In its decade-plus history of producing Godzilla comics, IDW has steadily ramped up its output with ambitious and zany concepts. Godzilla fans and comic readers alike were taken aback with the bizarreness of 2015’s Godzilla in Hell miniseries. Later comics, like Godzilla: Rage Across Time and Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons, experimented more with wild settings and tone, but nothing came close to replicating the collective shock that the Godzilla community felt when Godzilla in Hell was first revealed; until now.
When announced, Tom Scioli’s Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre caused a great deal of ruckus, with a mixture of confusion and optimistic excitement. Crossing over icons of Western pulp with the King of the Monsters, with the titular character from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s landmark novel The Great Gatsby, seemed like an odd artistic choice, even for Scioli who is known for past fever-dream like comics such as Transformers vs. G.I. Joe. Is Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre a solely strange gimmicky comic, one that’s intended as an odd curiosity? Can it deliver more than mere shock by its ludicrous nature, in its three forty page issues?
At least based on the contents of issue one, I believe that Tom Scioli’s Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre is more than an amusing oddity. Whether or not it’ll be a masterpiece by the end of its third issue remains to be seen, but I enjoyed issue one well enough on multiple levels. Like Rosie Knight and Oliver Ono’s recent Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp, the comic benefits from being created by someone who is clearly passionate and knowledgeable about what they’re putting on the page and has a precise vision of what they want to create. Through dramatic character writing, admittedly aped from an American classic, and simple but beautiful classical cartooning, Scioli manages to weave a wild tale that takes an impossible combination of elements into a cohesive and exciting narrative.
To loosely recap the first issue, the events of The Great Gatsby mostly unfold as they do in the original novel. However, one night while Gatsby is hosting a party, Godzilla emerges and sets Long Island ablaze. Daisy is lost, and Gatsby vows revenge on Godzilla. He creates the “Gatsby Force”, cleverly called the “G-Force” and begins recruiting scientists to help him stop the monster. Meanwhile, Godzilla continues to rampage, eventually departing America for London. Other icons appear, and there’s hints at something greater.
On paper, Godzilla and Gatsby might feel like an incredibly odd combination. To be clear, after reading it, it still is. However, Scioli realized something rather genius when he came up with the concept. Godzilla (1954) focuses on a rather dramatic love triangle between Emiko, Serizawa, and Ogata. While not exactly the same situation as what Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby go through in the The Great Gatsby there are similarities regarding unrequited love, and tragedy stemming from duty. Godzilla Raids Again (1955) also contains similar plotting and character-driven drama. The Godzilla series is no stranger to tragedy-driven personalized drama exploding into a grander scale. Gatsby doesn’t feel that different from the plethora of revenge oriented protagonists that graced the Heisei and Millennium films. It surprisingly works and Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre #1 transcends cultural and temporal barriers.
The end result is that although the combination of Godzilla and Gatsby is a strange one, content wise and how it’s actually portrayed doesn’t feel particularly jarring or nonsensical. There’s a thematic link between the two properties that Scioli taps into and it’s a relatively easy drama to understand; Gatsby loves Daisy, and Godzilla (in addition to Tom) is the main obstacle to come between them. Gatsby, with extravagant wealth, intends to find a way to fell the beast. Importantly Scioli strengthens this connection through art that is referential to the 1954 film. A panel of Godzilla overlooking a row of buildings, eerily looks similar to a shot of Godzilla in 1954, and allows for thematic connections to intersect visually.
And despite the eccentric characters that are joining him on the adventure, Godzilla seems to be Godzilla. Godzilla does Godzilla things, and doesn’t feel unusual in the slightest, beyond being portrayed in a slightly goofy Rat-Fink-esque style. Godzilla picks up trains, trashes bridges, burns cities, and sinks boats. Amongst a slew of battle-filled Godzilla Rivals comics, it’s actually refreshing to see a toned down Godzilla comic that mainly focuses on Godzilla as a destructive rampaging beast that fights off the military with ease. While not overly violent, the comic also doesn’t shy away from the fact that Godzilla is presumably killing tons of people; Scioli takes the time to show panicked ordinary people in desperate circumstances, something that the comics tend to shy away from. In other words, despite Gatsby being there, it doesn’t feel unusual for a Godzilla story.
