Tom Scioli is an expert at weaving worlds together. Look no further than the writer/artist’s idiosyncratic work on Marvel’s Fantastic Four: Grand Design, which attempted to provide one, cohesive story to decades of comics from the superpowered family. But Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre from IDW Publishing is another thing entirely, an epic work of staggering insanity that mashes together Toho’s kaiju with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous work.
The setup is pretty simple… We start with a broad overview of the story of The Great Gatsby, with the burgeoning love affair between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, and the hapless Tom caught in the middle. Scioli draws these sequences with aplomb, cresting in one of the book’s iconic Jazz Age parties that impacts both fashionable East Egg, and its across-the-harbor neighbor West Egg.
That’s when Godzilla attacks.
All credit to Scioli, who manages to hold together the integrity of Fitzgerald’s novel for the large majority of the pages of this book. He’s captured the language, and despite the inclusion of an enormous, fire-breathing monster still keeps things focused on the love triangle of Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom.
He also balances the inclusion of Godzilla in the book as a way of emphasizing some of Fitzgerald’s themes. It’s up for interpretation, but I certainly read Godzilla’s attacks as a comment about the encroaching real world on the hedonism of Gatsby and friends. And it’s clear why Scioli included Gatsby’s time fighting in World War I, both as a reason for the character to lead the charge against Godzilla — and a bigger idea present in this comic, The Great Gatsby, and the best Godzilla films, that we can’t escape our pasts.
As the issue continues and Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre veers farther away from The Great Gatsby, it spirals into wilder directions. The book turns into Scioli’s riff on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and gets far more goofy as it goes. But without spoiling the end of the first issue, the creator holds on to that main idea of the past’s hold on us — whether it’s a lost relationship or an enormous, scaled engine of destruction.
The last line of The Great Gatsby is famously, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” That’s essentially what Scioli picks up and runs with in this book. Gatsby is fighting Godzilla, but really he is a boat against the current. As much as he tries to destroy the lizard, he’s borne back into the past.
It’s a brilliant gelling of these two disparate properties that gets to the essential draw of both of them. And it proves that while this comic is Godzilla’s “monsterpiece,” as this series continues it may turn out to be Scioli’s masterpiece.
Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre #1 hits stores on October 23, 2024, from IDW Publishing.
Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre #1 Rating:
Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre #1 Official Synopsis:
Godzilla takes on his greatest foe yet—The Great Gatsby!
The year is 1922. Mysterious man of luxury Jay Gatsby continues to throw parties from his palatial Long Island estate, all in hopes of attracting the attention of his love, Daisy Buchanan.
But his affair is interrupted as his party attracts the one thing more dangerous than love: GODZILLA.
Now, Gatsby has no choice but to turn his undying will away from his love of Daisy and onto revenge against the monster who destroyed his home.
Come along with Gatsby on the journey of a lifetime in three oversized issues as he combines forces with the greatest men of the 20th century to stop its greatest monster—written and drawn by cult favorite comics creator Tom Scioli (Fantastic Four: Grand Design, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics).
