3 out of 5

In IDW’s endless milking of their properties, I sign off on this one: dropping Godzilla into various cities for short stories and dedicating an issue to each city, highlighting “if you know you know” history and culture via creatives presumably from or otherwise appreciative of the featured locale. With only so much you can do with a giant, semi-mindless lizard – reframe the origin to do some social commentary; zoom in on the affected populaces – using the creature as a travelogue springboard is novel, and there’s the fun of likely destroying those destinations as well.

Anyhow, we’re in Boston now, and I know nothing of Boston, but these creatives do. Unfortunately, we still have the mixed bag of anthologies with which to contend.

Steve Orlando and Matt Emmons team on a historical entry (late 1800s) that I believe is riffing off of the Great Molasses Flood, and while I think this slots in with the concept perfectly, Orlando’s way into the story feels backwards, and this is un-assisted by Emmons not quite nailing the necessary scale for the tale’s impact. Now, I partially bought this issue because of Emmons, but I feel like his chunky linework just doesn’t sync well.

I also bought this for Jesse Lonergan’s “Lobster That Attacked Boston,” and unfortunately – it’s also the lesser of the stories here. Lonergan just really overdesigns the whole thing, taking the surface story of Godzilla versus a giant lobster and divvying it up into mini-panels with a subnarrative about a marathoner who helps Jesse take us on a whirlwind footnoted run through Boston landmarks. Bro, it’s way too clever; it’s way distracting; and it makes both parts of the story less fun overall. Kudos for the final punchline, though (and great art, of course, even if I didn’t like how it was ultimately applied).

Hanna Cha gives us an illustrated storybook that’s quite simple, and quite effective for that reason: Godzilla nurses a Mothra egg. (I think that’s what’s going on – I’m piss-poor on my ‘Zilla lore.) Told in watercolors and full bleed pages, it does the tourist bit around Boston without all the noise and fury of Jesse’s entry.

Lastly, Hayden Sherman rounds us out with an action piece: The Green Line. This stumbles in the middle a bit (Sherman titled the story after the transit line, then had to get us off the transit line…), and the narration can be heavy-handed, but that’s okay: it’s a story about some MBTA workers guiding ‘Zilla to a particular destination, playing like the last sequence of a blockbuster movie, and thus excused for being heavy-handed as it ultimately lands the action, a reveal, and a concluding wink.