Stealing the past from within a deeper past.
Creative Staff:
Story: James Patrick
Art: Rem Broo
Colors: Rem Broo
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Michelle and her crew are about to go into the belly of the beast, and that’s not just a metaphor. But are they ready for a job that has no margin for error? And even if they are, the true nature of the score is about to be revealed, and not all of them are going to make it out of this issue alive. Take your blood pressure pills for the tense third chapter of KAIJU SCORE: STEAL FROM THE GODS.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The original Kaiju Score series was a whole lot of fun that writer James Patrick put together that I do hope makes its journey across the multimedia world. The series worked well with its brevity and it left me wanting more to see where it would go. With this sequel series, things move in a new direction and it’s building on what came before but without repeating things as Patrick looks to expand our understanding of this world. Thankfully, the team is back together with Rem Broo on the art duties as he gets to put together a great-looking book with some really great action material across the board. The character designs are great, I love the flair of the action that we get, and the coloring is spot on for this work.
The book has dealt with a lot of fun and interesting things in its first half of this four-issue series where it got us to connect with Michelle more, understand how things unfolded after Florida, and how her group got pulled into this bigger mission. Prodathu and what it holds is definitely the right kind of thing you want to go all-in on if you have the right backing for it and the group pulling the strings here is definitely setting things well. And you really do get a great sense of scale as the team arrives where Prodathu is and we see part of it sticking out on the surface. It’s the kind of thig giant monster and kaiju fans want to see for this kind of thing, and the proper reverence that such a sight would hold even from those who aren’t keen on this kind of thing. There’s a lot of dialogue going into all of this, which I suspect will read better when you read this as a full single experience, as we get Dmitri working to put things in motion to get Michelle and her team down to the ship.
There’s a good kind of Indiana Jones aspect to this as Michelle’s team goes down while T.G. works to get them the right access. His mission involves some good stuff in dealing with the past and having betrayal come his own way while Michelle’s group has the tension of waiting to see if T.G. can pull off the inside changes that they need. I do wish things were a bit more in showing us the inside of Prodathu but at the same time it has that kind of look that feels right for this in that it’s just been turned into a work zone. So when things go bad and the tide turns on Michelle and her team, it takes some crazy turns. I’ll admit crazy pro-Prodathu cult trying to bring it back to complete its mission of destroying or rewriting the world wasn’t something I had in the cards for the book. Which makes me really curious how they’ll wrap it up in one more issue.
In Summary:
I’ve definitely been enjoying this series a lot since it’s working with the concepts of the first without repeating everything that was done there in the same way. This one has a lot of things going on as the plan gets underway but there are twists and turns along the way with some betrayals just to make it all the more dangerous. I do enjoy the tighter feeling of a four-issue series like this even as I wonder how it’ll get wrapped up next time around, but it has the right sense of tension to it and the chaos created along the way works well. Patrick’s script works well to cover a lot of ground while Broo’s artwork once again looks great and conveys this world in a really neat way.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: June 22nd, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
