Throughout the 60 plus years of the Godzilla series, the King of the Monsters has battle many strange foes and visited exotic destinations. Now in this Godzilla miniseries, the setting is none other than hell itself. Thus comes the title of the miniseries, Godzilla in Hell, which is the fourth Godzilla miniseries published by IDW. Up to this point, the IDW Godzilla miniseries have often received more positive reaction in comparison to the main Godzilla stories published by the company.
The story, told in five issues by a variety of authors and artists from July to November of 2015, details Godzilla's journey through the underworld as he attempts to figure out why he is in this strange and terrible place and find a way out of this nightmarish world. Along the way, he battles against unimaginable creatures and demon versions of the kaiju from the main Godzilla series.
Basically each of the individual issues deal with Godzilla's descent and journey into the dark pits of hell and his attempt to fight his way out. Through the journey, he would encounter demonic incarnations of his foes and horrors that have entered into the lexicon of describing hell. If that were not bad enough, the landscape itself would seek to battle the monster as it takes on forms of structures that Godzilla is used to destroying. Only this time they strike back against the King of the Monsters.
Not surprisingly with the subject matter, Godzilla in Hell is indeed one of the very odd stories that IDW has done about the monster. In terms of chronology of the overall story, issue 3 is the beginning of the story as Godzilla engages in a horrific battle with another kaiju (and in a sense a surprising one at that) that destroys the Earth, followed by the remaining issues. As for the monsters that appear in this mini-series, issues 1 and 5 are the new ones although issue 1 seems to have drawn inspiration from Biollante and Orga. Issues 2-4 deal with well known kaiju from Toho.
After the story concludes, there is the gallery with the different covers used for the five individual issues. The covers done by Stoke, Frank and Zornow are truly excellent in their portrayal of the story itself while the covers done by, Sara Richard, Ibrahim Moustafa, and to a lesser extent Alberto Ponticelli do not show clearly that this is not a regular situation for Godzilla. At the end of the book, there are small notes by Bob Eggleton on how he wrote issue 2 of Godzilla in Hell.
One has to give the miniseries immense credit for having a story that makes Godzilla almost look normal. The artwork is definitely very interesting (with a few very terrifying images here and there) though a bit uneven due to the involvement of multiple authors involved in the miniseries with issue 3 being the weirdest in both story and art. In terms of the overall story, issue 4 feels the most pedestrian mainly due to the overall story and background in which Godzilla battles his foes although it too has its share of exceptionally weird phenomenon, mainly with all three monsters present in the issue being unable to stay dead (they do die but then they come back to life and in the case of Godzilla, he looks at his own corpse).
Godzilla in Hell has become one of the top sellers of the overall IDW Godzilla line with reprints already made for issues 1, 2, and 3 of the mini-series. Overall, it is highly recommended read and continues the impressive streak that IDW has had with its miniseries comics that deal with Godzilla.
With the rights that IDW had for Godzilla having expired early in 2017, the Godzilla comics have started going out of print. However if one looks hard enough, one can still find this and other comics at stores. Furthermore, there is also the option of buying the kindle versions of this and other IDW Godzilla comics and reading them online. |
