Story by John Layman
Art by Alberto Ponticelli
Having stolen the Elias from Monster Island and made his way back to Tokyo, Detective Sato sets out on his plan to use them – and, by extension, Mothra – to destroy the Takahashi crime syndicate.
I’ll freely admit that I was skeptical about Godzilla: Gangsters & Goliaths, even when I heard it had a writer with a pedigree like John Layman. It was, after all, still a Godzilla book, which I haven’t had the best of luck with. Somehow, though, the creator of Chew (one of my favorite current books) has managed to infuse a sense of purpose into the classic Japanese monster world that is sorely lacking from some of the setting’s other books.
Layman has managed, so far, to weave the creatures of Monster Island into a classic revenge plotline in a way that makes their inclusion interesting, rather than simply attempting to tell a human story amongst carnage and destruction of monsters that barely take notice of humankind. Sato and the supporting cast aren’t spectacularly well-developed characters, but the plotline is fun to follow and the Elias will make for an interesting foil for Sato once his decisions come back to bite him in the ass (which they undoubtedly will).
My only minor complaint about the book has to do with Ponticelli’s renderings of characters. His landscapes are excellent, and his monsters (especially Mothra) carry all the weight and scale you would expect from these… well… goliaths. His people, however, sometimes feel a bit sloppy, and even though the book is set in Tokyo, not a single person in the book actually looks Japanese.
Aside from that one complaint, Gangsters & Goliaths is a fun read with an engaging take on the setting. Pick this one up, and avoid Kingdom of Monsters at all costs.
