What do you think?
Rate this book
Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters #1-3
Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters
The King of the Monsters rises again, and he's bringing lots of other beloved Toho monsters with him in one destructive saga!
When Godzilla appears off the coast of Japan, the Japanese government must respond quickly to contain the disaster... but before long, other monsters start appearing all over the world. Can humanity survive this mysterious onslaught of giant beasts? Featuring Anguirus, Battra, Destroyah, Gigan, Hedorah, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, Mechagodzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Spacegodzilla, and Titanosaurus. Collects the whole 12-issue series for the first time.
When Godzilla appears off the coast of Japan, the Japanese government must respond quickly to contain the disaster... but before long, other monsters start appearing all over the world. Can humanity survive this mysterious onslaught of giant beasts? Featuring Anguirus, Battra, Destroyah, Gigan, Hedorah, King Ghidorah, Kumonga, Mechagodzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Spacegodzilla, and Titanosaurus. Collects the whole 12-issue series for the first time.
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 6, 2012
2 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Eric Powell
505 books281 followersEric Powell has contributed work on such comics titles as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Hellboy: Weird Tales, Star Wars Tales, The Incredible Hulk, Black Panther, The Avengers, The Hood, MAD Magazine, Devil Dinosaur, Swamp Thing, the Avengers, She-Hulk, the Simpsons, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell and Action Comics.
Although eking out a meager living in the comics field since 1995, Eric didn't find true success until he launched his critically acclaimed dark comedy series The Goon. The Goon was subsequently picked up by Dark Horse Comics and boasts a diehard cult following.
Although eking out a meager living in the comics field since 1995, Eric didn't find true success until he launched his critically acclaimed dark comedy series The Goon. The Goon was subsequently picked up by Dark Horse Comics and boasts a diehard cult following.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 12, 2021
Wasnt too fond of this one. Not much in the way of monster fights, too many side stories, not enough of a main story, and the plot is very one-sided politically. I know IDW 'claims' that "any similarities to any persons living or dead are purely coincidental," but come on. That was clearly intentionally former President Barack Obama. Not that I mind having the fictional president based off a real president, but if you're going to take a swing at the right, could you at least make an effort to try to see from their point of view? Or, better yet, just leave politics out of it. We're reading this because we wanna see monsters fight, not to have some talk show host talk about how right-winged the military is, or have a caricature of the state of Texas. Just give us kaiju! Clearly the real monsters in this book are the trio of authors, who neglected to tell a cohesive story, explain ANYTHING that's happening, or leave their political convictions on the cutting room floor. The sequel to this story, "Godzilla: History's Greatest Monster" is a MUCH better tale.
January 20, 2025
Bears some similarity to the later MonsterVerse take on Godzilla - with Godzilla's emergence bringing about a new age of kaiju worldwide - but much more apocalyptic. Unfortunately, the story is also very cynical, and its politics very unsubtle, which holds it back despite its memorable elements. This could have all worked better, had the author committed to writing this as a satire, instead of expecting us to take it seriously by the end. (B)
April 10, 2023
due to me being super into a) kaiju movies & b) comics, it was pretty clear to me that i was gonna need to catch up on idw's godzilla stuff, so i decided to finally kick that into gear. i know most of their output has been (as is fairly typical for idw) in the form of largely self-contained miniseries, but the amount that they've put out so far seemed fairly manageable, so rather than jumping onboard in the middle somewhere, i decided to start from the beginning with kingdom of monsters.
i... kind of wish i hadn't, tbh.
social commentary has been an aspect of the godzilla series since its inception, but i can't say that a single one of its film versions (even the infamous 1998 roland emmerich blunder) has ever handled this aspect of the franchise's identity worse than these comics.
before i even get into what these comics' idea of biting social commentary is, you know how basically every version of godzilla before or since has grappled in some way, shape, or form with the horrors of nuclear warfare? yeah, the way this comic handles it is by having japan literally try to nuke godzilla? and it acts as though they just have nukes, y'know, lying around. as if they were not only not a nuclear-armed country, but a country that is fiercely opposed to the notion of nuclear weapons? so that's... something!
as the comic goes on, it becomes increasingly america-centric, which... yeah, it's not really shocking. and as we've seen in the legendary pictures movies, there's really no reason you can't do that and still have it feel an awful lot like a godzilla story? but that's... not what's happening here. at all.
so, there is basically one human character who has a consistent speaking role in the story, and that's this sneering soldier guy who spends his whole first issue just loudly rolling his eyes about how "lazy & entitled" everyone else in his generation is. he's just a fucking boomer trapped in a millennial's body. sigh.
don't worry, though! he gets plenty of character development! he goes from sneering with contempt at pop culture to sneering with contempt at how desperate people get when supplies start dwindling. see! character development!
the other human characters with more than occasional lines of dialogue are just... extremely clever & subtle caricatures of celebrities & public figures. like, i'm sure a lot of readers had to exert some real effort to figure out who "girly yaya" and the cast of "jerseyified" could possibly be referring to. it's just so subtle & clever!
