Godzilla Rivals: Mothra Vs. Hedorah
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Godzilla Rivals: Mothra Vs. Hedorah is the 13th installment in the IDW Publishing one-shot comic series Godzilla Rivals. It was released on June 5, 2024.[1]
Description
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A strange meteor crashes outside a small Icelandic village just after their annual Mothra festival, suddenly bringing the remote town to the attention of a dying trillionaire. As he seeks the secrets to eternal life in the crater, twin villagers Astrid and Aurora deal with the death of their festival-organizing grandmother. But what is waiting to seep out into the village, and who could defend it? It's a cycle of death and rebirth in Godzilla Rivals: Mothra Vs. Hedorah![1]
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Plot
Astrid glumly walks past booths at Bortenfor's annual Mothra festival. Her grandmother, Ana Arneberg, finds her and hands off kites she found at the shrine. Astrid asks Arneberg not to work so hard; she replies that she could if Astrid didn't take so many breaks. A young festival attendee asks them if Mothra is real. Arneberg explains that the moth monster has protected their village against evil for time immemorial; Astrid instead tells her that the village invented Mothra as a tourist attraction. Astrid comes upon her sister, Aurora, who is helping to clean up the leaflets spread around the festival grounds by its overbearing corporate sponsors. Arneberg reveals to them that she's decided to go off her medication and accept that her final months are at hand. Both sisters are shocked, with Aurora more accepting; Astrid is frightened of a future without their parents or their grandmother. They all embrace, and the matriarch reminds the sisters that they'll always have each other.
At the same time, Lawrence Lazek rages at the prognosis for his own disease, which his doctor informs him will prove fatal in a year or less. The richest man in the world, he vows to spend his entire fortune on a cure if necessary, and is quickly provided an opportunity to do so. His assistant brings him news of a meteor crater where a microscopic alien organism was discovered, having survived the vacuum of space and atmospheric entry. He orders an increase in funding to the team studying it and to avoid revealing its existence to the government.
Months later, Astrid and Aurora visit their grandmother's grave. Aurora has told the Mothra festival's organizers that she will be too busy with work to help out, while Astrid will be similarly occupied with school. Astrid is upset that Aurora spoke for her - and now working for Lazek. Aurora points out that Lazek is the biggest employer in the country before leaving.
At the Livskunnskap "Hedorah" Labs, Aurora is told that she'll be bringing biowaste of samples that the lab is testing to the incinerators, but little else, and hears a scream coming from behind a closed door. The originator of the scream is Lazek, who has just been injected with a sample of the space creature. To his doctor's surprise, it quickly sets to work eating his tumors; he theorizes that it's drawn to the radiation from Lazek's past treatments. His doctor urges caution, due to the creature's mysterious nature, but Lazek demands another injection, offering the doctor's assistants $10 million each. They comply as the doctor leaves in disgust. Lazek's satisfaction quickly turns to horror as his arm turns purple and the creature bursts out of his chest. Hedorah rampages through the lab, killing every person that it sees and consuming radioactive materials. Aurora hears an evacuation order moments before she watches Lazek's assistant killed by the monster's acidic sludge. After she evacuates, she calls Astrid. Meanwhile, Hedorah kills Lazek's doctor and transforms into its Flying Stage to destroy a helicopter.
As the power goes out in Bortenfor, Aurora comes to collect her sister. With Hedorah flying towards the town, Astrid suggests that they flee to "the most boring place on Earth": the temple, which they haven't visited since they were young. They recall how Arneberg made them sing for her friends here; when they sing it again, a nearby box with Mothra engraved on it starts to glow. After they finish, they hear the beating of wings outside: Mothra has arrived. They tell her about Hedorah and their newfound belief in her, and she flies off to intercept the space monster. She blows away the smog starting to choke the town, then blasts Hedorah with her antennae lasers. It counters with sludge bullets that she blocks with her wings. Landing, it changes to its towering Perfect Stage. Her silk has no effect on it, and it blasts a hole through her with its eye lasers. Mothra picks up Hedorah and flies it into the air, where lighting fatally strikes both of them. Gazing at Mothra's lifeless body, Aurora and Astrid vow to move forward together. They join a crowd watching a massive egg that appeared near the shore, which they recognize contains the next Mothra.
Appearances
MonstersCharacters
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Weapons, vehicles, and races
Locations
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Gallery
Cover A by Joshua Cornillon
Cover B by Rebecca Ann
Cover RI by Sara Pitre-Durocher
Trivia
- This is the first installment in the Godzilla Rivals series to have both of its titular monsters appear in a previous issue.
- This issue was originally set to release on May 29, 2024, before being pushed back to June 5, 2024.
- The panel of Astrid typing at her computer while listening to music on headphones references the animations on the YouTube channel Lofi Girl, which are in turn based on a shot from the 1995 Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart.
- Astrid and Aurora fill the roles of the Shobijin in this story, being sisters who can summon Mothra through song. Their rendition of "Mothra's Song" is comprised of an English translation of the additional verses that Yoshiko Miura wrote for Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992).
References
This is a list of references for Godzilla Rivals: Mothra Vs. Hedorah. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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