Review – Godzilla: Cataclysm #1 (of 5) (IDW Publishing)

Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Dave Wachter
Release Date: 13th August 2014

Buoyed by a recent re-infatuation with all things kaiju I jumped into IDW’s ongoing Godzilla: Rulers of Earth at a random issue just to whet my appetite. While I certainly enjoyed what I read and hope to review more in future, I found it difficult to keep up with the story that was already in motion. Luckily, in Godzilla: Cataclysm I may have found a series that I can not only start from the beginning, but that is also a much more streamlined experience.

This comic starts off incredibly strong. The first few pages recounting an event known as The Cataclysm, where kaiju began attacking mankind and each other with greater ferocity and frequency, before disappearing entirely. These pages, which posit the making of ancient and modern myths over strong artwork which is entirely drenched in red, mark some of the finest depictions of kaiju in both scale and detail that I have seen outside of Godzilla: Awakening, with some pages capable of being standalone art. Once the kaiju have vanished, and twenty years have elapsed, the art also succeeds in expressing the world in which the ruins of humanity survive. Whether on street level or from far above the scale of destruction can always be felt.

This destroyed Earth is of course the major differentiator from other Godzilla stories, but while I do find the idea of looking at the Godzilla universe from a position more akin to Pacific Rim exciting, the execution contains a few flaws. Firstly, while the inclusion of discussion as to the kaijus status as myths or even gods is unique, it appears limited to only one character that we’ve met so far. The others react to this world in much the same way humans in The Last of Us or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would. Speaking of The Last of Us, it is a comparison to that game’s world, which also exists 20 years after a world-wide calamity which provides my largest issues. While the kaiju are stated to have disappeared 20 years ago the characters we meet live mostly in tents. If the monsters are gone, why has no attempt at reconstruction occurred, and if there are no monsters in the city which is visted halfway through the issue, then why don’t people move there? The Last of Us presented a world which remained hostile to human reconstruction, but this comic does not. The re-emergence of Godzilla also seems somewhat forced, with nobody noticing his approach until he was directly on top of them. This takes some of the terror of kaiju revival away when they seem to pop out of thin air.

This comic gets by on its amazing art and by the fact that once plot holes are ignored the interest in seeing kaiju fight in a post-apocalypse is still strong. The issue flies by, due to a combination of well-worn apocalypse tropes that don’t require much thought and a desire to witness some beautiful action. Based purely upon how the interesting premise is almost wasted I would have given this comic a two out of 5, putting it at a ‘for fans only’ level. Luckily, the excellent art and relative accessibility of this title compared to Rulers of Earth just nudges this comic up a point.

Rating: 3/5

PREVIEW ARTWORK.

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