Mothra was defeated by Antra, and the world can never be the same. Two sisters are recruited by the Mothra's fairy priestesses to right the world and let Mothra be the Queen of monsters once again in this full-color kaijuu adventure story.

Mothra: Queen of the Monsters is written by Sophie Campbell with art by Matt Frank, published by IDW. (‎January 27, 2026)

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Well, this was fun. Gamera's always going to be my favorite, but who wouldn't love to be saved by a giant colorful moth kicking ass in the sky?

Mira and Emi are estranged twin sisters who lost their parents and the world they lived in after Mothra was defeated. They are brought together to travel in time and find Mothra's egg, raise it to be the powerful champion the planet needs. But time travel comes with risks, and if Emi and Mira are not in harmony, their song might cause even more damage!

This was a lot of fun to read. I imagine a print copy of this will be very stimulating, as Frank's art fills panels full of color and action, while never becoming too confusing. You can “hear” each panel, from the chaos and destruction to the song that powers Mothra.

I also really liked the way Campbell and Frank iterate the singing scenes, in which the color palette changed, and the song gently wends its way down a page that is drawn with gentle color and movement that contrasts beautifully with the monster fighting.

Emi and Mira both have gone through a lot, but you just know they'll find their voices to give Mothra the power she needs. I especially loved the “training sequences” as the sister negotiates with other kaiju so young Mothra can fight and power up, including Antra, the very creature whose defeat of Mothra began this story.

There's some priestess politics and infighting between the priestesses of different monsters, but ultimately this is a story about two sisters working through the different paths their shared tragedies set them on to find one another. And it's about giant monsters ripping each other apart while human society is trashed. We're rooting for Mothra, but those buildings are still going down, and people are still running panicked through the streets. Yay?

The volume ends with an artist gallery of Mothra and her opponents, which was both colorful and fun. This is a great comic, especially if you just ignore the collateral damage.

Bolts
Rating:

I've read a lot of kaiju stories, but admittedly, my experiences with the kaiju Mothra specifically are fairly limited. If anything, I think the only stories I have read or watched that involve her usually just have her as a supporting character. So I was very interested in reading a book where she is front and center, but that desire was only met with disappointment as Queen of the Monsters felt like it was taking every step to just irritate me.

Have you ever read a story where things just happened? There's no real reason why things are happening; there's just a bunch of stuff going on, and you're not really asked to think about anything else other than being stimulated by the flashy colors. I mean, it's great that the colors are very nice and the art direction for the book is solid. There are some full-page spreads in this book, and Mothra has a variety of different colors. There are even some splash pages that look like something right out of an old seventies album. I wish I could just print out some of these art pieces and put them on my wall. But then, when you try to tell a story utilizing this art, I start to see some of the cracks.

The pacing and actual communication of scene transitions in this story are a mess. I'm not given any reason to care or understand anything that's going on, even though the story feels like it's trying to be way more emotional than it actually comes off. It starts like a typical kaiju story where a young girl is separated from her family due to a Mothra attack, and she blames Mothra for losing the fight. This is a woman who blames Mothra's lack of ability as a kaiju for her losing everything. That's an interesting angle until almost everything gets redone slowly throughout the story because random magical stuff happens. I got introduced to characters who should leave more than an emotional impact, or I am told about how much the events in the story matter to the characters, but I, as a reader, don't feel anything because the emotional depth this book tries to communicate is so tight that it's practically nonexistent. Nothing in this book really feels earned because, outside of the very obvious harmony message that was set up right at the beginning, there's not a lot to care about. There are definitely a lot of things going on, and I'm actually surprised at just how much kaiju fanservice is shoved into this self-contained story. But I would've much rather enjoyed a more emotionally rich story with limited kaiju activity than one that tries to do everything with a kaiju story under the sun. This is a story about time travel, multiple kaiju, almost a dozen kaiju fights, magic, priestesses, and two sisters that may or may not have indirectly caused the death of a bunch of people. This book tries to do all of that and succeeds at none of it, so while I would recommend looking up the art pieces, don't waste your time with the story.