Drawing some more Godzilla gang fellows, with Megalon taking the starring role. Always loved this big lug.

And then... hmm... don't remember these guys from any Godzilla movie... guess they must be from the comics.

Alright, some more Godzilla monster sketches. First, a batch of polished designs for Anguirus, Hedorah, and Gorosaurus. If you're thinking, "Wait, did I miss Gorosaurus sketches?", the answer is you did not...

...because I figured him out pretty quickly. Retrosaurs come easy to me by this point. Varan's going to need some more work, though.

I think I got my approach for Titanosaurus pretty quickly, but had to spend a while refining the details. The original Titanosaurus's head has all these details fighting for prominence - the big fin, the fin ears, the horns, AND some catfish barbells, all clustered around the eyes. It's a lot! Figuring out how to work them all in elegantly was difficult, and I ended up shifting things around. Even then, I think I'm probably going to cut the barbells in the finished design.

You might notice that both Titanosaurus and Gorosaurus (and Varan's unfinished sketches) have some details in common with my Godzilla. I'm kinda taking a page from Singular Point and making them part of the same clade of fictitious prehistoric reptiles - Goro's species lost the gills as it took on a fully terretrial existence, while Titano's gills are more prominent to enable her almost entirely aquatic lifestyle.

Baragon gets to join the Godzilla relative train too, mainly for meta reasons. He's somewhere between Godzilla's branch of the family tree and Gorosaurus's - because his role in Frankenstein Conquers the Role was at one point pitched to be Godzilla's, and his role in DAM was ultimately taken by Gorosaurus, you see. I didn't change his design very much beyond skewing some proportions to make him seem more mole-y - I mean, I tried to, but Baragon's hard to improve upon, he's already weird as fuck as is. Baragon's... kinda perfect?

Stepping away from prehistoric monsters, I had fun with Orga, mainly by playing with elements of his Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash incarnation. He's gonna getcha with his big ol' grabby hands, you see. God I wish I could find that tumblr post.

Finally (for now), I'm... still figuring out Gigan, honestly. Not really sure what angle I'm going to end up with, he's proving hard to pin down. Will require more sketching.

Today I was reminded of my long defunct Tyrantis ask-blog, which, while ultimately a failed experiment (’cause if I couldn’t keep up with it back then, I sure as fuck can’t now that I’ve got carpal tunnel syndrome), produced some really good pieces that I’m still proud of today despite their shortcomings.  Also it helped flesh out my second novel, which you can buy now BTW.

I decided to post some of its highlights today, along with two never-before-seen pieces that I never found time to finish for the blog - one “canon,” the other obviously not.

Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction 16: Godzilla

I’m not going to be objective about this. I mean, I haven’t once labored under the pretense that this project is objective, but I have at least tried to maintain a perspective outside of my personal tastes when writing up these comments. But there’s no separating my personal opinion from the subject of today’s entry. Let’s talk about Godzilla, King of the Monsters. A BRIEF DEFINITION: I will be referring to “The Kaiju Genre” in this entry. The Kaiju Genre is a subgenre of Atomic Horror, much as Imperial Gothic Horror is a subgenre of Gothic Horror. While still Atomic Horror, Kaiju stories have some specific rules that set them apart - particularly the theme nature striking back at man, and of course the Kaiju monster archetype - i.e. these stories have giant monsters in them. The 1954 classic Gojira is, in my opinion, the perfect example of an Atomic Horror story. I hold the movie in extremely high regard. It follows the formula from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (and is far from the only 1950’s monster movie to do so) and fills it out with incredible depth. Instead of having the nuclear bomb test occur in the Arctic, or the desert, or some other far, remote place, they put it in the bikini islands - right next to a fishing ship. The filmmakers did this because, shortly before Gojira went into production, this actually happened. An actual Japanese fishing ship happened to pass by the actual Bikini Island Atoll (because the Americans running the tests didn’t warn the Japanese for fear of the Soviets finding out) and got a good old dose of radioactive fallout! Some of the sailors actually died of radiation poisoning, but not before the fish they had collected was sent to market and poisoned more people! When the Japanese asked the Americans if, hey, maybe they knew why their fishermen inexplicably got radiation poisoning, Good Old Uncle Sam told the Japanese that it was none of their business and that they had better cover up this incident or they’d get a red white and blue boot up their asses. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms was atomic horror based on the speculation about the nature of a nuclear disaster. Gojira is based on an actual personal history with it. Godzilla destroys a few more ships off the coast of Japan, and the Japanese are quick to investigate. Eventually he is discovered rampaging on Odo Island in a scene that, frankly, is about as terrifying as you can get with a 1950’s kaiju flick. We don’t see much of Godzilla in his first rampage. Everything happens at night during a storm, with Godzilla’s wails mixing with the roar of the thunder and his body being mostly hidden in the gloom and rain. The small shacks and buildings on the island shake violently in the vicious wind and, eventually, under the crushing footfall of the leviathan that has wandered through them. Finally we get one brief glimpse - a “blink and you’ll miss it” shot - of Godzilla’s massive leg moving in the darkness behind a collapsed house, his scaly flesh merging so well with the trees and inky night sky behind him that you’d be forgiven for missing it - but when you see it, you realize just how horribly huge this monster is. Eventually we meet our main characters: Dr. Yamane, a paleontologist; Emiko Yamane, his daughter; Ogata, a young sailor who is infatuated with Emiko; and Dr. Serizawa, a World War II veteran who was implied to have some experience with nazi scientists and who is betrothed to Emiko - oh, and who has the social stigma of having been scarred from his time in the war. Dr. Yamane wants to study Godzilla - not only as a paleontological find, but also to understand why Godzilla can survive being hit by a nuclear blast. This is important! I will explain why later on. Ogata, on the other hand, is all on board the “kill Godzilla” bandwagon. He’s bloodthirsty in the well meaning way young people who are hungry for war without understanding the horrors it brings. Dr. Serizawa, his foil, is reluctant to confront the problem. Serizawa has seen war all too well, and he is incredibly cautious about engaging in it again - even against a monster like Godzilla. Emiko, caught between the two (and her father, for that matter), remains undecided. She loves Ogata, yet also respects her father and loves Serizawa (albeit in a more platonic way). She abhors violence like Serizawa, yet, by the end of the movie, sees the horror Godzilla is causing and comes to the conclusion that yes, Godzilla must be destroyed. The destruction Godzilla causes in the original Japanese cut of Gojira is unparalleled in its scope - at least by any of the contemporary kaiju flicks of the 1950’s and 60’s. Them! and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and The Beginning of the End and The Deadly Mantis and even The Giant Claw all talk about the possibility for massive destruction, and even give us a taste of it - a crushed building here, an eaten policeman there, maybe a couple of missing couples at makeout point, but they never delve into the sheer apocalyptic mass devastation that we see in Gojira. Tokyo is utterly ravaged in this film, its destruction shown in enough glorious detail and screen time to match all the rampages of those other movies put together. We see buildings fall, we see Godzilla step on fleeing mobs of people, we see a tower full of reporters collapse as the men aboard it scream towards their oncoming death, and