Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero

Title: Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero

Series: Original Graphic Novel
Publisher: Legendary Comics

Publication Date: 2013
Creative Team:
            Writer: Travis Beacham

Artists:

Sean Chen

Yvel Guichet

Pericles Junior

Chris Batista

Geoff Shaw

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Monsters, Robots

Pacific Rim: Tales from Year Zero had three strikes against it before I ever held a copy.  Strike One: I’ve got geek street cred for days but I really don’t have much love for kaiju.  Kaiju is Japanese for ‘Strange Beast’ and is used to refer to creatures like Godzilla, the Cloverfield monster, and most of what the original Power Rangers fought in Megazord form.  I admit, there’s something fun about watching a guy in a monster suit stepping on a cardboard city but on the whole it’s not for me.  Strike Two:  As to Mechs/Giant Robots, I loved Voltron as a kid but I’m not nostalgic about it and as an adult I care barely sit through the Rifftrax version of Transformers.  Strike Three: There might be good movie tie-in comic out there but I have yet to read one.  They are almost always superfluous junk.  Unfortunately, Tales from Year Zero didn’t change my opinion on any of these fronts.

In the Pacific Rim bad breath can be lethal!

I only had two reasons for bothering with Pacific Rim: Guillermo Del Toro and Idris Elba.  Neither person is involved with this comic but they both saw something in this project.  When it comes to Del Toro, he’s never let me down (although he came close with Blade 2).  Meanwhile, Idris Elba usually picks interesting projects (The Wire, Luther, and Prometheus to name a few).  All of that was enough that I was willing to leave my preconceptions at the door and give Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero a chance.  I just wish I had been rewarded by that decision.

Little Known Fact: Kaiju hate Suspension Bridges but they love Truss Arch.

Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero deals mostly with the impetus of the PPDC.  What is the PPDC you ask?  They are the world organization that defends the planet from Kaiju attacks.  You might be wondering what PPDC stands for.  I read the comic twice and I still can’t tell you.  Those initials are everywhere in the comic.  Places are labeled as PPDC facilities in the narration, PPDC logos are on jackets, uniforms, and buildings.  Characters mention the organization constantly.  I’ve scoured this comic from beginning to end and back again and the best I can tell you is that it might mean Pan Pacific Something Something.  Defense Counsel?  Defense Coalition? Dehydrated Cantaloupe?  I still don’t know.  If it’s in there I couldn’t find it.  This is really just the beginning of a longer list of inadequately answered / completely unanswered questions.  The simplest question is twofold:  Where do kaiju come from and why are they suddenly appearing regularly?  None of the scientists and military personnel we meet even suggest exploring that question.  In this fictional world is the answer so obvious that people don’t even find it worth discussing?  I know people have to be defended and that goal could easily force the questions of kaiju origin into the corner for a while but if you’re repeatedly attacked by an enemy eventually you have to go on the offensive.  The PPDC is all defense.  Apparently no one wants to win the war they just want to win a few battles.  This is just one of the ways Pacific Rim skims the surface of its concept.  Heaven forbid anything should get in the way of robots vs monsters.

The Pan Pacific Demarcated Cheese Jaeger Academy.

Travis Beacham is the concept creator.  He co-wrote the screenplay with Guillermo Del Toro but he’s flying solo on the comic.  The story is told as a series of interviews.  A reporter named Naomi Sokolov is assigned to write a retrospective article about kaiju and the PPDC called “Why We Fight”.  Tendo Choi is the first to be interviewed.  He was in San Francisco when the first kaiju arrived on what would later be called K-Day.  The second interview is with Dr. Schoenfeld who came up with the concept of fighting the kaiju with giant mechs.  (This is easily the best of the three stories).  The last interview is with Marshal Pentecost (Idris Elba’s character).  He explains anecdotally the relationship that mech co-pilots share.  Each man has a different perspective on “Why We Fight”.  Tendo’s figures there’s nothing else humanity could do, Dr. Schoenfeld suggests the answer is love, and Pentecost declares they fight to win (Hoorah!  But again how are you going to win without figured the where, why, how, etc of the enemy).  Ultimately, the fighting may be over though since it’s been decided to build a huge wall across all coast lines effectively locking the kaiju out at sea.  

Especially since my X-Box broke.  So we might as well fight and stuff.

Stupid Blood Tree!

The way the art in the comic is credited forces you to guess which artist is drawing which parts.  I mostly think they are listed in order but it’s not always clear when artists have switched.  In the final story the artists even swap out for about 3 pages in the middle for no apparent reason.  With this situation I hate to credit/criticize an artist by name since I’m not sure who did what.  I will just say that I was the least fond of whoever illustrated Tendo Choi’s story.  Their characters aren’t very consistent and the detail level drastically from panel to panel.  Meanwhile, the artwork on the overarching interview narrative was excellent.  One of the kaiju in the middle story “Turn the Tide” was especially bizarre in a fun way.  If this were an out and out anthology I would have loved to see extremely varied artwork but since this is situated as one coherent narrative I’m glad that the art was mostly consistent.  The problems I had with this comic had little to do with the art.

Overall Pacific Rim Tales from Year Zero is nothing special.  The story does what it’s supposed to do; it’s an appetizer.  It gets your taste buds going and hopefully you’re excited for the meal.  However, like most appetizers you really only buy it because you’re hungry now and you know your dinner might take a few minutes to arrive.  Unfortunately, also like most appetizers they are completely forgotten once your dinner arrives.  Worse than that, if Pacific Rim flops at the box office than Tales from Year Zero will disappear more completely than Jimmy Hoffa.  Hopefully, Del Toro has a few tricks up his sleeve.  Call me crazy but I still have high hopes for the entree.

Ever have that dream where spiders are crawling all over you?  Here it is Mech style

Grade: C -