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19th April 2024

kaiju

The Eleven Most Fearsome Giant Monsters in Comic Books

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World Comic Book Review proudly has a section dedicated to “kaiju”. Kaiju is a Japanese word meaning “strange beast” (怪獣), and refers to giant fantastic monsters. The motion picture “Pacific Rim” (2013) (see the image introducing this article) featured kaiju fighting giant robots piloted by humans. “Pacific Rim” is described as director Guillermo del Toro’s … Read more

Monsters Unleashed #1 (Review)

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Monsters Unleashed #1 (Review)
Marvel Comics, January 18, 2017
Writer: Cullen Bunn

“Monsters Unleashed” is a new crossover miniseries from American comic book publisher Marvel Comics. This story brings together majority of its mainstream character properties in a single story, and gives them the unenviable task of dealing with the onset of a prophesized apocalyptic event. The prophesy is grim: gigantic monsters attack the Earth en masse and rid it of human beings.

Perhaps we are jaded, but the first issue feels unique for a superhero crossover event, as it does not involve the heroes fighting each other on some artificial pretext. This is clearly a premise from which American superhero comic books should take a break. Instead, the story starts with the Avengers fighting a giant tentacled monster, and then greeted by yet another giant monster falling from the sky.

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Kaiju, History, Rage, and Mythology – Godzilla: Rage Across Time

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Godzilla: Rage Across Time IDW Publishing, August, 2016-ongoing Writer: Jeremy Robinson (#1), Chris Mowry & Kahlil Schweitzer (#2) The globally famous, fictional giant reptilian monster “Godzilla” was originally introduced in a 1954 Japanese motion picture. The movie was a way of addressing the consequences of nuclear warfare, a concept all too real to Japan. Over … Read more

Monster of the Week #1 (review)

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“Monster of the Week” #1 (review)
Self-Published, October 2016
Writer: Ryan Little

The Kickstarter blurb for this comic opens with the following elevator-pitch: “A Giant Monster Kaiju book in the wonky tone of Adventure Time.”

(“Kaiju”, as we have previously discussed, is a Japanese type of comic book dealing with enormous city-destroying creatures, in the manner of “Godzilla”.)

The overarching plot is amusing. Each year, once a week, every week for three months, a giant monster inexplicably appears from the sky, in the American Mid-West. The US Army generally disposes of these enormous beasts using rockets and tanks, but little seems to be known about them.

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Importantly, in a faux-competition with the US Army in the destruction of these kaiju are amateur monster hunters. We meet two examples of these:

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