Maybe my expectations were too high. After the excellent Godzilla Rivals: Ebirah vs. Rodan, and also due to the overall high quality of the series, as well as the fact that one of my favorite Godzilla comics of all time is Godzilla Legends: Titanosaurus, I really wanted to love Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs. Titanosaurus. The new story, just out in March of 2023, written by Blue Delliquanti (O Human Star) with art by Feriowind (who has illustrated fan comics of Our Flag Means Death), takes inspiration from Showa Godzilla and recent Monsterverse themes—but the resultant melding of old and new feels narratively tired, with spotty art, and a lack of interesting action. This was for me the least interesting book in the Godzilla Rivals series yet, by far.
As usual, I will be going into spoilers, so skip to the end for a summary if you prefer to remain unspoiled.
Story: Mothra’s egg washes up at Torrey Pines, a golf course near San Diego. A scientist and inventor named Andreas Luna is on the scene, having somehow tip-toed past the military blockade. It turns out Luna is working with Ruobin Carpenter, a monster researcher, to investigate how to live at peace with kaiju. Luna and Carpenter are taken into custody by Master Chief Irene Catocala (all the characters’ last names are also varieties of moths), and Luna reveals a device they have been working on—a headset that would allow people to see the auras cast by kaiju, and thus detect them long before they emerge to wreak havoc on humankind. When Luna demonstrates the device on the Mothra egg, the unborn monster casts an aura over a 30-kilometer radius—and another monster is detected, too. Titanosaurus is heading towards the egg, and the kaiju’s angry aura causes Luna to collapse. Titanosaurus smashes up some navy ships and a bridge before stomping across land in a single-minded rage with one goal: Destroy the Mothra egg. Luna and Carpenter hatch a plan (hyuk hyuk) to drag the egg out to sea with fishing boats, and the pair once again sneak past the utterly incompetent military and jerk the egg out to sea with their impromptu team of civilians. The military is very forgiving of their subterfuge, and fly the egg with helicopters onto an aircraft carrier, which tries to outrun Titanosaurus. The giant red monster, though, quickly catches up and attacks, only to be battered off by mama Mothra after a short skirmish. Our heroes plant the egg on one of the Southern Coronado Islands (I think), and mama Mothra lands on top. Luna and Carpenter reflect on their adventures and cuddle together. The end.
I… don’t know why this needed 48 pages. I found the story downright boring. The egg washing ashore routine traces back to Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964), but Delliquanti doesn’t do anything new with the idea here beyond having a Mothra scale falling into a golf ball hole. The egg was just washed up by a storm again, but the storm this time doesn’t cause any damage. Having Titanosaurus very slowly menace the egg (it apparently takes the kaiju multiple hours to travel 30 or so kilometers) feels like a slow-motion version of Godzilla doing the same thing in MvG, but again with far less emotional weight. In MvG we got fun and humorous characters, we got heart-felt commentary on nuclear fallout and humankind helping one another, we got extended monster fight sequences and Mothra’s gut-wrenching sacrifice. Here, Titanosaurus gets ticked off about an egg, the humans struggle to move it, and then Mothra just hits the dinosaur a few times and he gives up. The fight is over so fast I was shocked, made worse by how the mother Mothra just appears out of thin air right when she is needed with almost no fanfare—even when Luna is wearing the aura detector! Luna should have been able to detect Mothra when she was miles away!
The technology, too, feels like a less interesting riff on the “Orca” tech from Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)—except instead of provoking kaiju with particular frequencies, it just detects monster auras. The story provides a long-winded explanation of the auras, tying it to magnetoreception—the ability of some animals to detect the earth’s magnetic field for navigation. Having humans “see” what monsters see is not a bad idea, either—but here, even with a few offhand remarks about needing a biological element for the tech to work, it feels poorly conceived. A human being can’t really measure the size of something stretching across multiple kilometers just by looking at it while standing on the earth, and the actually useful readouts from the device appear on screens showing maps showing where the monsters are in relation to each other—it’s not really useful or interesting for a human being to view the aura from the ground on the headset. We don’t really get to see what monsters see—we don’t get into their heads, like in the aforementioned Godzilla Legends: Titanosaurus. We just get these comparatively dull concepts about tracking and this idea that monsters get all upset when their auras overlap because it’s so irritating to them. The empathetic irritation that Luna feels, too, when he (I am not sure about Luna’s gender, so I am going with how the character presents in the book) wears the device is confusing. We are meant to understand that Luna can see the auras of the kaiju—but he also feels Titanosaurus’s anger. Luna can feel the “clash” of auras between the Mothra egg and Titanosaurus, which doesn’t make much sense. The aura detector is not a mind-reading device. It doesn’t get into monster’s heads. It just detects the auras they emit. Are we supposed to understand that any kaiju that observes OTHER kaijus’ auras as they overlap feels annoyance as a third party? The concept feels murky and ill-defined and… I’m sorry, it’s just really boring.
