by Pkmatrix » Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:58 pm
Of course, there are
- As with the last couple issues, I've forgone buying Frank's awesome (but expensive) cover in favor of the cheaper Powell cover. This one is...eh. It's Goji in the foreground, some smoke, and KG's heads in the back. It's pretty blah, to be honest. Really, I should've just sucked it up and bought Frank's cover, it was much better.
- Issue #8 opens up "Somewhere in Alabama", with Woods and Allie beset by bikers (and Woods giving them a good whupping). After the fight, Allie asks why the bikers attacked them and Woods explains the men had run out of water. The two wander off into the woods again, Allie now sporting a pair of goggles.
- Cut to Washington, DC: picking up from where last issue left off, Godzilla faces off with King Ghidorah. Oh God is the art bad here! Though I like the way Santos draws the human characters and he seemed to have potential with the monsters at first, this is just downright unappealing. The two exchange beam attacks in a two page spread, then Godzilla dives headfirst at the three-headed terror!
- Back to Woods and Allie again. Woods has just finished beating up another assailant (seriously, where are these people coming from?) and the two decide to take a rest. By sheer luck, Woods manages to get bitten by a poisonous snake but, and I do give some kudos to the writers, he handles it rather well: he calms Allie down, does some First Aid, explains to her what will happen to him and what she should do to help. The two wander off again.
- Once again, the fight! Godzilla blasts KG with his atomic ray, but it doesn't seem to have much effect since on the next page Ghidorah is biting both of Goji's arms and zapping him with some lightning to the throat. And then...I'm not quite sure what happens next. O_o() In another two page spread (though, I will grant it's an interesting 2-pager) Godzilla...topples over? Then Ghidorah...um...leaps at him? Then, and this is just a shot in the dark, but I think Godzilla emits a nuclear pulse that results in a mushroom cloud, vaporizing whatever's left of the city.
- "A Few Hours Later" (I assume for Woods and Allie, not Godzilla and Ghidorah), our heroes are attacked by a pack of wolves, Woods looking rather sickly. Suddenly...Mechagodzilla shows up and zaps them with his eye lasers? WTH? O_o Woods whips out his gun, fires an entire magazine at the giant robot, and then passes out.
- Back to "Below the Streets of Washington, DC", it turns out Ogden has been watching the Godzilla/Ghidorah fight this whole time from a secret bunker beneath the city. After Godzilla's nuclear pulse, their cameras were knocked out, but only now are coming back online: revealing what is possibly THE best drawing of Godzilla this series has produced so far. Seriously, what doesn't Godzilla look this awesome in every panel? The next page we're back to the Godzilla design used throughout the rest of the comic, as the King of the Monsters roars over a fallen (Unconscious? Dead?) King Ghidorah.
- Our comic ends with Woods and Allie. Woods wakes up again, seemingly recovered from the snake bite, and asks Allie what happened. She shows him Mechagodzilla (which, being he was poisoned, he assumed he'd hallucinated), which has fallen (why?), and the two venture inside. Woods finds some kind of control panel, pushes a button, and the giant robot reactivates.
Overall: Hm. After thinking about it, I think I'm going to give this a 2.5 out of 5 (C). On a second reading, it is an improvement over the last couple issues, but really not by very much. On the one hand, the comic has become more focused, switching between only Woods/Allie and Godzilla v. Ghidorah. For those who've been craving action, this one certainly delivers. Unfortunately, that's about all it delivers.
Let's start with Woods and Allie: my Lord, they are BORING! It's just the same scene over and OVER again: we start in media res as Woods beats up some attackers, Woods explains to Allie why they attacked, they move along to stay away from monsters. It was kinda interesting in Issue #6 (though it was already continuing the idea from #5), but after three issues in a row with these two doing basically the same thing, I'm sick of it! At least it seems like the writers are too, 'cause they finally stuck Woods in Mechagodzilla (which they should've done sooner, and could've handled MUCH better). But, really, any hope I had for Woods as our hero is more or less gone now. He bores me! At least in Issue #4 he sparked by interest by being somewhat likable yet doing something heinous, now he's just dull.
The other big plotline here was the fight, and boy was it dull too. Considering the fight takes up 10 pages, remarkably little happens in it. Seriously, the play by play is: beam attack, beam attack, tackle, beam attack, grapple, beam attack, nuclear pulse. That's it. This fight would take up, what, a minute or two of screentime in film? Even that long? It's an uninteresting fight, and if this is supposed to be the "finale" of this story arc it's one HELL of a let down. This may be more subjective, but I don't like the way either monster is drawn here either - the style actually reminds me a lot of that little mini-comic that came packed with the Trendmasters toys back in the day. To top it off, where are the backgrounds? It's either a orangey-whispy design (fire-illuminated smoke?) or just solid colors, with the only hint they're supposed to be fighting in a city being some crumbling buildings tossed in the corners in a few panels. How the hell do you set a fight in Washington and not use ANY of the landmarks? That there were TWO 2-page spreads, neither of which were at all necessary, just annoyed me. Those are two pages we could've used to make for a longer and more interesting fight!
I'm going to make an effort to re-read all 8 issues so far and see if maybe this reads better as a single story than as individual issues (I'm kinda doubtful). Hopefully, with the creative team changing for Issue #9, things start to really improve.[/u]
You can find Toho Kingdom's review of it here: . I picked it up today, but I think I'll hold off a little bit before sharing my thoughts in detail...though, suffice to say, I'm not much pleased at all. IMO, while this was a mild improvement over the last two issues, it wasn't by much and, if this is supposed to be the end of a story arc, it was a rather lame finale.
There are a couple panels where Santos manages to depict a really wicked Godzilla, but most feature incredibly lamely rendered dorsal fins, "crazy" eyes, and other off-putting characteristics.
