Thursday 22 October 2015

50 Word (Comic) Review: Godzilla in Hell #4- Subtle Matrix Busting Brilliance




Writer: Brandon Seifert
Artist: Ibrahim Moustafa
Creative Consultant: Chris Mowry
Publisher: IDW
Released: 21st October 2015


It’s subtle, you can’t see it, you are wrapped within the life lie, fighting battles, throwing punches, avoiding kicks, but truth is outside the war-zone of rat-race concerns, realise that death is an illusion, blast through the hidden wall, walk into the white, for there, alone, you will find reality.



Rating: 9/10

There’s a heck of an allegory going on in this comic book, and it’s so subtle that it can be easily missed. Godzilla is fighting various monsters, but after a while he realises that something is afoot. He cannot die, so he realises that the fight isn’t real. With this knowledge he decides to focus his energy on escaping from the unreality that has caged him. He comes across a wall, uses guile, intellect and brute strength to break through it, sees the white light of endless possibility, and walks straight into it. That’s the end of the book, and to find out more about that white light we’ll have to wait for Godzilla in Hell #5. Here’s my take on the allegory: Godzilla is in the world that we all inhabit. He spends his time fighting for dominance, as we all do. However, Godzilla realises that death is an illusion, as it is in our own holographic world. With this knowledge of truth, he breaks free from the Matrix that has caged him in flight or fight/rat-race/survival of the fittest non-reality, and into truth, into the real world beyond the Matrix. Godzilla is Neo, breaking through the Matrix, but is he going to wake up in a tank of Goo like the Matrix movie? Will he find himself on a movie set like the Truman show? Or perhaps he’ll just walk out onto a blank page and argue with the writer, like that old Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny cartoon? Whatever it is, I can’t wait to find out what is going to happen next. This book has been great. It’s the subtlety that does it, that and an overarching concept that has tied everything together to create what is an absolutely fascinatingly individualistic, yet collaborative whole.

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