For all of the... it looks like maybe 2-4 people who actually read any of this year's Deathiversary articles, who might be wondering what the hell happened to the last three days, and you might ALSO be wondering why I was living in the past. Well, lots of reasons, but to simplify, I got very confused, and I was very sick, and once I realized what happened I lost all will to continue to do it and so left it off where it was and haven't touched it until now. But I got through to Destroyah, and although the last three entries are post-humous, they are at least done now, so until next year, this is as much Deathiversary as I can do.
Re-watching gino 2 will have to wait, thankfully. It's all for the best, really, because you have no idea how much I dread that.
But what sparked me to finish it now? GODZILLA IN HELL you doofus. This is the most important thing to happen to Godzilla since Biollante, which is to say if it all ended right here (and basically it already has) future generations would, at the absolute least, tell only three stories about Godzilla: his birth, Biollante, and his death and subsequent katabasis. All mythic heroes have to make their journey into the underworld, and Godzilla has been trying since... maybe the late 70's. Moreover, in the scope of things I care about that are not Godzilla, come the fuck on guys it's HELL, this is just... UGH! I can't express it in words, or I don't know the right ones, and I know at least 500 words. So this is very important to me, and I'm going to treat it with everything it'd due.
To be as clear as Crystal Godzilla: With each issue of Godzilla in Hell I will be writing a full editorial article exploring the themes and images and their precedents and application to the Godzilla Cycle both as a mythic tradition and in a meta-fictional sense of the overall meaning for Godzilla as a myth. That is, the what and the why, and if at all possible, the who and when as well.
The series will take a look at the deepest underlying ideas that have run throughout the katabasis and, specifically, Hell tradition, as well as being something of a eulogy for the dead Godzilla, more so than anything else I've ever written, and I've talked about Godzilla's death a lot. However, the very fact that his soul's journey can actually be told as a story through the same traditional commercial means that his films and other "official" media are released through makes this journey more real, as it's being told not only under the rules of Godzilla's previous life as a franchise character but also as a result of the very mechanism that destroyed him in the first place. That is, Godzilla in Hell would NEVER exist if it were not for the media blitz created by hollywood's hype engine for gino 2. So not only did gino 2 make this happen, it made it possible, and so what we're seeing isn't merely another... thing... it's THE thing, get it?
Well, you will, once you get a look at one of the first monsters encountered by Godzilla... in Hell!
And after that? Well, Godzilla has risen from the dead before. Is it possible that at the end of issue #5 we will see Godzilla at the shores of Purgatory, ready to reenter the world thanks to the efforts of Shinji Higuchi? It's very possible, and that, too, makes Godzilla in Hell all the more important because it may not be over quite yet. And if Godzilla can beat Hell... he might be able to beat hollywood.
I mean, after all, he's done it before.
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