also, both of the aforementioned characters are killed off, the former with a crass (and very contrived) pun to make light of it, and the latter in one of those ridiculous prepper fantasies about coddled leftists needing a big, strong gun-toting alpha male to save them but him turning his back on them because of all the "disrespect" he's been subjected to. fucking OOF.
the only things i liked about these comics were the occasional gorgeous full-page spreads of kaiju fights. like, the art & layout of a lot of these pages is genuinely pretty fucking fantastic, but there's comparatively so little of it, and so little personality shown by the kaiju themselves, that it just doesn't come close to making up for how genuinely unpleasant the vast majority of the comic is to read.
i... kind of wish i hadn't, tbh.
social commentary has been an aspect of the godzilla series since its inception, but i can't say that a single one of its film versions (even the infamous 1998 roland emmerich blunder) has ever handled this aspect of the franchise's identity worse than these comics.
before i even get into what these comics' idea of biting social commentary is, you know how basically every version of godzilla before or since has grappled in some way, shape, or form with the horrors of nuclear warfare? yeah, the way this comic handles it is by having japan literally try to nuke godzilla? and it acts as though they just have nukes, y'know, lying around. as if they were not only not a nuclear-armed country, but a country that is fiercely opposed to the notion of nuclear weapons? so that's... something!
as the comic goes on, it becomes increasingly america-centric, which... yeah, it's not really shocking. and as we've seen in the legendary pictures movies, there's really no reason you can't do that and still have it feel an awful lot like a godzilla story? but that's... not what's happening here. at all.
so, there is basically one human character who has a consistent speaking role in the story, and that's this sneering soldier guy who spends his whole first issue just loudly rolling his eyes about how "lazy & entitled" everyone else in his generation is. he's just a fucking boomer trapped in a millennial's body. sigh.
don't worry, though! he gets plenty of character development! he goes from sneering with contempt at pop culture to sneering with contempt at how desperate people get when supplies start dwindling. see! character development!
the other human characters with more than occasional lines of dialogue are just... extremely clever & subtle caricatures of celebrities & public figures. like, i'm sure a lot of readers had to exert some real effort to figure out who "girly yaya" and the cast of "jerseyified" could possibly be referring to. it's just so subtle & clever!
also, both of the aforementioned characters are killed off, the former with a crass (and very contrived) pun to make light of it, and the latter in one of those ridiculous prepper fantasies about coddled leftists needing a big, strong gun-toting alpha male to save them but him turning his back on them because of all the "disrespect" he's been subjected to. fucking OOF.
the only things i liked about these comics were the occasional gorgeous full-page spreads of kaiju fights. like, the art & layout of a lot of these pages is genuinely pretty fucking fantastic, but there's comparatively so little of it, and so little personality shown by the kaiju themselves, that it just doesn't come close to making up for how genuinely unpleasant the vast majority of the comic is to read.
January 31, 2022
When titans collide humanity is the loser.
If you are coming for an assortment of kaiju battles filling many pages with bold beautiful artwork dedicated to destruction then here is a book for you. However regardless of artwork in between issues or what the back of the book claims certain monsters do not appear in the book such as Mothra though the twins known to work with Mothra are silhouetted on one page (there is another set of twins in the story that I thought might have been a darker retelling of Mothra's twins.) Don't worry though because Godzilla starts this battle royale and many of the classic kaiju join it as the origin for classic monsters are reworked to get them in the story fast to get your monster clashing jollies.
Some characters within the book are satirically portrayed being based on real world counter points and although some insightful things might be said now and their don't expect the majority of the humans to contribute to the story unless they have powers, are a major world leader, or happen to come across an effective tool to handle the kaiju threat. Speaking of the humans within the story don't expect a lot of good representations of humanity as most of the soon to be victims either seriously underestimate the kaiju threat or over estimate themselves in some way or another. Being a bit goofier and by proxy squishy to things much bigger then themselves these temporary characters have a tendency to give us little breaks between the scenes of major destruction as kaiju move and battle (I mean seriously...they have some amazing stamina to be able to travel how they do.)
If you are coming for an assortment of kaiju battles filling many pages with bold beautiful artwork dedicated to destruction then here is a book for you. However regardless of artwork in between issues or what the back of the book claims certain monsters do not appear in the book such as Mothra though the twins known to work with Mothra are silhouetted on one page (there is another set of twins in the story that I thought might have been a darker retelling of Mothra's twins.) Don't worry though because Godzilla starts this battle royale and many of the classic kaiju join it as the origin for classic monsters are reworked to get them in the story fast to get your monster clashing jollies.
Some characters within the book are satirically portrayed being based on real world counter points and although some insightful things might be said now and their don't expect the majority of the humans to contribute to the story unless they have powers, are a major world leader, or happen to come across an effective tool to handle the kaiju threat. Speaking of the humans within the story don't expect a lot of good representations of humanity as most of the soon to be victims either seriously underestimate the kaiju threat or over estimate themselves in some way or another. Being a bit goofier and by proxy squishy to things much bigger then themselves these temporary characters have a tendency to give us little breaks between the scenes of major destruction as kaiju move and battle (I mean seriously...they have some amazing stamina to be able to travel how they do.)
