Comic: Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre

 

Cover for issue #2 by Tom Scioli

Short Story: Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre

Author: Tom Scioli

Published: IDW (2024)

Rating: ✪✪✪✪✪ (absolutely wonderful)

The graphic novel collects the three issue mini series from IDW. It’s got to be the most fun comic I’ve read in my 41 years on this earth.  Tom Scioli has outdone himself!! Even if you’ve read American Barbarian and Transformers VS G.I. Joe… you are not prepared for what happens in this incredible comic!

The story begins as a straightforward adaptation of the beginning of The Great Gatsby, but then Godzilla attacks.  From then on, Gatsby applies his incredible wealth to building a paramilitary organization of science heroes to hunt down and destroy the giant lizard.  Other members of the team include, Sherlock Holmes, The Time Machinist, a steampunk cyborg H. G. Wells just to name a few.  The comic is exciting, hilarious, and it makes the biggest corporate blockbuster look like a cowardly, visionless, dalliance in the visual arts.

Clapping eyes on Tom Scioli's signature remixing of Jack Kirby's distinctive style with his own unique sense of color, layout, and texture feels like drinking a glass of cool water after hiking across the sun's anvil. The only problem with this book is because it's a corporate license, so it's just a matter of time before it won't be available to read anywhere (legally). That said, just like his work on Transformers VS G.I. Joe, this is a deeply strange and shockingly free spirited approach to a major license.  The whole book has the feeling of a shit post, but delivered with a sincerity and joy seldom matched in such license driven art.