Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero
Plot Summary and Credits
Gigantic kaiju emerge from an interdimensional portal beneath the Pacific Ocean, destroying cities and poisoning the environment. Humanity’s weapons are all but useless against them, so they must create a new method of fighting them without having to level a city in the process. A fleet of enormous mechs, called jaegers, are constructed to face the kaiju threat, but the neural link used to operate them requires two pilots with similar experiences and personalities. At the height of the war with the kaiju, reporter Naomi Sokolov holds a series of interviews with key members of the jaeger program, revealing how mankind’s greatest weapons were created and the cost they had on their pilots.
Travis Beacham (writer), Sean Chen, Yvel Guichet, Chris Batista, Geoff Shaw (pencillers), Mark McKenna, Steven Bird, Matt Benning (inkers), Pericles Junior (penciller, inker), Guy Major, Tom Chu, Dom Regan (colourists), Patrick Brosseau (letterer), Nicolas Sienty (pre-press and production), John J. Hill (book designer), Alex Ross (cover artist), Greg Tumbarello (assistant editor), Bob Schreck (editor), Guillermo del Toro (supervising editor)
My Copy
I’d seen Tales From Year Zero on a low shelf a couple of times during my visits to the comic shop, but there had always been something that took precedence. One day, when I went in to pick up volume one of Absolute Wonder Woman, I checked the shelf again and saw that it was still there. Taking this as a sign from the comic gods, I finally took it home with me.
Before Reading
I’m not ashamed to admit that Pacific Rim is in my top ten favourite movies of all time. It gives us battles between giant monsters and mechs, with all the silliness that premise entails, and there’s a real sense of the strength of the human spirit required to make such a battle possible. From engineers, to helicopter crews, to the pilots themselves, everyone becomes an essential part of the war effort. This side of the story is what Tales From Year Zero is all about, so I was pretty interested to pick it up.
After Reading
First of all, the title is kind of misleading. It should really be called something like “Tales From Years Zero Onward”, since only a small part of it is set during the opening year of the kaiju war.
Other than that, I really enjoyed this read. Like I said before, it delves into the human side of a film that’s pretty much an enlarged version of an eight-year-old’s toy box. We get to see a lot of the characters from the movie and how they ended up where they were, like how the Beckett brothers joined the program and the challenges they faced both in training itself and how their everyday lives affected their psychic bond. Having someone see all of your thoughts on a regular basis is bound to cause some problems, and Tales From Year Zero demonstrates this well, showing how the pilots relationships; and the removal of those relationships; changed their lives forever, as well as the drawbacks of having to choose them based on compatibility rather than experience or training.
The comic also goes into a bit more detail than we got in the movie about just why the UN decided to pour all of its resources into the jaegers. Because, let’s be honest, giant mechs requiring two compatible pilots aren’t super practical. We see the effects of the kaiju’s toxic blood and how resistant they are to conventional weapons, as well as the need to basically sacrifice a city to kill one of them. It seems that they agree with the universally accepted truth that giant mechs are just plain cool.
There’s something optimistic about the world of Pacific Rim that this comic shows on a deeper level. I know that sounds weird, and no, I don’t fancy the idea of giant monsters attacking our cities. Jaegers are shown to need an insane amount of resources to build and maintain, as well as countless people pitching in at different levels. This kind of effort would only be possible if the whole world chipped in, putting aside our differences to create a way to protect our world. I suppose I could draw some metaphor of the giant jaegers symbolising all of humanity standing as one big warrior, but neither the comic or the film is trying to be super clever so neither will I.
This comic isn’t the most complex story out there, and at the end of the day doesn’t really add all that much to the film. Which is perfectly fine, because the film isn’t all that complex either, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s got giant robots punching giant monsters. What more could you ask for?
Closing Thoughts
Tales From Year Zero doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it delivers what it needs to, giving a little more depth and humanity to an already stupidly awesome movie.
Next week’s review will be something of a reverse to this one, where a rampaging monster from our world gets sent to o another planet and becomes its saviour.
