“Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong” – Book Six
Artists: Christian Duce and Tom Derenick
Color Artist: Luis Guerrero
Letterers: Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Tyler Smith
Review by Lauren Fiske
A brief jump in the timeline introduced several new developments in Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #6. The few days that have passed in the comic allowed the Justice League time to make plans. However, nothing is resolved yet as most of the Leviathan monsters are still on the move and several key players are missing. With this seemingly being the penultimate issue, is everything going to get wrapped up neatly?
Trying to avoid spoilers? Check out previous reviews of the series!
Mecha Time
If you’ve read the previous issues of Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong, you know that Lex Luthor’s big secret weapon to control the gargantuan monsters he’s summoned is a MechaGodzilla. Appropriately, the Justice League responds in kind with some crazy mechs of their own. The Green Lanterns team up to create one using their rings while Batman shows off one of his greatest creations. The Bat-Mech is fantastically designed, looking like the ultimate Iron Man and Optimus Prime mashup (wrong IPs, I know) to create the ultimate Batman invention.
Batman’s mech is obviously massive to the point of being roomy even in the driver’s seat. It’s clearly able to take on Luthor’s stolen mech with no problems. Having seen Batman’s closer allies and friends welding in previous issues, it’s no surprise that the mech is impressive and can handle so much. The only time it seems to show weakness is when Kong and MechaGodzilla team up. It will be interesting to see how this new mech holds up in the next issue and what Batman will do with it after all of the monsters are (hopefully) defeated or sent back to their own world.
Minor Details
While the art of this series is always great with really fantastic color and lettering, with such a large cast of heroes and villains to choose from, it’s been somewhat difficult to focus on specific storylines. Small moments developed in previous issues have been forgotten or glossed over in dialogue with light payoff. While we did finally learn what Grodd was up to (with Kryptonite no less!), Toyman and Shazam are both still unaccounted for. Superman’s story has something occur with no explanation of how or why. Previously fought monsters returned with some resolution, only to introduce more. A member of the Justice League might have just died.
A lot is happening and there are still unanswered questions. The ending of this issue suggests that the next will be the last of the series. So in a 7 issue series, how much can be said or wrapped up? For a series with so much exposition, a lot has felt rushed. I understand that comic books are built upon action and this one has plenty of it, but that doesn’t leave a lot of time to explore what’s only been discussed in the background. In this issue particularly, larger narrative pieces are being discussed by the characters in dialogue and not seen in the panels. Unfortunately, it makes the end of the series feel clunky and slightly unsteady.
This isn’t to say that it’s all bad! I just wish the pacing of the series overall felt a bit more streamlined and more connected. If other portions of the story were told differently, spending time in this battle would feel more okay and a greater focus could be had on the craziness unfolding in the city.
Conclusion
Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong #6 is setting up this series for a strong finish. It’s not a perfect read, but considering how much is left to get on the pages, the creative team is doing an excellent job. This issue features so many vibrant colors and truly looks stunning from page to page and I can’t wait to see how the various storylines finish out!
As long as more answers are revealed and the layers of the onion get peeled further back (and we get maybe one more Beast Boy as a kaiju moment!?), this series will end as it has been throughout: pretty solid and definitely entertaining.
Images Courtesy of DC Entertainment