It might be interesting if Luna’s device could decipher kaiju language transmitted via their auras. Maybe if Luna discovered that the monsters were created by something, that they had an internal program that coerced them into fighting one another, that might be interesting. Maybe he could discover a mystical system in which each monster had destiny strings that drew them into inevitable conflict, that fate required them to clash on particular days, according to a system of prophecy and a divine calendar. Maybe such a story could have been built in to really shine a deeper light on monster lore. But just… they get really irritated when their auras overlap? That’s it? This feels like an extension of how Godzilla (in the Monsterverse) gets all ticked off just because Kong dares step outside of Skull Island, or how the kaiju king travels around and beats down on any other monster that even dares to wake up. I don’t like that concept in the Monsterverse as it makes Godzilla into the ultimate bully, and it doesn’t work any better here.
So what about monsters that mate? Are they irritated the whole time? In this story, how did Mothra get the drop on Titanosaurus? Shouldn’t he have sensed her coming literally from miles away?
Outside of the plot itself, the characters don’t really feel alive—which is ridiculous given how much time we have to spend with them away from the monsters. The comic feels long, with endless scenes of exposition and Luna and Carpenter running around—but we don’t learn that much about their lives in all that time. Luna is an androgynous, energetic scientist who becomes overwhelmed when connecting with monsters—and that’s about it. Carpenter is bigger, more muscular, and angrier—and the pair show affection towards each other (presumably they are in a romantic relationship), but they felt colorless and bland to me. Catocala is the rare female commanding officer in the Godzilla universe, but she is toothless—never really disciplining the pair of rogue scientists, never really acting effectively on her own.
The art overall has a sketchy feel, with backgrounds coming across messy and unfinished. Human characters look generically “anime” again—kind of like those in Godzilla Rivals: vs. Hedorah and Godzilla Rivals: vs. Gigan. Of the three, Feriowind’s art looks the scratchiest, the messiest, which is a legitimate artistic choice—it reminded me a bit of Attack on Titan, though not as rough-hewn.
The monsters look better. Titanosaurus appears demonic when he first makes his entrance, and he has some city attack scenes that manage a sense of scope. As the crimson dinosaur zeroes in on the egg, his determined and devilish expression lends the monster wrath and purpose. The thin, pencil-like linework provides Titanosaurus and later Mothra with a great sense of detail, and when they do fight one another, the battle comes across with impact and power. Mothra looks beautiful, with close detailing of her fur, and I love how Feriowind sketches out her eyes. The weakest shot, though, has to be Mothra settling on her egg, as her wings appear to shrink, and she looks a bit sad. Still, the monsters look good in nearly every panel, and their sequences are depicted with gravitas and drama for the most part. Colors by Pinto feel a bit flat, especially in comparison to the fuller, gorgeous color work in some other Godzilla comics like Monsters & Protectors and Ebirah vs. Rodan. I do really like how she colors Mothra’s egg, though, and she gives Mothra’s descent from above onto her egg a celestial sense of beauty.
But again, even with all those positives, something about the monster action feels staid, too. I consistently felt a profound sense of been-there throughout this book, as the concepts that hold the story together are lacking in creativity and don’t use the monsters in interesting ways. Titanosaurus could have been replaced with anybody, and Mothra is just a bland beauty with zero pathos. She acts as a deus ex machina in the end when Luna and Carpenter’s plans utterly fail—and the fight is over so fast, Titanosaurus has such a season of dread building up his approach, but then he gives up practically with barely any fight—and nothing is made of his usual powers (wind storms from his tail) or weaknesses (high frequency sounds). What’s the point of including a monster and ignoring most of their unique attributes?
The covers are great. Feriowind’s main cover, with Mothra above and the sun glittering around her massive body and Titanosaurus bursting from the ocean with a roar, clinches action and searing monster fury in a colorful package. Sophie Campbell (Shadoweyes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) provides a nighttime alternative, with Mothra and Titanosaurus facing off as the waves burst and the stars glitter behind. She sketches out the confrontation with great detail and the colors pop against the glittery black sky. G. Romero-Johnson (SFSX) has my least favorite of the three, though hers has a stronger feeling of individuality, with the Mothra and Titanosaurus feeling a bit off-model as the tussle against a burning cityscape. Romero-Johnson’s imagery sports more muted colors and a fuller background detail, but the monsters look clunky and chunky with dull facial expressions that don’t reflect the monsters’ battle spirit.
I just was so disappointed with this release. The story lacks the sense of newness that so many of the Rivals books have boasted in spades, and the simple tale the book provides lacks character and urgency. It feels like the narrative is plodding along, with altogether too many pages devoted to exposition and lugging around a giant egg, and when the monsters do fight, it’s over in a flash with very little sense of satisfaction. The characters, too, stumble, lacking the freshness of good monster-story heroes. Also, while so many IDW comics are overflowing with kaiju Easter eggs, this one lacks even that charm, with rather uninspired usages of the monsters and sketchy sci-fi ideas that are a snooze. I liked the monster art, which artist Feriowind gives a thunderous voice, though backgrounds and characters can look rough. This issue is such a huge step down from the previous book and is so unoriginal and plain-Jane that I think many may wish to skip it. |
