I’m a huge fan of Godzilla. The way a gigantic lizard stomps over a city, causes mayhem, then buggers off back into the ocean as if nothing happened is something to be admired. I wish I could be that much of a menace, but alas, I’m a regular-sized human who would be susceptible to a little thing called prison. Also, I’m not sure my knees are up to kicking down buildings.

Instead of rampaging like a monster, I’ll settle for reading about destruction by our favourite Kaiju in Godzilla vs America. As the name suggests, the 70-year-old lizard goes on tour, stopping off at various cities across the United States, where he promptly becomes everyone’s problem. Stops include Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and finally Kansas City, but rather than show us the devastation caused, the book chooses to focus on the humans impacted by their impending doom.

This collection of 16 stories, four for each city, takes you on a roller coaster of emotions, from the romantic coming together of singletons on a subway to a more silly affair that features a fan-man accidentally activating Mechagodzilla. Every tale was enjoyable on its own merit, although it was a little disappointing to find that each story existed in its own silo rather than telling one story of how the King of the Monsters destroyed each city.

The disconnect continues as IDW drafted in artists from the featured cities to write their own stories for Godzilla. While this was incredibly cool to see so many teams in the credits of the book, it did mean that the art style changed from story to story. The aforementioned fan-man from Chicago looked different to the subway couple, despite being from the same city. On top of this, there are major inconsistencies in how each Zilla attack is handled, which just adds to the inconsistency of the book.

Each story in Godzilla vs America was genuinely enjoyable, but the ever-changing artwork and disjointed nature of the plots are the biggest problem with the comic. There was no overarching story to dig into, and with consistent art, the book felt simply OK to read. If the four stories for each city were aligned in how ‘Zilla was causing devastation and how the humans handled it, then this would be a fantastic recommendation. Instead, I think this is for those who really love to see Godzilla pointlessly smash things over and over again and don’t care what he looked like from one page to another.