August 12, 2019
Before you read the rest of this review, know that I was going to give this three and a half stars. however, I wasn't allowed to do that. so I made it four stars. So, this is not the best book, but its VERY fun to read. especially for a Godzilla fan the artwork is amazing and the monster fights are well written, but it's the human parts that are lacking. I never really thought they acted like real people. their actions are really over the top, and they create many plot holes.
But you forget about all of that whenever the monsters show up. Their fights are amazing, and really make you feel like you're reading a Godzilla movie. I, personally really like this series. but I'm biased, as I grew up reading whatever few issues I could find. I would really only recommend this, if you're a true Godzilla fan, or if you're just looking for something fun to read
But you forget about all of that whenever the monsters show up. Their fights are amazing, and really make you feel like you're reading a Godzilla movie. I, personally really like this series. but I'm biased, as I grew up reading whatever few issues I could find. I would really only recommend this, if you're a true Godzilla fan, or if you're just looking for something fun to read
December 14, 2019
I couldn’t finish it. I went through the first few issues pretty fast, and that is precisely its weak-point. The entire thing seems like you are being told a story in Fast-Forward. Crap happen so fast that you literally care about nobody, not even the creatures. The artwork is cool...but the story is absolutely vacant. It’s like jumbling all the Godzilla movies and comics into one condensed little book. The artwork however, isn’t bad at all. The writing unfortunately does suck though. The humans are written so poorly that not only do they have NO stories, backgrounds, or redeeming qualities...they also have no need to be in the book. Plus, they talk like nobody on the existence of our planet. Like forced-dialogue robots with NO realistic emotion. How did this writer even get a Godzilla contract?
October 31, 2025
It has the narrative cohesion of a twelve-year-old who tars cats, the social consciousness of a father who hate-watches TMZ and yet, even in that dysfunctional dumpster dynasty, there’s a little sister who might just make it out alive. This comic may be just about an affront to everything – to structure, momentum, to taste – but somehow amidst the chaos of a mid-air jettisoned Bad Idea, Kingdom of Monsters still managed to honor one higher source: you don’t fuck with Godzilla. He is a force of nature, awakened at the behest of Man’s fury onto folly, and anyone (any man, woman and, in this case, children) who tries to rein Nature to their command shall receive the whoop-ass wrath of the scaly gods. It’s bad, it’s awful, but I’d be a liar if I said it sucked. Read it, if anything, as a curiosity piece to what has come since.
July 17, 2024
This story is at its best when it is telling the story of Godzilla as a truly world ending apocalypse.
Something genuinely interesting to watch unfold.
However, the satire is pretty weak, and there are many times in which the Monsters take a backseat in the story so the author can rant about how Millennials are the real monsters for being spoiled or whatever. It's a lot of "Old Man Yells at Cloud"
I'm not faulting the book for being political. Godzilla is at its best when it's about something larger.
It's just the most trite, boring, and cranky hill to die on.
Something genuinely interesting to watch unfold.
However, the satire is pretty weak, and there are many times in which the Monsters take a backseat in the story so the author can rant about how Millennials are the real monsters for being spoiled or whatever. It's a lot of "Old Man Yells at Cloud"
I'm not faulting the book for being political. Godzilla is at its best when it's about something larger.
It's just the most trite, boring, and cranky hill to die on.
July 30, 2023
Loved the monsters, not so much the humans, and even less the (not so subtle hints) at politics...
Same for the art: loved the monsters, however all the humans looked exactly the same, whether they were from Japan, from Mexico, or elsewhere.
Same for the art: loved the monsters, however all the humans looked exactly the same, whether they were from Japan, from Mexico, or elsewhere.
November 24, 2019
Like godzilla and kaiju beating the crap out if each other? This book is for you :D
December 18, 2019
Got this at Midtown Comics as a Christmas present for my nephew
June 11, 2020
I took off one star because there was no Mothra
February 27, 2022
Story is very fast paced and centered around the monsters with some focus on humans but not too much.
Art is great too
Art is great too
August 30, 2025
why would america be there?!
November 22, 2020
this book is wild because obama creates mechagodzila which is hilarious to read that shit in his voice, but is even more hilarious because that drone striking son of a bitch absolutely would create mechagodzilla
#KaijusAreForCommunism
#KaijusAreForCommunism
October 7, 2013
I'm not a Godzilla fan by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the only one of his movies I've seen is the US remake with Matthew Broderick. I got the mostly for Eric Powell. He's a fantastic writer who excels at this type of story. And he does not disappoint. Along with the usual death and destruction involved with Godzilla and some other radioactive monsters fighting, Powell and Tracy Marsh infuse the series with lots of biting pop culture commentary. It all works perfectly.
The book does slows down a little near the end when Jason Ciaramella takes over writing, but it's still fun.
Throw in outstanding art by Phil Hester and Victor Santos and you have a book well worth reading.
The book does slows down a little near the end when Jason Ciaramella takes over writing, but it's still fun.
Throw in outstanding art by Phil Hester and Victor Santos and you have a book well worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews