Review – ‘Godzilla Vs. Thor’ Sure Is A Comic

Welcome to the table,

I love Godzilla stories. While they are largely formulaic, something is comforting in knowing that before it wraps up Godzilla, the King of Monsters, is going to defeat whatever foe he is fighting and wander off to sleep in some ancient cave, swim the deep sea, or menace some other thing that has caught the attention of the atomic fire breath spewing Kaiju.

Marvel has been doing a pretty good job with its Godzilla Vs offerings, and while up to this point I have liked the ones I have reviewed a ton, this one does not seem to hold up as well, even though it provides a fun collection of ideas, it feels like those ideas are existential more than easy to follow and on some level that probably tracks as it is a story of a god and a monster. Let’s get into it.

Godzilla Vs. Thor is written by Jason Aaron and pencilled by Aaron Kuder. The story kicks off with Godzilla being dormant and The Hand, a cult of deadly assassins, slaying a group of killers in a ritual to drain their blood onto the heart of the King of Monsters so he will rise up and cause mass destruction.

The leader of The Hand delights in the destruction that Godzilla unleashes on Tokyo following the ritual. Thor arrives on the scene and Godzilla and he clash, eventually resulting in Thor encasing Godzilla in ice.

It feels very rushed, and Godzilla, who is for sure a wandering engine of destruction, feels somehow lessened in this story as they depict him as mindless and a bit of a toll of this very human force. Godzilla bows to nothing and it would seem to me his general defiance would have him destroy The Hand for assuming to bring him back or take some kind of pleasure in what he is doing. That could be my projection, but it feels like the caricature of Godzilla in this story is very one-dimensional, and anyone who has actually paid attention to the King of Monsters knows he is far deeper than “grrrr-grrrr-destory.”

The Hand ninjas have a piece of the Necrosword, so they go to the frozen Godzilla and transform Godzilla into Godzilla the God Butcher.

Again, I don’t want to come off like a jerk, but this feels very one-note and honestly an excuse to make a variant Funko POP! or something. I would totally buy the Funko POP! of Godzilla with the power of Gorr but it does not really do much to serve the story as the next page turn we have Thor in space, and he finds a dead Sif and then gets to Asgard to find Godzilla wrecking it.

Thor and Godzilla fight through the nine realms in a handful of very colorful double-page spreads courtesy of Jesus Aburtov, and then they both die and go to Hel, where they rise, fight each other over and over for all eternity.

The other stories in this collection I have read were delightful and really got me excited for this one but for some reason, this just comes off as flat. I’m a fan of Jason Aaron’s work. I think his Thor run is one of my favorite showcases of the character to date. This just does not work for me for some reason and that I think is what is making me sound even more critical.

I really wanted badly to like this. I looked forward to it. I have put off finalizing the review because I was hopeful I could come back to it with fresh eyes and give you something more than “it’s okay,” but each time I find myself enjoying it even less.

Until next time, it’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s… a comic… and sadly, the only thing that is memorable about this offering is how disappointed I am that it could have been so much cooler than it ended up being.