on and on it goes still! A mother clutches her children in an alley as the fires grow brighter and Godzilla’s roars grow closer, telling her kids, “Don’t worry, we’ll be with father soon!” before flaming debris falls upon her. Godzilla’s final rampage concludes with him screaming in freakish fury amidst an eerily quiet city bathed in stark black and white flames. Only one living being is shown to escape Godzilla’s wrath on screen during this onslaught - a group of birds in an aviary. This is also important. I’ll explain why later on. After the final rampage, Emiko sees the countless victims of Godzilla’s assault in one of the few buildings left standing. She sees a child screaming after her dead mother is carried out, and sees another lying in bed with radiation sickness. The toll is too much, and only then does she open up to Ogata and reveal that she knows a way to kill Godzilla - a secret she had promised her fiance, Serizawa, never to tell. This is an ingenious writing device, by the way - Emiko’s conflict in the story is between her emotions and her duty. Her duty is to Serizawa, the man she is betrothed to and a man she loves and respects like a brother. She has sworn an oath to never reveal his secret, and is thus duty bound not to tell Ogata. Yet her feelings make her love Ogata romantically, just as they make her realize that Godzilla must be destroyed. She is faced with two evils - betray the person she rightly feels respect and duty for, or allow countless people, including but not limited to herself, suffer an unimaginable horror. It’s a lot more complex than Anne Darrow’s “Do I love the hunky manly man sailor or the giant gorilla that tried to rape and/or eat me at one point” from King Kong. Emiko spills the beans, and she and Ogata confront Serizawa. He is hurt by the betrayal at first, but eventually realizes that Godzilla is doing unimaginable harm. He has a weapon that can do the same - the oxygen destroyer, a device that, when it comes in contact with water, almost instantly vaporizes any oxygen breathing lifeforms. But Serizawa has had a lot of experience with what mankind does with that kind of power - the most obvious example, of course, is the atom bomb, which made Godzilla, the very problem they’re facing now. “A bomb against A bomb, H bomb against H bomb, oxygen destroyer against oxygen destroyer!” he spits in disgust. If the atomic and hydrogen bombs caused such devastation - including but not limited to all the death Godzilla has caused himself - then so to will the oxygen destroyer, unless Serizawa can make it that no one ever uses it again. So Serizawa burns his notes and personally brings the oxygen destroyer to Godzilla’s underwater lair. We get our first and only glimpse of Godzilla at peace in the movie with a long, lingering shot. We see how naturally he fits within this underwater environment - a world that has not been touched much by mankind. We see how serene and graceful he is, and in this moment Godzilla is more than a monster - he is a natural wonder, as beautiful and imposing as any mountain. The music is, for once, not menacing during this scene, but rather mournful. As one critic noted, this is where we realize Godzilla, too, is a victim of war. Serizawa unleashes his weapon and cuts his safety rope, allowing himself to perish with Godzilla. Godzilla desperately tries to avoid his fate when the destroyer goes off, swimming to the surface to give one last agonized wail before plummeting to the depths and disintegrating. As he dies, everyone is mournful - both for the loss of Serizawa, and for the fact that the evil that created Godzilla - mankind’s devotion to creating and using more hideously powerful weapons despite the consequences - means that another of the monster’s species may yet arise to seek vengeance on mankind. Gojira, much like The War of the Worlds, attacks something very primal and inherent to the nature of humanity. It attacks our desire for revenge, and our belief that all violence - even violence on a colossal scale like war - can be justified under the right circumstances. There is a belief in the human race that, in certain circumstances, we can defeat evil - stop it, once and for all - by killing the right people. It’s why we have wars. No one - or at least very, very few people - goes to war because they like killing people. No, we go to war because we think that if we kill the right people, we’ll make sure no one ever hurts us again. Yet most wars are caused by a desire for revenge - they start because we think the other side hurt us in the past, and we need payback. Then the other side attacks because we attacked, which means we will attack in the future, and on and on and on it goes in an endless cycle. Gojira, with its science hero who’s devotion to patient, rational science (the “good” science in Atomic Horror stories) is absolutely paramount, clearly states that this idea is massively stupid. Violence does not truly solve violence. You can hit your enemy hard enough to make the violence pause, yes. You can build a bomb that cows them into submission. But your display of force will invite counterattack - if not from your first enemy, then from others who are terrified of the power you showed. One atomic bomb begets another, then begets a hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen bomb begets hydrogen bomb begets dozens of hydrogen bombs begets dozens of more hydrogen bombs begets HUNDREDS of hydrogen bombs until mankind has enough