by Benjamin Haines » Fri Dec 20, 2013 6:07 pm
Well, Kingdom of Monsters, History's Greatest Monster, and Rulers of Earth are all technically one long continuity, but you can understand each one of them on their own without having to read what came before. The character of Steven Woods appears in KoM and RoE but he acts so different in the latter that it might as well be an entirely new character. I think they just wanted to establish a direct link to KoM for some bizarre, unfathomable reason.
Rulers of Earth is what IDW's ongoing Godzilla series should have been from the start. Some stories are self-contained (3,4,5), others span a few issues (1-2, 6-7), but they all feed into the overall story arc that seems set to climax with issue 8. Different issues feature different monsters and offer interesting matchups between them, so it's like Legends but with continuity and a consistent creative team.
KoM and especially HGM fell flat because, among other things, they were mostly just one long story broken up into chunks without regard for pacing, which made a lot of individual issues unfulfilling. Maybe they'll come across better if you're reading them for the first time all together as a trade paperback but that kind of structure just isn't conducive to an ongoing format with 12 issues spread out over an entire year.