A bit about King Ghidorah in IDW's Godzilla: Rulers of Earth

carcharion

Greetings.

Let us take a break from superheroes/heroines and review a monster instead.

Here is King Ghdorah. Debuted in 1964 as an antagonist of Toho's Ghidrah: The Three Headed Monster. Depicted as an alien planet-killing three headed wyvern, he destroyed the civilization of Mars, or Venus, depending on the translation, millennia ago and is now targeting Earth.

As a supposed planet killer, his potential is , by my own opinion, never truly explored deeply. More modern literations are increasingly better at portraying him as such as a character, especially this year's version from Godzilla: King of The Monsters, but still I can't see him as a true terror yet.

But in this comic, just in one page, I somehow see him as what he should be: A dreaded planet killer. Here he's destroying the home planet of the series' alien antagonist, the Cryogs, which led to a desperate attempt to conquer Earth by a small fleet of what's left of the once great race.

Here's the fall of the Cryogs homeworld



Cryogs are said to be an advanced spacefaring race prior to their eventual fall by the might of Ghidorah. They are no doubt powerful. They seem to prefer using monsters, cyborgs, or robots to do their bidding, and probably had sent several of their weaponized monsters to fight Ghidorah back in their planet's destruction, which was probably, if not definitely, a failed attempt.

Below are the pics of the Cryogs

The main Cryog antagonist from chapter 1-20, Rhizon and his subordinates, before being replaced by the more dreadful Emperor of the Cryogs in later chapters.



The fleet




So we may conclude that, by many aspects, Cryogs are much more developed than the human in this comic's universe, yet King Ghidorah (there are actually 2 in-universe Ghidorahs. A weaker one and this.) Seemingly annihilated their homeworld, probably along with their conquered worlds, with ease. It can be said that this particular Ghidorah is an OP kind of monster anyone shouldn't mess with, even by Godzilla himself, and this comic had succeeded in portraying him as what he's supposed to be.

carcharion

Their preferred weapons, weaponized GMOs.l, presented here by the Emperor's latest possession, the Trilopods

nweathington

This particular Godzilla comic series (and I've read them all) was okay, but it was far from my favorite (that would be the Godzilla: Half-Century War miniseries by James Stokoe). While it had some moments of Showa-period influence, it felt much closer to the Millennium-period movies, which—outside of Final Wars—I didn’t really care for. The Cryogs felt very much like a retread of the updated version of the Xiliens, with a dash of Millinniens thrown in. And while I appreciated them making aliens who actually look alien (as opposed to most of the movie alien races), they just didn’t feel very alien. I did like some of the supporting characters though.

carcharion

There are several aspects of the IDW Godzilla universe that need to be explored deeper.

nweathington

Well, IDW doesn’t really have one continuous universe. There are at least two distinct universes throughout their various ongoing series, and most of the miniseries don't feel connected to any of the ongoings. For instance, Half-Century War is definitely in its own little universe. And In Hell is more like something from a psychogenic fugue state dream.

Kingdom of Monsters was, for me, the best of IDW’s ongoing series attempts, but even it isn’t as good as Dark Horse’s Godzilla series from the ’90s.