There’s also a satisfying mixture of Godzilla action and Gatsby adventuring. Scioli aces balancing both parts out, and despite a lot of dialogue heavy pages, he allows for some truly spectacular pages of Godzilla to light things ablaze.
If Monsterpiece Theatre's first issue was solely about Godzilla and Gatsby, I’d be able to say with confidence that it’s a bizarre-yet wonderful- concept executed well. However, I do have gripes, or rather concerns, with where the series will head, as well as the management of other characters. After focusing on an easy to understand narrative of Godzilla and Gatsby, Scioli escalates the weirdness by introducing other classic western icons, including Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and a bunch of characters by Jules Verne.
It’s not that these characters are unwelcomed, or less jarring than Gatsby, but rather it feels like they interrupt a very focused narrative involving Gatsby and Godzilla. Additionally, with page after page of introducing various icons, including the likes of Tom Edison, the Baker Street Irregulars, and the Time Machinist, it feels like a hodge-podge of page after page of cameos and easter eggs for someone with an incredibly niche interest in old western pulp rather than a cohesive and focused story. It’s not as bad as I make it sound; Scioli is able to quickly establish a connection between Sherlock Holmes and Gatsby, and does have some restraint. It does however run the risk of escalating into something that feels less meaty and more expecting the audience to solely be entertained by what wild cameos the writer can come up with. I worry issues two and three will just be introducing more and more characters, rather than fleshing out ones that issue one establishes and builds upon.
Still, like understanding the thematic connections between Godzilla (1954) and The Great Gatsby, something clicked in my mind. Having Dracula in a Godzilla comic, while exciting, feels no less conceptually bizarre than Godzilla fighting King Kong in 1962 or having Frankenstien grow to gigantic proportions and fight a subterranean dinosaur in 1965. Sherlock Holmes isn’t that far removed than some of the reporters that have graced many Godzilla films. Inventors like the Machinist don’t feel out of place in a franchise where mad scientists create giant rose-human-hybrids or cutting edge robotic weaponry. In other words, despite the insane concept, it doesn’t take long to adjust because the Godzilla franchise, to a degree, has always been insane.
And it does allow for the imagination to run wild. Where will Scioli go with this? Will Dracula turn into some giant bat creature and fight Godzilla? Will the Machinist build some strange proto-mechagodzilla or flying airship? Will Holmes concoct a plan to fight Godzilla alongside Gatsby? What other insane concepts will Scioli come up with? Will the tripods from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds appear? I'm not saying I particularly want any of these crossovers or inclusions, but it’s fun to speculate what Scioli has in store. And just putting this out there, while as of writing this I have no idea what the contents of issue two and three would be, if there was ever a time to include King Kong from the 1932 novel, now would be the time.
Now that I’ve talked at length about the concept, and to what extent it works, it’s time to actually discuss the meat of any comics, the visuals. This’ll be a big make-or-break issue for any reader, but Godzilla looks ugly. That’s not an insult, and based on Scioli’s aptitude, it’s clear it’s an intentional choice. Godzilla is given these large eyes that overlook a nasty bulbous snout aligned with a row of sharp teeth. With puffy and uniform spines, Godzilla looks less like any specific incarnation and more like a bootleg toy, or rather what someone might think Godzilla looks like if you told them about it without seeing any of the original movies. That works to the comic to its advantage; a pulpy crazy Godzilla fits nicely in a pulpy crazy comic. And despite the goofy look, Scioli manages to make Godzilla look horrifying such as when he looks down upon Manhattan with yellow eyes and a monstrous grin. Some people won’t like it, but I love it. It feels appropriate.
