GODZILLA IN HELL by Stokoe, Eggleton, Farinas, Moustafa, Moody, Freitas, Wachter

I’m just gonna be honest and confess I am legitimately surprised this book even exists.

The story? Godzilla goes to Hell. That’s…that’s about all you’re getting. Seriously, the first page is him falling down a terrifyingly deep chasm and then he hits a fiery bottom and is confronted with an enormous sign, large enough to have been carved from a mountain, that reads ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Which is when the hilarity starts because, well…let’s just say assuming that Godzilla knows how to read was a poor opening gambit on Hell’s part because…I mean…he’s Godzilla. What do you THINK he’s going to DO when confronted with anything in his way other than respond with ATOMIC BREATH AAAAAAAAARRGH.

So Godzilla wanders around Hell and meets incomprehensible horrors and doesn’t care and fries them with atomic breath, and that goes on for 5 collected issues of comic books, and then it’s over. Narrative wise, there’s a bit where it flashbacks and suggests Godzilla was sent to Hell because he knocked over the giant Jesus statue above Rio de Janeiro which is just a twisted kind of creative brilliance, right there. If that sounds like a dull time for you then, well, what can I say? This is exactly what it says on the tin and what are you DOING reading this book when Gorky is, like, right there, next to Godzilla on the shelf? If the librarians are being alphabetical about these things.

I will say not all issues are equal here, inasmuch each issue is written and drawn by a different artist, and some rose to the brief better than others. Two issues, while gorgeous to look at, are just rehashes of old giant monster fights. Godzilla knocks heads with King Ghidora TWICE, you guys. Yawn.

Those other issues, though? Hoo boy. So, there’s this bit when Godzilla is confronted with a cloud but the cloud is composed of, like, MILLIONS of little naked people who, maybe, are all his past victims and then there’s this giant mountain of eyeballs that spits out angels with Mothra wings who want him to fight the armies of hell (Godzilla fights them both, and then eats the survivors, which is just marvelous) and, and THEN there’s a huge Japanese Torii guarded by some Lovecraftian abomination AND THEN there’s a Buddha quote of all things and and and…

So, yeah, if you read that title and feel like it might be a good time then check this out. It’s a bit inconsistent, inspiration wise, but it delivers the Hell-stomping goods. Me Like Books.