Broderick and being saddled with a bunch of subpar sequels like Godzilla 2000 and Final Wars (Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla was pretty sweet, though). The King of Monsters had seemingly laid his crown down to swim off into the sunset, never to kick over a building or battle a version of himself from space again.
Well, screw that nonsense, says IDW Publishing to the world. After all, they say all you really need is someone with a passion to create and a drive for success, and then anything’s capable. You want a good Godzilla comic? It’s possible, and IDW proved it with the Swierczynski/Gane ongoing. You want a great Godzilla comic? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. James Stokoe is here.
“Godzilla – Half-Century War” is the first issue in a five-part series chronicling the destruction of Godzilla throughout five separate decades as seen by one man, Ota Murakami. A lieutenant in the Japanese army during Godzilla’s first attack, Ota does his best to combat the monster in a scene best described as a “deleted scene” from the original Godzilla film. It’s a clever little tale that sneaks amicably into the continuity of the original story and offers up a new dimension through which to view the chaos wrought by the giant beast.
Godzilla is such a landmark film not just because of the iconic character it introduced, but also the vivid human element. Godzilla is only as devastating a beast as he is when you realize that he is a direct result of one of the darkest moment’s of human history, with the exploitative and goofy monster-genre aspect coming later. This aspect is what Stokoe mainly focuses on with the book, with Godzilla as a weapon of mass destruction, and it’s through this that we’re able to connect to the main character of Ota. While this comic represents actions in 50’s Japan, Stokoe brings the parallels out in just a subtle enough fashion to make the point without distracting from any other aspect of the comic. It’s subtle but it’s there, and it enhances our relationship with Ota via his internal monologue against the backdrop of a city burning.
Continued belowHowever, all things considered, Ota is a tad bit one-dimensional. He certainly seems to embody a few tropes of Average Soldier In Army Standing Up In Face Of Danger, and there’s no specific reason to care about Ota right now outside of him being our main character. Yet even outside of that type-cast role, both he and Stokoe are able to sufficiently thrive within the overwhelming chaos. We may never see a comic that’s just about Godzilla hanging out on Monster Island and watching monster TV instead of the damage he leaves in his wake, but with an overall story as compelling as this, the first entry into the war of Ota and Godzilla is off to a great start, and there’s a lot of room for him to be developed over time (literally).
Of course, even if there is more to it than that the “giant monster destroying Tokyo” is still a huge selling point to the book, and that aspect is really sold with Stokoe’s impeccable artwork. All of Stokoe’s signature artistic characteristics are present: the clever use of sound-effects and integrated typography as part of the design, the hyperactive attention to detail and the manga influenced characters moving around the page as if they were real with a viable sense of motion. It’s a beautiful issue that truly draws you into the story with it’s heavy focus on the realization of its environment, and as Tokyo crumbles you can’t help but watch in absolute awe. With color assists from Heather Breckel, you’d be hard-pressed to ever find a Godzilla book that looks this good again, both over what has come before and what will come in the future.
So Godzilla may not exactly be relevant anymore and the classic film is over 50 years old, but with just one issue Stoke has proven that his reign is far from over. No, Godzilla is definitively back thanks to the folks at IDW, and “Half-Century War” is pretty much the perfect resurrection for him. With the first issue giving us a look at the events of the first film and once again bringing us back into his world, it is with baited breath that we wait for Stokoe’s second issue. Bring on the monsters.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy
