In October of 2015 Marvel Comics rolled out their All New All Different line of new comic books. We covered most of the new titles and relaunched titles coming our way. With it being January we've had a chance to check out a few of Marvel's new books and reviews will start rolling out your way, dear readers. For a list of all the new books comic out check out the post linked below:
A bit of news on a personal and professional level for one of our writers here at Blood Work, one of them is now writing for the comic website COMICONVERSE. The review for Drax #1 is actually on their website and expect many more articles from Blood Work to appear on their as well. We'll be sure to keep everyone here updated and always have it linked right here.
We appreciate everyone who has ever visited Blood Work and we appreciate all your support. Thank you all so much and we hope you'll continue to support us both here and wherever else we'll be writing. So without further adieu click the link below for Blood Work's review of Drax #1!
The 1970's was a difficult period for the Japanese movie industry. Television was taking over and as a result the movie companies were trying all sorts of different approaches to reinvigorate their film franchises. The Godzilla series was no exception. Characters like ULTRA-MAN and giant robots, which were so popular on TV, were being shamelessly copied and featured in the Godzilla series in an attempt to win audiences back. GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA marks the first time the king of the monsters ever fought a giant mechanized monster.
Two directors are primarily responsible for the Godzilla films of the Showa Era: Ishiro Honda and Jun Fukuda. Fukuda directed five of the fifteen Godzilla films of the first series. He is the one who brought giant crustaceans, massive insects and arachnids, an Ultra-Man parody, cyborgs, giant robots, and some of the craziest kaiju designs ever seen to the series. Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla was his last film entry into the series and quite possibly his best effort.
THE PLOT
This was the United States title for the film
An heiress to the Azumi Royal family has a premonition of doom: A monster will set fire to the city and trample on the people who try to run away. Godzilla appears and begins wreaking havoc. The king of the monsters doesn't seem like himself though. When his kaiju friend Anguirus arrives and the two monsters fight, everyone realizes something is wrong. Godzilla next attacks a city only to encounter Godzilla blocking his path. The two Godzillas fight and in the battle one of them is revealed to be a robot wearing a fake skin, a Mechagodzilla. The giant mechanical menace proves too much for Godzilla to triumph against alone. It will take a series of prophecies, secret agents, and an ancient god to help Godzilla win the day and save the Earth from destruction.
THE GOOD
The pace. This movie has its slow moments but when the action hits the movie takes off! Toho really pulled out all the stops here and gave director Jun Fukuda everything he needed. The battle between Anguirus and disguised Mechagodzilla is fast and furious, both monsters moving rapidly as opposed to the dramatic slow motion photography that typify many Godzilla battles. And the final battle is perhaps the most flashy, explosive, and effects heavy fights of the entire Godzilla series (outside of Destroy All Monsters of course). And the score. It's a completely new and memorable film score that's dynamic and moves at a hundred miles an hour during that last battle.
King Seesar, Mechagodzilla, and Godzilla
All new. During the waning years of the Japanese film industry seeing reused footage, often referred to as Stock Footage, was quite common. There is no stock footage in this film. 1974 was Godzilla's twentieth anniversary and Toho celebrated with extravagance and excess. Godzilla had never fought a robot before nor had he gushed blood as copiously as he does in this film. The graphic violence reached a whole new level, from Anguirus having his jaw bloodied and broken in two places to missiles stabbing into Godzilla's flesh and hanging there (it's pretty intense). And two completely new monsters in Mechagodzilla and King Seesar.
A crazy plot. First seeing this movie you wonder what the heck is wrong with Godzilla. He doesn't sound right and he's acting like a total jerk. Then you see the real Godzilla and the impostor is revealed to be a machine! A machine from space! Now we've seen the space alien plot before but now they're green skinned ape-men from the third planet of the black hole (it seriously looks like they're trying to appeal to the Planet of the Apes crowd). Not only that, the film brings in secret agents (no doubt trying to draw in fans of James Bond). And then there's the apocalyptic predictions of the shrine priestess and prophecies coming true making this film one part religious, one part spy thriller, one part alien invasion, one part giant monster movie. Like I said, crazy.
THE BAD
Planet of the Apes part 6?
Shameless. Everything I mentioned above about the plot is an equal indication for something gone terribly wrong. You can interpret it in one of two ways: either completely ludicrous or completely amazing! I subscribe to the latter opinion but I can easily see how someone could view a melding of four or five different genres as a desperate attempt to right a sinking ship, and it is, but in this case it makes the film wild, crazy, and completely unique. It's sort of a leave it or embrace it kinda film. I'm also not a fan of Anguirus getting his jaw busted up so bad. I didn't like it as a kid and I still don't like it now, although it simply serves to get you to hate Mechagodzilla all the more (which is what you're supposed to feel). I also don't like that the DVD is still out of print!
THE VERDICT
Godzilla Vs Mechagodzilla is my favorite Godzilla film that came after Destroy All Monsters. It's sets out to give you everything you love about super spies, robots, ape-men, giant monsters, and Armageddon scenarios and does it better than all the rests. Mechagodzilla is given top shelf treatment and is a big step up from the previous four films in the series. As a child I watched this movie end on end and as an adult it still holds my attention because there really is no other movie like it. One of my favorites.
Documentation: Space Amoeba a.k.a. Yog ~ The Monster From Space (1970), Godzilla: Monster of Monster (NES video game, 1988)
History: Gezora is a breed of gigas-sepia lycidas, mega-fauna that closely resembles the common kisslip cuttlefish. The colossal beast was discovered by Dr. Miya of Japan living in the waters surrounding Selgo Island, an atoll existing between the Hawaiian islands and the Marianas. The island has since become a kaiju habitat containing several kinds of mega-fauna, the kaiju Kamoebas and Ganimes, all of which were discovered on the same expedition.
Gezora from Godzilla: Rulers of Earth #3
Sentient micro alien beings the size of amoebas were revealed as the reason behind the kaiju infestation. The aliens boarded the space shuttle Helio 7 in outer space. When the capsule returned to Earth it splashed in the waters near Selgo. In Dr. Miya's encounter with the aliens they referred to themselves as astro-quasars and travelers. They have also been referred to as space amoeba and have been given the name Yog by other scientists.
These alien spores would infect local wildlife, ballooning the creatures to kaiju proportions. Theories exist that the effect of the aliens on the animals was in fact an evolutionary regression to prehistoric eras where creatures of this size existed normally. The aliens returned these creatures to their prehistoric states. Once the aliens were driven from the bodies of the kaiju, the beasts remained in their gargantuan states. Gezora was a result of these aliens infecting a common kisslip cuttlefish.
Gezora was the first of the kaiju discovered on the island. Strangely legends of the beast existed prior to the arrival of the aliens upon the Helio 7 space capsule. Originally a village consisting of 80 natives existed on the island. They worshiped Gezora, believing the creature to be ancient wild god. The native elder and shaman held ceremonies and appeasements to Gezora to placate the god and stave off the monster's wrath. Whether Gezora is in fact an ancient creature or spawn of the space amoebas has not been confirmed.
Godzilla: Rulers of Earth #3 variant cover by Jeff Zornow
When a group of contractors arrived on Selgo to construct an island resort Gezora emerged from the depths and killed all of them save one. Gezora has eight arms and two tentacles equipped with suckers. The eight arms propel the great kaiju through the sea at incredible speeds upwards of 100 knots (its maximum speed has not been determined yet) and serve at legs allowing the kaiju to walk upright upon land. Gezora has an extremely cold body temperature, so cold that the waters surrounding Gezora as it swims are effected by its cold temperature as well. Gezora has the ability to expel ink from its body typical of most cephalopoda. Gezora is also extremely intelligent for a kaiju, containing one of the largest brains of all mega-fauna.
When Dr. Miya and the others arrived on Selgo, the village elder insisted that their presence would invoke the wrath of Gezora. The elder's prophecy proved true as the kaiju emerged from the sea, traveled inland, and decimated the island village. Gezora killed the last contractor from the original team as well as several villagers. Through Dr. Miya's study of the monster he discovered Gezora's aversion to extreme heat and sonic vibrations like those transmitted from bats and dolphins. Ultimately it was the combination of these weaknesses that drove Gezora back into the sea, believed to have been fatally injured by burns sustained to its body.
Gezora hasn't been seen since. The kaiju of the initial outbreak all seemingly perished in that first expedition of Dr. Miya's but both Kamoebas and Ganimes have resurfaced since, without having been created as a result of the space amoebas. Hypothesis are that the changes wrought to the ecosystem of Selgo Island have persisted even after the demise of the space amoebas and have continued to propagate kaiju. Eyewitness sightings and other evidence gathered in the following years show the likely possibility that Gezora is still alive and living in the waters surrounding Selgo Island.
Gezora from the NES game Godzilla: Monster of Monsters
Review: I first became aware of Gezora in the 1986 video game GODZILLA: MONSTER OF MONSTERS for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Gezora is the first kaiju you confront in the game and is the first and only time Godzilla has encountered Gezora. The kaiju roster in that video game is perhaps my favorite line-up of kaiju Toho has ever done. This roster includes the original MOGUERA, VARAN, BARAGON, and cameos of MATANGO and DOGORA among more usual suspects like GIGAN and MECHAGODZILLA. It's just cool seeing so many of these underrated kaiju featured again.
Earth's evil kaiju: Gabera, Ganimes, Gezora, Kamacuras, Megalon, Kumonga, and Ebirah. Art by Yasushi Torisawa
SPACE AMOEBA was Ishiro Honda's last non-Godzilla kaiju film and the first kaiju film after the death of tokusatsu film legend Eiji Tsuburaya. Sadamasa Arikawa did the special effects for the film and sadly Gezora is perhaps the weakest of the three kaiju in the film in terms of realization. Gezora was heavily featured in all the production and publicity photos and is by all rights the central kaiju of the film despite being the first to be killed off. All the artwork, posters, and photos show Gezora really well and showcase the amazing suit and design. Gezora is truly photogenic but seeing it in motion is when its faults show.
I think Gezora is a wonderful kaiju. It favors many of the aspects I find desirable in kaiju, the basis on real life creatures being the strongest. Nowadays with the technology we have to work with in movies Gezora could look really terrifying and amazing. It's sometimes the simple designs that prove the most effective. The simplicity of Gezora's design is certainly one of its strengths. Gezora is a classic kaiju, one worth tracking down and discovering.
Threat Level: 5 out of 10
Localized Destruction
For more studies in Kaijuology check out the pages below
Welcome all to the first ever BLOOD AWARDS ceremony! This is Blood Work's first full year end review where we will look back at 2015 and go over the movies, comic books, super heroes, giant monsters, and ninjas to have graced these blog posts over the last 12 months. We will sit in judgment once more and award the best and brightest of the last year.
Blood Work started in June of 2014 with the sole purpose of sharing my love of film, comics, kaiju, and more. That first seven months were sort of a beta test. This year marks the first full year of Blood Work and this year I feel Blood Work has finally found its voice and knows what it wants to be. Let's kick off the new year with a celebration of the best of 2015! So without further adieu... on with the blood!
KAIJU OF THE YEAR
(As the category implies this is merely a fun award. We here at Blood Work love all kaiju)
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Atlantean engineered Guardian of the Universe. Gamera is one of our favorite kaiju and one of cinema's greatest monsters! Check out the concept footage for the next Gamera film hopefully coming to completion this year!
In 2006 Marvel Comics Group released one of my all time favorite comics books, the Immortal Iron Fist. This book is almost a perfect example of how great comic books should be. It also established the hero IRON FIST as one of my personal favorite super heroes. Hopefully this next year we will finally receive the promised NETFLIX original series of Iron Fist! THE HIGHEST RATED COMIC BOOK PRODUCED IN 2015... GUARDIANS 3000
Artwork by Alex Ross
Dan Abnett finally returns to the cosmic Marvel stage giving the original Guardians of the Galaxy their due. This was the first good cosmic Marvel book since 2011's ANNIHILATORS: EARTHFALL and was truly worthy of being called cosmic. The comic was short lived but still quite remarkable in its brief life. 2015 was a strange year for comic books in that Marvel interrupted nearly all of their comic books and subsequently cancelled them all for their mega event SECRET WARS, which has yet to finish. Guardians 3000, like so many others, was an unfortunate casualty of this. The story has continued in the latest book from Marvel GUARDIANS OF INFINITY (my most anticipated book of the All New All Different rebranding of Marvel. VERSUS BATTLE OF THE YEAR This year at Blood Work we began a new series of posts where we pitted classic warrior cultures against each other a la SPIKE TV's DEADLIEST WARRIOR. I asked all my coworkers their opinions, tallied the votes, and then wrote an original story based off the voting outcome. Here's the list of Versus Battles from 2015:
It was the closest of all of the surveys and perhaps my personal favorite of the stories. Again this was something of a writing exercise and completely fun for me and hopefully fun for everyone else involved. The Valkyrie VS Amazon story was also the first Versus story where I found myself wanting to revisit these characters and continue writing the story. Indiana Jones Vs Lara Croft comes in a close second! BLOODLIEST TV SERIES OF THE YEAR
The television shows reviewed last year were, and this includes Anime, regular broadcast television, and premium original series like Netflix. I know I should probably separate animation and live action and perhaps I will in the future but for this year we're lumping all of TV together. The shows reviewed last year were: Jessica Jones Daredevil WGN's Salem Blood-C Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 And the bloodiest television series of 2015 goes to... SALEM
This was a difficult decision to make. I didn't review a whole lot of television this year but the shows that I did review were incredible. The two Netflix originals Daredevil and Jessica Jones were outstanding! Daredevil especially was just as good if not better than many of the super hero movies being made today. And of course this year I finally watched the original Gundam series that started it all, the Star Wars from Japan. But the original WGN series Salem was simply amazing. Maybe it's the fact that it appeals to my love of horror but I dare say my love super heroes is on equal if not greater footing. Salem is easily the scariest and best depiction of witches I've ever seen.
