Monsters Unleashed! by Cullen Bunn, Jay Leisten, David Baldeón, Ramón Bachs, Justin Jordan, Andrea Broccardo, et al.

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: February 2024

Monsters Unleashed!

Monsters Unleashed!: Monster Mash

Monsters Unleashed!: Learning Curve

Writers: Cullen Bunn, Justin Jordan

Artists: Steve McNiven, Jay Leisten, Greg Land, Leinil Francis Yu, Gerry Alanguilan & Michael Jason Paz, Salvador Larroca, Adam Kubert, David Baldeón, Ramón Bachs, Andrea Broccardo, Francesco Gastón, Bachan, Alex Arizmendi, Alberto Alburquerque 

Color Artists: David Curiel, Michael Garland, Marcio Menyz, Chris Sotomayor

Letterer: Travis Lanham

 

Monsters Unleashed! was a five-issue miniseries that was then followed by a twelve-issue ongoing series, collected across three volumes. The main character is Kei Kawade, a young monster fan who during a worldwide invasion of monsters from outer space discovers he has the power to summon monsters by drawing them. He is eventually recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Damage Control and becomes known as "Kid Kaiju." He is mentored by monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone, and I read this as part of my working through her key Marvel Comics appearances.

 

Good thing some of the monsters are on our side!
from Monsters Unleashed! vol. 2 #4 (script by Cullen Bunn, art by Salvador Larroca)

 

The original miniseries and the first eight issues of the ongoing are all written by Cullen Bunn and feature eleven different artists. I really did not care for any of it. The opening miniseries is in particular tedious, with umpteen different superteams (the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, &c.) fighting monsters again and again and again. Too many characters, too many artists, no interesting character work or plotting. After that, the series just focuses on the ongoing adventures of Kid Kaiju and Elsa, but I still found little to latch onto or be interested in.

 

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 2017
Read: February 2024

Actually, that's not quite true. There's some okay stuff here—I particularly liked the appearance of the Mole Man, the original nemesis of the Fantastic Four, who kidnaps Kid Kaiju to get his help resurrecting his army of monsters. It's always a neat move to make an old, somewhat pathetic, villain into a figure of sympathy, and Cullen Bunn does it well here. But the big conspiracy of monsters, and the two different Fin Fang Fooms largely left me cold. Elsa is present, but contributes little, and seems pretty watered down from her characterization in Nextwave and Marvel Zombies (though I did like the bit where she becomes queen of some insect monsters). Some of the artists are pretty bad; Andrea Broccardo in particular can't seem to decide if Elsa is twelve or sixty-two years old.

One other big issue is that Kei summons five monsters into existence to be a team of his own... but while five big monsters might look okay (I don't think of the series's myriad artists ever had the knack of making me interested in monster fights), their lack of meaningful characterization (they are, after all, monsters) means you have a lot of characters that it's just not possible to actually be interested in.

 

Am I just biased in favor of fellow Mole-Men?
from Monsters Unleashed! vol. 3 #4 (script by Cullen Bunn, art by David Baldeón & Ramón Bachs)

 

Thus, I was really not looking forward to the last four issues. Whenever a series comes to an end and a new writer takes over for the last few issues, I think every comics fan knows that whatever you've been reading, it's about to get worse as a couple extra issues are cranked our regardless of quality in order to fill up a trade. In this particular case, I was dreading it even more because I knew writer Justin Jordan only from the execrable Team 7, and the book abandoned all attempt at artistic consistency, with four different artists on four issues.

 

It's my favorite food, too, Scraggs.
from Monsters Unleashed! vol. 3 #9 (script by Justin Jordan, art by Francesco Gastón)

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: February 2024

But... to my surprise... with those last four issues, suddenly the series became really good! Instead of attempts at big Marvel-spanning epics, Jordan gives us four done-in-one tales, each teaming Kid Kaiju up with one of his monster team, allowing us to finally get to know them as characters—not to mention him. Suddenly the book is fun and funny, exactly the kind of thing I would have liked all along. But four issues of it were well worth it (though perhaps not worth reading the previous thirteen). We get colonies of giant bees and Cthuloid menaces worshipped by loser cultists and Transformers expys on the loose in New York City. (One issue is about the Inhumans, but I guess you can't win them all.) I was suddenly able to tell all the monsters apart from one another, and I didn't even mind that Elsa—ostensibly my whole reason for being here—was written out after issue #10. Good stuff, and I wish Justin Jordan had written the series from its beginning.

