Godzilla: Oblivion #4 Review

After a rough start, Godzilla: Oblivion gave us a pretty decent issue last month. This week, the series returns with a Mechagodzilla-filled penultimate chapter. Is it good?

Godzilla: Oblivion #4 (IDW Publishing)

Observations

• This series normally makes me wish the human characters would shut up during the fight scenes, but this actually sounds interesting…
• …and incredibly stupid (in a good way).
• Uh, shouldn’t this be taking a little longer?
• Maybe long enough to show us a little more Mechagodzilla vs Godzilla action?
• Now I want the human characters to shut up again.
• Okay, here we go! Big monster fight!
• Okay, that was the most satisfying let down ever.

Is It Good?

This issue gets some credit just for providing such a great cliffhanger ending. It delays what could have been a fantastic fight with the potential for another one that will (hopefully) be even better.

Unfortunately, the rest of Godzilla: Oblivion #4 suffers from the same problems that have plagued the entire series. The tone of the book vacillates from humorous to serious in a way that’s uneven and occasionally jarring. The artwork for the monsters is far superior to that of the humans. The human characters themselves are painfully unlikable.

Making matters worse is that we don’t get to see enough of what should have been a visually stunning fight between Godzilla and a fleet of his mechanical doppelgangers. The few snippets we do get are great, but not nearly enough to make up for the frustrating dialogue that dominates the narrative.

It also doesn’t help that the big plot twist seems absurdly rushed. I’m not saying that the plan/countermeasure needed to be decompressed into multiple issues, but it probably deserved a bit more than eight pages. As stupid as these characters are, I highly doubt they could pull off such a feat in the span of what feels like a couple hours at most.

But as I said before, the cliffhanger at the end of the issue looks potentially mind-blowing. Let’s just say that if things play out like they should, then artist Brian Churilla will be wonderfully and completely in his element. He also might be able to salvage this series if the banal human characters can shut up for a while (or maybe just get killed in the first few pages).