Stiff competition between the films here as I rated nearly all of them a 6 out of 10. Crimson Peak edges out the others because it offers something truly rare in horror cinema. If the distributors of the film had marketed it correctly reviews would be more positive. Guillermo Del Toro approaches his films with a certain purity that movie executives don't seem to understand. Crimson Peak is another amazing film from Del Toro and one I hope garners more recognition and praise with time. Runner up horror film this year goes to Burying the Ex because it is so much fun and every horror movie buff's dream come true.
MOVIE OF THE YEAR
Here it is. This is the big one. Blood Work's choice for the best movie of the year! Let me just begin by saying there were a lot of good movies that came out this year. I tried to see everything on my "Must Watch" list but sadly I missed a lot. Among the failures to see have been CREED, KRAMPUS, HATEFUL 8 (which fortunately I can still make it to), TERMINATOR GENISYS, GREEN INFERNO, and I'm sure more. But here are the movies I did make it to this year...
I wish I could say this was difficult to decide because if that were the case than that would mean there were some great movies this year. Compared to 2014 I feel 2015 fell a bit short on quality albeit 2015 may be the greatest year in cinema history financially. But just because a movie does well at the Box Office doesn't mean anything in terms of quality. Still, there were a lot of good movies this year even though I was disappointed with some. Really it came down to two movies: the runner up this year and one bloody good experience goes to Ant-Man. I loved Ant-Man. Far and away the best super hero film of the year. But there is one film that take away the crown:
I can't say enough about this movie. No other movie this year comes close to rivaling how entertaining and utterly spectacular this film was. We've seen some pretty amazing films in the years gone by and we've seen some truly epic action set-pieces. But we've never seen anything like Mad Max: Fury Road. The tension. The pace. The sheer spectacle. And most of it is real. Very very little CGI went into the action scenes. And when you see it you'll think "these people are crazy!" Everybody who worked on this film poured their heart and soul into it and it shows. Mad Max: Fury Road deserves some kind of Oscar or Academy Award for flawless execution. And for being totally frickin' metal.
NINJA OF THE YEAR
In case you didn't know, we here at Blood Work love Ninjas! Shinobi, Kunoichi, Mutant Turtle, video game, movie, cartoon, and Lego. We love NINJAS! So, it is my great pleasure to finish off this year's award ceremony with perhaps the greatest award I can bestow and the one award that's been on everybody's minds: Who is the Ninja of the year? If you've been keeping up you'll remember that we explored a lot about ninjas this past year. Here's what we posted on our favorite topic in 2015:
Artwork and character design by Makoto Tsuchibayashi
The hero of the Playstation 2 video game SHINOBI. It's a good thing this is a fun award because I completely cheated by including him. He's my all time favorite ninja. Since this is my first ever award ceremony for Blood Work it's only right that I end this Award show with officially crowning one of my favorite heroes as the best!
Thank you all for joining me along this journey over the last year and a half of Blood Work. 2016 looks to be an exciting year for movies, not so sure about comic books. Whether it's new or old discoveries, if it's cool and up my alley expect to see it posted here! I hope you all have enjoyed the posts whether you agreed with my ego-inflated opinions or not. Thank you all and keep the blood pumping.
