Editor’s note: This review has been updated due to pre-printing errors that factored into the review.
Tim Seeley and Ferro Pe’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Godzilla is off to a rollicking, fun start, and a huge part of that is that it’s clear this creative team has a lot of love for both properties. They’ve embraced the whole of both universes, sprinkling nods to different eras of each character to give us a wildly entertaining confection. Mixing in elements of the IDW turtles and Godzilla canon, mythology from various Godzilla movies, and a healthy dose of the 1987 TMNT cartoon, what we’ve got here is like a supreme pizza with all of our favorite mutant and kaiju toppings. It’s hard not to smile ear-to-ear at a book that gives us a concept as wacky as Krang’s new mutagen (I won’t spoil what it’s called) and does so with a straight face.
Fans will especially appreciate the ways in which Seeley has intertwined the turtles’ history with that of Godzilla, with the opening scene of an army of ninja staring down the King of the Monsters being one of my favorite panels in recent memory.
Ferro Pe clearly had a lot of fun mashing the aesthetics of these two worlds together. Godzilla looks mean and monstrous, but still at home in the heightened world of the Ninja Turtles. Meanwhile, characters like Krang have recognizable designs that have been given a bit of a gritty makeover. I don’t know that the evil brain from Dimension X has ever looked quite this intimidating. Pe also plays around with different art styles throughout, with one of the more striking visuals being the glimpses of the kaiju of legend, which take on the appearance of an ancient illustrated scroll.
Courtesy IDW
However, the lore download here is a bit of a double-edged sword. One downside to the book is the pacing. So much of this first chapter is devoted to setting up the rules of this world and the lore behind its versions of the characters, so it doesn’t feel like the book is just getting started when we get hit with the “to be continued” tag. Then again, I suppose it’s a good thing that one of my problems with this issue is that there’s not more to it!
On the whole, however, this is an exciting and entertaining opening skirmish for this crossover event. This issue put a big smile on my face throughout. In just its first issue, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Godzilla delivers the goods with enough nostalgia, action, and wacky concepts to fuel an entire series. Now that the players are all in place and the stakes have been raised to cosmic heights, I have a feeling the rest of this miniseries is gonna be pretty radical.
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