Human characters look good too. Scioli manages to convey a range of emotions through the expressive faces of Gatsby and Holmes. He draws frightened people throughout, and when aided by unique coloring it really sells the panic. To be clear, it’s not just the line art, Scioli really adds to the whole set-up with creative and minimalist coloring. Some pages are just a mixture of white, red, blue, and black, but it all meshes together well. Scioli is effective with his color choices and they do a lot of the heavy lifting for emotional beats. The way that Scioli illuminates Gatsby and Daisy’s faces with purple and blue to indicate shock when Godzilla swings his tail at their boat is perfect.
As alluded to earlier, there’s a lot of action. While not a battle comic, or being very sequence heavy, Scioli makes everything simple and easy to understand. While reading the comic I never had difficulty figuring out what was going on, which unfortunately isn’t something I can say about all of IDW’s recent Godzilla releases. When firefighters tried blasting Godzilla with water, it was easy to understand and visualize in my mind them frantically getting pulled forward after the hose got tangled around their feet. When planes fight Godzilla, it’s very easy to imagine them buzzing around Godzilla before being lit aflame. This extends to human action too. Minor actions like a punch, or a cat leaping out, work well. Sciloli’s art is easy to understand and a delight, making the comic a fun visual read.
It’s worth noting that the comic is filled with visual references to past media, Godzilla and otherwise. I’ve brought up the visual allusions to Godzilla (1954) but others have caught different references. Forum user Angilasman caught a reference to the pose of Gatsby on one being a direct reference to the poster of 1975’s Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. There’s bound to be many references I or others didn’t catch, but it will be fun to be clued in by others later. It’ll give the comic a fun communal discussion and re-analysis aspect that not many other comics have. It should be stated that these visual easter eggs feel like an intentional artistic choice that aids the comic, rather than merely tracing or lifting from entries.
In terms of covers there’s a great selection. Tom Scioli’s Cover A, which features the main troupe of heroes facing off against Godzilla in a manner lifted directly from Fantastic Four Issue #1, is a clever choice. It tells the reader what they need to know and is accurate to the comic; Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre is a bombastic assault of literary characters against Godzilla that is visually inspired by classic American pulp and comics. The only odd thing about it is the strange way Godzilla is coming out of the ground and his relative smallness compared to the humans surrounding him. But, I can forgive the discrepancy in size due to the cover being a clear reference to the aforementioned first issue of 1961’s Fantastic Four. With retro-font choices it's a very eye-catching cover that sells the series well.
My personal favorite cover is Cover B, also by Tom Scioli. It’s rare that IDW allows its authors to do both the main covers, but once again Scioli justifies his creative madness with a stellar cover that mimics Francis Cugat’s iconic cover for The Great Gatsby. Replacing the mysterious floating face in Cugat’s cover with Godzilla is a fantastic choice that furthers the connection between the two icons. Given that issue one is more Gatsby-centric, and my own love for the cover, I prefer cover B to cover A, though you can’t go wrong.
Both the retail incentive covers are okay, but don’t hold a candle to Scioli’s covers. Jim Rugg’s cover is the better of the two, with a retro looking Godzilla in front of a slightly psychedelic red, yellow, and blue backdrop. The font choice and retro-style fit the tone of the comic, but it just doesn’t click like Tom Scioli’s.
The cover I like the least is Jim Mahfood’s cover. Unlike the previous covers, it feels like it would work fine as any cover to any other Godzilla series and outside four skulls, doesn’t feel like it fits the theming of Monsterpiece Theater. Maybe I’m missing something here, and Mahfood’s cover is a reference to something I’m not getting, but I can’t say it works well as a cover for the series despite the interesting art.
In summation, Godzilla's Monsterpiece Theatre #1 was an odd but fun read. If one can get past the intentionally ugly way Scioli draws Godzilla, it delivers as a Godzilla comic as Godzilla is the catalyst and given a lot of opportunity to destroy things. Beyond that, it’s a fun curiosity, seeing Godzilla interact with all these other Western literary and film icons. Whether or not it can keep that momentum into issue two and three, I can’t say, but I’m certainly invested. Tom Scioli struck gold with realizing the connective tissues of tragedy and love between Godzilla and The Great Gatsby and for that alone it’s already an interesting and memorable part of the Godzilla franchise’s history. |
