MINI-MILLENNIUM GODZILLA
I’ve started to do some sketches, some requested, some not, but all monsters.
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#godzilla #jailbird #kaijumax
Note: Due to an error, the full version of this review did not appear in KAIJUMAX Season 3 #2. Here it is:
Though not by any means the first giant monster movie, Gojira, directed by Ishiro Honda and featuring the monster creations of Eiji Tsuburaya, distinguished itself by moving away from the crisp stop-motion effects of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms from the previous year and instead creating an emotional story not unlike that of 1933’s King Kong, now updated to the atomic age. Using Gojira’s attack as a reflection of the all-too-recent atomic warfare of WWII, as well as a not-subtle reference to the Lucky Dragon no. 5 fishing boat that was caught in the fallout of the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, the film captured the paranoia and panic of disasters that humans should have seen coming.
A straightforward disaster-response movie in some respects, Gojira cleverly triangulates its characters around the titular monster: a soft-hearted biologist who wishes to spare Gojira and study him, his haunted colleague, Serizawa, who knows he has the weapon to kill the monster but fears what the governments of the world would do with it if they knew of its existence, Serizawa’s frequently terrified fiancee, a brave salvage fisherman, and, in the English version, an American newspaperman played by Raymond Burr who seems to know a lot of these characters’ body doubles. In a rare feat, the English Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a very different but almost as good counterpart to the classic original. Where Gojira has a great deal of political maneuvering, disaster coverup, musings on what science could make of such a creature, and a maudlin love triangle leading to Dr. Serizawa’s selfless sacrifice, King of the Monsters is more of a voyage of journalistic discovery, ending with a truncated and much more optimistic final scene in which the danger has been permanently eliminated and “the whole world could wake up and live again.”
Besides setting up what was to become one of the longest-running movie franchises of all time, Gojira was the first to make explicit its portrayal of a rampaging creature as representing vague existential threats to humanity (variously: nuclear war, ecological collapse, nature’s fury, etc.), and gave the human characters a darker undertone to what before had been largely a lot of running, screaming, and looking on in bafflement. Though the version westerners saw at the time was simpler and less dark, and let humanity off the hook for all of its war- and ecology-related missteps, it nevertheless gave a deep sense of menace that would continue in the series for about one film before they said “screw it, kids love Godzilla” and made him dance.
Though my tastes in monster movies typically run more to the absurd, Gojira is a undeniably beautiful film, with emotional dialogue scenes, lavishly shot miniatures, deliberate pacing, and an indelible new archetype: a monster who could become cinema’s catch-all metaphor for each decade’s deadliest new global threat.
This is the author’s commentary track for KAIJUMAX #5 from Oni Press. Zander Cannon talks at great length about PTSD, inking techniques, prison stories, and generally being a cartoonist and making a comic book about monster prison. Put on your headphones, grab a copy of the comic (optional), kick back, and enjoy!
KAIJUMAX #1 gets a monster-sized advance review from Famous Monsters of Filmland!
“This is it. The one you’ve been waiting for. The debut issue you absolutely cannot miss.”
First Kaijumax con sketch: The Creature from Devil’s Creek getting high on smog.
Okay, folks, you got the comic, now here’s the commentary. In this lengthy (1hr48min) recording, I go through the comic page by page, talking about the creation process, illustration and writing technique, monster fandom, and comics in general. Put on your headphones, grab a copy of the comic (optional), kick back, and enjoy!
Anonymous asked:
Here’s a confession: I haven’t seen Final Wars yet. Yikes. I’d already seen an awful lot of monster movies before Kaijumax, but now that I’m working on this series, I’ve been trying to fill in the gaps, and I’m making an effort to be very broad in my approach (that is, watch a few Ultramans, a few Kamen Riders, a few Super Sentais, a few Gameras, a few Godzillas…) and that’s one I haven’t gotten to yet. But to answer your question, once I do see it, I very likely will incorporate that into the story.
I like the Godzilla Jr. in Godzilla vs SpaceGodzilla, designwise, but he and “Baby” from one of the Millennium MechaGodzillas are pretty boring to me, since they seem to end up being targets or helpless things without much to do. Obviously, I like to draw references from everywhere if I can, but I haven’t had much luck with them so far.
More New Year’s news: Kevin Derendorf of Maser Patrol is writing a book of reviews on the giant monster genre’s lesser-known titles (i.e. no Godzilla, Gamera, or Kong). Spot the Kaijumax reference on the cover!
I’m choosing to believe this is a Kaijumax reference (though it’s just as likely they thought of the same silly pun that I did). Thanks, Kevin!
Anonymous asked:
Thanks! Most of the time I think of a gag or a reference based on a memory of a movie I may have seen decades ago, and so I do have to go back to check it out by watching the movie (if I can; I don’t always have time if the deadlines are coming up). I also do a lot of looking around on TV Tropes or Wikizilla for phrases to describe what I’m thinking of. I also make notes every time I see a new movie or read a prison novel or something, and then go through that as I’m writing to see if there’s anything good that will fit.
I do love those franchises, as well as Red Baron, Iron King, Gundam, Mazinger Z, and Tetsujin-28. Hopefully I’ll be able to fit in references to all those and more.
rustybottlecap asked:
I like to think there is a weird paradox like in the middle period of Godzilla films where monsters clearly destroy cites and incinerate people, but 20 minutes later people are inexplicably musing about how there must be some good in them. There’s always some maniac kid who thinks the monster’s just misunderstood even as he eats a boat full of people.
In Kaijumax I want to tie that range of reactions into the sort of real-world people you find in police or prison dramas, in which there are some that feel that morality is black and white (i.e. all monsters are destructive and bad), some that feel like there is some gray area (i.e. some of the monsters’ motives are understandable, if not acceptable), and some – like the aforementioned boy – who are unrealistically attached to what amount to violent criminals.
What I want to avoid is too much worldbuilding in terms of how society has adapted to the reality of giant monsters, except in terms of how it serves to build character and tell a story. To render it all out logically without building a story around it would be to miss the point of Kaijumax.
iamoutofideas
