I love big monster films, so does Tiny Wife (more than I do in point of
fact), I particularly like them when they play the monster as being something
largely unstoppable (which they would be), and I like it when people put
thought into what they’re doing and don’t just head straight for the fight
scene (or have swan diving godzillas, 1998 pay attention), so when Pacific Rim
came out, it was on the must see list, and remains one of my favoured films of
all time...
But there aren’t enough Giant Monster films out there these days, and
the ones that there are tend not to involve the Giant Monster all that much. Anyone see the recent Godzilla film? Two hours of film and only ten minutes of
Godzilla, what’s wrong with this picture...?
So it’s always pleasing when you find something that’s got a Giant
Monsters and a bit of plot work to go with it.
Enter World War Kaiju...
I’d already taken a look at this when it was at the Kickstarter stage,
but as I’m sure many of you can sympathise, I spend too much time on
kickstarter and occasionally rein myself in, even when the shiny is so bright I
can almost taste it...
However, they did kickstart it, it did do well, and from that, they
released a number of copies into the world, so I got a copy for Tiny Wife...
Stop looking at me like that, I really did get it for Tiny Wife...
The fact that I found it brilliant too doesn’t come into this, it’s her
book...
Seriously...
The story is told in flashbacks, as a reporter questions a soldier on
what happened in the final days of the war.
It’s an alternate universe story, where instead of dropping Fat Man, the
atom bomb, the Americans found a way to drop Fat Man, the Kaiju... Before long, other countries were
experimenting with this new technology and before long, there were Kaiju
popping up everywhere.
The story itself
is fairly simple, and makes up most of the drawn elements of the book, with a
reasonable amount of text in between made up of reports about the operations,
scientific calculations, formula’s, and the general sort of random snippet that
really interest me.
There’s a whole world dreamed into this book, and I suspect that this
first book has just scratched the surface of it. There’s a website devoted to the comic,
dividing the known Kaiju into their respective countries or alignments, so you’ve
got American, Soviet, Nato, and Rogue Kaiju, none of which have any allegiance to
that country, only the understanding that that country has (what they think
anyway) control over them.
It's available at the moment at www.worldwarkaiju.com
I liked the book a lot, it doesn’t take itself seriously, but it has enough reverence for the subject matter to not make it a joke, I know there are plans for a second book at some point and this time...
I liked the book a lot, it doesn’t take itself seriously, but it has enough reverence for the subject matter to not make it a joke, I know there are plans for a second book at some point and this time...
I will be backing it on Kickstarter...
