Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp | Review

Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp
Writer: Rosie Knight
Artist: Oliver Ono
IDW Publishing; $12.99
Publisher’s rating: Ages 9-12

IDW Publishing’s latest take on an all-ages Godzilla comic, following the kid-friendly 2021-2023 series Godzilla: Monsters and Protectors (which, by the way, just saw re-release as the 290-page collection Godzilla: The Complete Monsters and Protectors), is an original graphic novel, Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp. It’s the work of the creative team of writer Rosie Knight and artist Oliver Ono, who are no strangers to the world of the King of the Monsters, having previously collaborated on 2022’s Godzilla Rivals: Vs. Battra, a one-shot comic that was later collected in Godzilla Rivals: Round One.

Their Battra comic seemed set in a near-future, featured some young characters, and was centered on an ecological message, all of which is also true of Monster Island Summer Camp. Despite the title, the Toho Studios monster who gets the most panel time by far is the one shown with our young heroes on the cover: Minilla, the one-time son of Godzilla. Here Knight gives Minilla “they” pronouns though, presumably because Minilla is a monster, and not because Minilla psychically communicated a pronoun preference to the human characters…?

The diminutive Minilla was introduced in the 1967 film Son of Godzilla, where the monster is Godzilla’s adopted progeny. After a brief appearance in 1968 “monster rally” film Destroy All Monsters, the big-eyed mini-Godzilla would later appear extensively in 1969’s All Monsters Attack, the most kid-friendly film in the franchise’s history, wherein he could apparently shrink to human size and talk to the film’s latchkey kid protagonist, who visited Minilla’s home on Monster Island during dream sequences. Minilla’s only other film appearance was 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars, where the monster again befriends a human child and serves as a link between humanity and Godzilla.

Though thus established as a friend to humanity in general and children in particular in the Godzilla canon, Minilla has never been too terribly popular with fans, perhaps because the Minilla-centric All Monsters Attack is one of the weaker films in Godzilla history, prominently featuring stock footage from previous films.

Minilla certainly makes sense as the axis around which this book revolves though, and Knight and Ono provide a likable enough version of the character, Ono’s design straying far enough from the cheap-looking rubber suit design of his filmography to make Minilla seem far more “real” within the world of the comic, and the creators never subjecting the character to pratfalls or other childish silliness.

Minilla first meets the book’s protagonist Zelda when she stumbles through a portal to Monster Island in a cave system near the summer camp she’s attending. Zelda thought it was an art-focused camp that she was attending, and the aspiring cartoonist was looking forward to the best summer ever, but it turns out the art camp was bought out by corporation More Inc, who turned it into a sports camp.

It’s while on the other side of the portal that Zelda gets her hands on a magical scepter that she uses as a replacement cane, a mysterious item that allows her to hear Minilla’s various roars as if he is speaking to her (the reader only hears Minilla’s thoughts as restated by Zelda, so the monster never really “talks” in the book).

She also discovers that there’s something wrong on Monster Island, a setting that shows up off and on later in Toho’s Godzilla films of the original Showa Era cycle. The giant monsters who make their home there all seem agitated, and there’s strange seismic activity on both sides of the portal, despite there being no history of earthquakes in the area.

Together with her cabin-mates Weezy and Rumiko and her new friend Minilla, Zelda must figure out what is going on and restore peace to Monster Island, which will, at the climax, involve awakening the slumbering Godzilla and pointing him at what turns out to be an illegal fracking operation. (If the names Weezy and Rumiko sound familiar, they should; the after-story back-matter reveals that all three girls are named after famous women from comics history, American comics writer Louise “Weezie” Simonson, Japanese manga-ka Rumiko Takahashi and the late American cartoonist Zelda “Jackie” Ormes).

Ono’s artwork stood out among that of most IDW Godzilla artists when he drew the aforementioned Battra one-shot, and it’s nice to see that the publisher afforded him the opportunity to apply his signature style to a bigger story here.

With a somewhat sketchy line, his setting feels lived-in and organic, and his character designs all feel equal part story book and manga. The monsters—which include brief appearances by Kamacuras, Ebirah, King Caesar and Mothra, in addition to the big guy himself—all look like themselves, although being drawn into a comic rather than brought to life via “suitmation” makes them all look more real and more a part of the setting and the world than they often do in their home medium of film.

Once again establishing Godzilla as a force for stabilization of the environment and a protector of Earth’s status quo against those who seek to exploit it, Monster Island Summer Camp reinforces a message the franchise hits upon again and again: If you think the monsters are bad, you should take a look at those who wish to profit off the Earth and its resources without regard to who they are hurting. Those are the real monsters.

That makes it a true Godzilla story, even if the King of the Monsters has a relatively small role to play in the drama and Minilla is the real star of the proceedings.

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