Godzilla: The Half Century War, James Stokoe

"The year is 1954 and Lieutnant Ota Murakami is on hand when Godzilla makes first landfall in Japan. Along with his pal Kentaro, Ota makes a desperate gamble to save lives... and in the process begins an obsession with the King of the Monsters that lasts fifty years!"














I really can't recommend this book enough - if you like Godzilla, non-superhero comics or just incredibly detailed art, then you HAVE to read this.

Stokoe is a master of fine detail. I mentioned in my review of Welcome to Megalopolis how much I admire the art of Jim Caliafore, for its depth of deisgn, but what's achieved by more non-mainstream artists like Stokoe and Ulises Farinas is breathtaking.

Take the panel below, a scene of Godzilla advancing through Tokyo during his first sighting, with a Japanese tank attempting to distract him from the fleeing refugees in front. A city scene featuring finely detailed buildings, the monster himself and the horde ahead of him. All are lovingly detailed, with no skimping. Compared to so many superhero comics, where a light attempt at a background is often to simply colour a flat service it's astounding.

James Stokoe (uncoloured), http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=39274

The comparison with Farinas is an easy one; both produce craftman-like independent comics, and in 'Gamma' Farinas created a story of epic monster mayhem, through a prism of Pokemon and Power Rangers.

Ulises Farinas 'Gamma' ,http://comicsalliance.com/ulises-farinas-gamma-interview-dark-horse-presents/

But to boil Stokoe and Farinas down to simply being great artists does them a disservice. Half Century War, far from being simply a chance for Stokoe to indulge himself, is a wonderfully written book of obsession, loss and failure - what it means to live in a world in which sentient natural disasters have essentially made the military defunct, and in which total annihilation is only an new emergence away. It clings tight to the spirit of the original, whilst telling a neat history of the character through the eyes of one man.

It's essentially Don Quixote, with giant irradiated dinosaur-lizards.

I've written before about my love of Godzilla as a concept ( http://monsterawarenessmonth.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/remake-and-reboot/ ) and I love that this is a book that not only takes Godzilla seriously as a character but retells the story in a new light, introducing antogonists, plots and themes which dovetail with, and enhance, the movies.

And Stokoes meticulously time-consuming art doesn't just focus on individual pieces of rubble, buildings or people - his monsters are beautiful and horrifying, exactly as they should be. There's a two page spread of multiple warring beats, where the focus of the panel is maintained by a moving van threading through the warzone. It's masterfully articulated, maintaining the readers eye line at all times, moving them through a densely populated page without a break and allowing them time to drink in the power, size and destructive capability of Godzilla and his ilk.

It is, in short, everything that you should read.

Also Try:
James Stokoe, Orc Stain
Ulises Farinas, Gamma
Jeff Parker, Thunderbolts: Violent Rejection

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles, Kim Newman

"Imagine the twisted evil twins of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and you have the dangerous duo of Professor James Moriarty - wily, snake-like, fiercely intelligent, terrifyingly unpredictable - and Colonel Sebastian Basher Moran - violent, politically incorrect, debauched. Together they run London crime, owning police and criminals alike. When a certain Irene Adler turns up on their doorstep with a proposition, neither man is able to resist. An entertaining and wickedly humorous crime adventure from the bestselling writer of Anno Dracula."











Supposedly written by Colonel Moran, colleague of Professor James Moriarty (from The Adventure of the Empty House), this is a loving pastiche of the Conan Doyle Holmes stories, victorian literature and pulp adventure novels. Literary mash-ups are fairly common, but this is one of the best, combining disparate plot strands from dozens of books and tying them all together around the skeletons of various Holmes shorts, from The Red Headed League to the Greek Interpreter, and, of course, Scandal, Hound and Falls.

Originally written as multiple short stories for magazines, they hold up remarkably well and the books format works terrifically. It helps that Moran, like Flashman before him, is the kind of easily readable rogue that makes base villainy so enjoyable. It's easy to compare these to a less inclusive Bond, but the real joy for anyone who has read Holmes is in picking out the references.

Newman's grasp of the wider genre is massive, as his work on Anno Dracula has shown, and references are peppered through the book which should encourage anyone reading to go and find out more. It rewards close reading, and the end notes give some insight into where more obscure characters come from. Realising that you're reading the other half, or a parallel, to a Holmes tale is great fun.

Anno Dracula may be more fun, but this is arguably more readble, and much like the Holmes books serves as a nice series to dip in and out of, with the short story nature of the tales making it easy to pick up and put down when you want to.

Also Try;
Alan Moore, League of Extraordinary Gentleman
Kim Newman, Anno Dracula,
Sir Arther Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes
Philip Jose Farmer, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg