It’s nice to have friends. Since the last version of a Kong comic I read had the ridiculous premise of Kong on the Planet of the Apes and I also am not a big fan of neither Biollante nor Destroyah from the Godzilla universe, I decided to enlist the help of my pal Sly Hondo (he is a big fan of all of these!) and let him give you the 411 on these issues.
KONG THE GREAT WAR #1 DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT
I was glad to hear that Kong was returning to the printed page but as Doc mentioned, what they had been doing with him recently didn’t thrill me. The version of Kong here is based on the Kong of Skull Island series from a while back. Knowing that this is the first issue, I didn’t expect to see a lot of Kong as they would need to develop the storyline. Based in the days of World War I, the story revolves around a naval officer who survives a shipwreck and ends up on what I assume is Skull Island along with a few shipmates. They begin the task of trying to survive. They spot some form of dinosaur in the waters around the island. Climbing a mountain and hearing strange noises, they stumble across Kong on the final page.
Unfortunately, even with it being set in a different time period, this is nothing we haven’t seen many times before in both print and on the screen. And while Alex Cox’s story is good, it just doesn’t surprize. Meanwhile Tommaso Bianchi’s art, is pretty cool and is really a good fit for the story. It seems to represent the time frame really well with lots of sketchiness and shadows. I give it a 6 out of 10 Grahams.
GODZILLA RIVALS BIOLLANTE VS DESTROYAH ONE-SHOT #1 IDW COMICS
As a big fan of Destroyah, I have been waiting for this issue since I saw the ad in IDW’s last one-shot. While Nick Marino’s story does a pretty good job, it is a bit weak on Kaiju action. No spoiler but it also ends rather uneventfully and I have to call cheating on the finale. I can’t believe that ***redacted*** won the fight. The other unfortunate part is that I am not of fan of Sean Dove’s cartoony anime-ish style. While it works fine for the surrounding story, it really doesn’t work for the monsters and the fight scenes. It also doesn’t help that even though this is a one-shot, it does seem to have some sort of connecting plot points from previous one-shots. Not the most well done issue but I still got my Destroyah story. Luckily, by the look of the cover for the next one-shot featuring Space Godzilla, we may be retuning to the scariness. Here’s hoping. I give it a 7 out of 10 Grahams.