This is the fifth post in a series about Elsa Bloodstone. The next installment covers The Death of Doctor Strange and Marvel Action: Chillers. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Bloodstone & the Legion of Monsters (1975-2012)
2. Bloodstone (2001-06) 
3. Nextwave, Agents of H.A.T.E. (2006-07)
4. Marvel Zombies: Battleworld (2006-15)
   

Review: Revolution by John Barber & Cullen Bunn and Fico Ossio

Comic PDF eBook, n. pag.
Published 2017 (contents: 2016)
Acquired January 2018
Read March 2018

Revolution

Written by John Barber & Cullen Bunn
Art by Fico Ossio
Colors by Sebastian Cheng
Letters by Tom B. Long

I believe I previously compared IDW's Dark Cybertron crossover to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but Revolution is the real Crisis on Infinite Earths analogue. Cosmic threat, disparate groups of heroes, big status quo changes. Revolution crosses Transformers over with a set of Hasbro-properties-turned-IDW-comics, some preexisting, some made into comics for this event: G.I. Joe, Rom, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, Action Man. I think that's all of them. When I first read Crisis, I had only a dim notion of the world in which it took place; I was a DC comics neophyte. That's not too dissimilar from my reading of Revolution-- I know IDW's Transformers very well at this point, but G.I. Joe only from previous Transformers crossovers, Action Man from the tragically truncated Saturday morning cartoon of 2000 to 2001, and the rest not at all-- yet Crisis worked for me while Revolution didn't.

You always know a character is The Girl One because they have a romantic history with half the male team members.
from Revolution #1

Part of this is intellectual and unfair. Crisis draws on its participants', well, conceptual weight. Historical weight? I dunno. You might not have actually read a Blue Beetle comic, but you know that Blue Beetle has a decades-long preexisting history when he turns up. You might not have read an Earth-3 story before, but you know that the Justice League has been there many times. And this even bleeds over into worlds newly established for Crisis, like Earth-6. But here, Rom and M.A.S.K. and Micronauts and Action Man... it's just like, why should I care? They were basically made up for this story, so seeing them in danger here has no effect. They have fifty days worth of history, not fifty years.

Literally no one else was worried about this, dude.
from Revolution #4

Related to this... these concepts don't seem all that good? Fifty years of evolution mean that every DC character to appear in Crisis had been refined and honed over the years. They were all good ideas... to some extent at least. But like M.A.S.K. is like Knight Rider times five or something? And Action Man is a man who is good at action? And the Micronauts are just small folks? Except they come from a universe where everything is small, so they're not really small in a meaningful way. Like, Transformers started out dumb, and still kind of is, but thirty years have allowed it to accrue some good concepts and ideas. I can't say the same for any of the other concepts here.

I do like how Soundwave seems to believe polite apologies make up for genocide. (This does seem to work for Transformers, judging by Megatron.)
from Revolution #5

Which leads me to my next point... Cullen Bunn and John Barber's story doesn't work on its own terms, either. It's a jumble of characters no one gives you a reason to care about. Like, M.A.S.K. supposedly has a moral dilemma when they realize Transformers are sapient, but their characterization is so flimsy, and the reasons so nonexistent, that you can't get interested in this dilemma. But if you don't care about that, all you've got left is people in super-cars... which is not interesting, and doesn't play to the strengths of the comics medium. Exactly who was doing what when with a magic space rock was another thing I could never really discern. Say what you will about the Anti-Monitor (and I have), but he provides Crisis with a focal point. Revolution is murky. What's at stake? I dunno.

If only I cared about you or your morality, Scarlett.
from Revolution #2

Fico Ossio is an above-average artist when it comes to drawing figures for IDW, but I found his panel-to-panel storytelling unclear at times.

Oh, gee, a character I don't care about has switched from one team I didn't care about to another team I don't care about! (I actually didn't even recognize her until the Transformers wiki clued me in.)
from Revolution #1

I shudder to think how this is going to negatively impact the IDW Transformers line, which has already (outside of More than Meets the Eye) been moving in a direction I don't care for. It has definitely solidified my plan to not pick up Optimus Prime. When the regular series resume, it'll be Lost Light and Till All Are One for me, and that's it.

Next Week: Meanwhile, on Earth... it is still a time for Revolution!