In 2010, IDW Publishing acquired the rights to make a Godzilla comic, this time featuring a good chunk of Godzilla's classic adversaries. There have been four ongoing series in this established universe:
- Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters
- Godzilla: Ongoing (later renamed Godzilla: History's Greatest Monster)
- Godzilla: Rulers of Earth
The series trope examples include
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Common Tropes
- Adaptation Distillation: Of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Final Wars and Destroy All Monsters.
- Alternate Continuity: All three series are set in a universe that completely ignores the canon of the entire Godzilla franchise, especially the 1954 film.
Kingdom of Monsters
- Adaptational Nice Guy: King Ghidorah is certainly less antagonistic here. It's kind of fitting considering his design in the comic is based on his GMK incarnation only given a size boost.
- Adaptational Villainy: Battra via mind control.
- Artistic License – Military: When the Japanese first encounter Godzilla, their first reaction is to nuke him. In reality, while they do have the capability, Japan is not part of the nuclear club and have made it clear that they'd rather not have anything to do with nuclear weapons.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Minette and Mallorie.
- Bittersweet Ending: The monsters may have been defeated, but human civilization is in shambles.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Battra and Rodan.
- Co-Dragons: Rodan and Battra are these to Minette and Mallorie.
- Continuity Reboot: Of the entire Godzilla franchise.
- Darker and Edgier: In comparison to some of the films, maybe a bit darker too.
- Death of a Child: The first issue begins with Godzilla unintentionally swallowing two kids whole when he rises from the beach. The second episode feature a boy finding Rodan's egg and wanting to feed it his neighbor's cat. The next page shows an escaping Rodan swallowing something and spitting out the boy's hockey stick, leaving the cat behind, implying Rodan ate the boy.
- Decompressed Comic: This comic, especially the first issue, is somewhat infamous for dedicating entire pages, sometimes more, to brief, unimportant events like someone looking at a computer monitor and then running out of the room.
- Establishing Series Moment: The moment Godzilla bursts out of the sand and inadvertently eats two kids in the process is enough to show just how dark this series is.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Subverted. Godzilla may not be able to fall under the Twins' control... but he is in no way pure.
- Kids Are Cruel: To an almost absurd degree, as many of the kids in the series are portrayed as sociopathic or extremely bratty. Or in the case of the psychic French twins, just plain creepy.
- Mythology Gag:
- Rodan first makes his appearance in Russia, kinda like he did in another movie.
- When President Ogden is addressing the negative effects of dropping a nuclear bomb on the monsters (one of them being Godzilla), he says "It could start shooting lasers out its eyes."
- Battra makes a cocoon on the Eiffel Tower, kinda similar to what Mothra did in her debut film.
- The first enemy Godzilla fights in this series? Anguirus.
- Battra and Rodan battle each other, this could be a riff on how both monsters share the same roar.
- Anguirus and MechaGodzilla fighting it out.
- Following a fight with Godzilla, MechaGodzilla goes on a rampage via malfunction in a very similar fashion to Kiryu.
- After being (unsuccessfully) nuked, Godzilla is briefly seen glowing red. Hmm...
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- Oh, Crap!:
- The Japanese government upon finding out not only did Godzilla survive a nuclear blast... he now has the ability to spew atomic flames.
- An exodus coming across Godzilla as they're trying to evacuate Los Angeles.
- Anytime a new monster shows up.
- Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: Sgt. Woods refuses to help the cast of the Jersey Shore Expy, letting them be trapped in their van and roasted alive by Godzilla's thermo nuclear breath.
- Take That!: There's lots of jabs at Jersey Shore, Lady Gaga, PETA etc.
- Too Dumb to Live: Oh, where to begin?
- The people who made MechaGodzilla didn't even bother to put in a shielding at the back of its head. The reason it goes crazy? Godzilla shoots it there.
- Minette and Mallorie dropping an unconscious Godzilla into a nuclear reactor to revive him and thinking they can brainwash him.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Kumonga only shows up for one scene and only briefly mentioned later only to never be brought up again.
- The Shobijin are briefly seen at the end of Issue 3... and never seen from that point. Which is a case of What Could Have Been—had writer Eric Powell not left the series halfway through, it was to be revealed that those weren't the Shobijin at all—just some dolls kept by a crazy guy who THOUGHT they were mystic spirits.
