Constantly. I will put in capsule reviews of movies that strongly influence each issue, but as I acquire DVDs of monster movies and they migrate across streaming platforms, I catch random ones and they always give me great ideas. 

I hadn’t watched much Super Sentai or Kamen Rider before I started the series, so it was fun to catch some of that stuff and incorporate it into Team GREAT, as well as watching a bunch of Gamera movies at once to get a better sense for how to play the Zugaigo issue. And of course I binge-read a ton of Lovecraft for the Kraken House issue (no mean feat! Lovecraft is …not terribly fun to read). I’m looking forward to really digging into the rest of the Mothra films as I go into the 4th season, which is set in the women’s prison (Mothra being the main female kaiju).

Zonn is an odd mix, since I designed MechaZon first with details that would look good on a robotic monster. I then had to design his organic counterpart – the reverse of the usual method – and so I kind of just gave him a beak, those weird brain-blobs on his back, and a fluffy, feathery butt to give the same basic shape as MechaZon’s treads. So to answer your question, he is not really based on any monster in particular. That said, all of my monsters are kind of a mishmash of basic monster pieces from the Godzilla and Ultraman movies/shows. Zonn’s longer neck is kind of reminiscent of Red King’s neck; the feathers are from the various bird-like monsters from Ultraman, the weird spiky/tentacle-y things on the brain are well-established in kaiju lore. But someone – I’m afraid I can’t remember who – pointed out my favorite interpretation of Zonn’s design: “He looks like the top half of Big Bird got a horrible chemical burn.” And that summarizes it about as well as anything could.

I do think that Godzilla would have the edge here. What’s kind of shaken out over all the movies is that he’s almost elementally powerful, and much of the drama of his stories is how the rest of the world counters something so terrifying (”territorial hurricanes”, as James Stokoe called Godzilla and his ilk in Half Century War). Ultraman is a protagonist, however – not just sometimes but all the time – and despite all the momentary setbacks, loss of nerve, self-doubt, and competing priorities that plague every good hero, he always triumphs, especially when it’s Earth at stake. A good story would kind of have to end with an Ultraman victory. 

Perhaps in the mix there is an Ultra who is so vain, arrogant, and foolish that a trouncing from Godzilla – who he critically underestimated – would feel rewarding. But then there’s just the patient mentor, the month of training on a distant planet, and the crucial long-lost weapon to turn the tide. He’s gotta win. Godzilla’s only real hope is to accomplish his goals (wrecked city, killed worse kaiju, drove off alien armada) and then head off to the sea to sleep for a decade so we can call it a draw.

I like that about that movie, and the gang in Kaijumax that they belong to is known as the “Maketo” gang, referring to what some of the latter-day Ultraman series call “Maquette” monsters, notably Miclas and Windom, whom the human heroes would summon from little capsules (they first appeared in Ultra Seven in 1967 and Seven’s alter ego would do the same). In Kaijumax I’m doing a lot of combining of that idea with the designs of Pokemon and their spiritual successors, as well as the monsters of the 80s like the enemies in Mario Bros. 

Thanks a lot! I’m so glad that this book is finding the monster nerds out there (or as I like to call them, “my people”). I’ve just finished Season 2, and the trade paperback should be out in the spring. 

I always like when the humans have to lure them somewhere, because it usually means they have to get a compliant kaiju to move the battle into the trap before they can blast it with cannons or dehydrator rays or whatever, and so that always means we get both a kaiju/kaiju battle AND a kaiju/tank battle wrapped into one.

It will be the female wing (island) of Kaijumax prison, but maybe not everyone there is a kaiju, per se…