of these weapons pointed at each other to wipe out the earth ten times over. No, violence is not the answer. It only creates enemies. Unlike Western kaiju flicks, which believe that even though army weapons made the giant monsters, you can still kill them with the same weapons and have no bad consequences (…like the kaiju), Gojira argues that those violent tactics, no matter how well intended, only continue the problem. The Oxygen Destroyer did not end the threat of Godzilla… just delayed it. One of the most important features of Gojira is the fact that it treats its monster as a character. People deride it for its less convincing special effects, ignoring the fact that “realism” in a story is mainly a western value. What mattered to Godzilla’s creators was the fact that Godzilla was emotive. In most Western kaiju flicks, the monster is a personality-deprived force of conflict - a prop more than a character. It enters a scene when the story needs a scary moment rather than when it is motivated to do so. It attacks the heroes when the script demands it instead of when it would make sense for a creature to do so. Kaiju in these movies are just a source of conflict, nothing more. Godzilla, though - Godzilla has motivation, and it’s even built into his design. His hide is based on an alligators, but designed to look like its scales had warped and melted together under the heat of a nuclear blast. His eyes were painted looking down (on the original suit, anyway) with large, furious eyebrows and a mouth bent in a perpetual frown so he could be looking down in righteous fury at the puny humans whose weapon had so horribly damaged him. Godzilla doesn’t attack humanity out of animal instinct or “just because” - he attacks because he’s in agony, because his home was destroyed, because he’s awoken in a world that hates him, and because humanity is the cause of all of that pain. The story shows that Godzilla is not inherently evil. He doesn’t attack the birds, for example, because they did nothing to him - they are another group of animals who have been victimized by humans. Likewise, Yamane’s note that Godzilla’s ability to survive radiation reveals that, had humanity not (accidentally) tortured this poor creature into a vicious rage, we could have actually learned something incredibly valuable from it: a way to survive the horrible destructive power of our own weapons. By choosing the way or war and weaponry against Godzilla - and, by extension, the natural world - humanity denies itself the possibility to survive great destruction. We choose to inflict death rather than transcend it, and to oppose the world rather than coexist and learn from it. That’s very martian of us, isn’t it? Godzilla returned for a sequel, or at least another of his species did. And he was just as pissed in his second movie as he was in his first. With the oxygen destroyer no longer an option, the heroes of his second film were forced to find a non-fatal way to do away with him, burying him in an iceberg. Another sequel came, and another, and another, and through them all the tactics of the Japanese military changed. So to did Godzilla. In each sequel, there is at least one other monster Godzilla faces. He wins some fights, he loses some others - his wins and losses being dependent on how friendly the monster is to humanity. Some of the kaiju he faces come from islands where they lived in harmony with native humans who, while perhaps less technologically advanced, are far more in tune with the natural world. These kaiju are protective of humanity, and they fend Godzilla off. This is important. The movies are offering up the idea that mankind does not need to live in a state of war. Humans don’t need to be conquerors and warriors. Humanity can, in fact, survive much better by coexisting with others. Eventually Godzilla faces a kaiju that is even beyond the scope of his rage - one whose hatred has become so virulent and malevolent that it extends to all life in the universe. Godzilla fights this foe and, for the first time, is not attacked by humanity for it. His stance begins to change towards humanity after this, and, likewise, so does humanity’s stance on him. Some critics - even some that are otherwise very intelligent - stupidly assert that Godzilla’s turn from villain to hero in the original movie series came out of nowhere and was a bad idea. These people are dumb. Well, ok, that’s just me being spiteful, but their opinion on this matter is definitely dumb. Godzilla’s turn from villain to hero is not “stupid.” It is gradual, natural character development, and it is character development that is totally in line with the theme and tone of the first movie. If Gojira is like The War of the Worlds in the way it challenges humanity to recognize some of its inherent evil tendencies and bemoans our apparent inability to move past them, then the sequels to Gojira are a picture of the ideal world we could create by finding a solution to that problem. Slowly, over the course of several sequels, the humans in this universe learn that these giant personified forces of nature aren’t inherently opposed to humanity. They are powerful, yes, and we have to tread lightly with them, but they do not have an inherent desire to destroy us. They learn hatred, and if we instead treat them with kindness, they can be turned into our protectors. As bacteria can repel invaders, so to can the humble mutated dinosaur. Humanity slowly stops reacting to Godzilla with violence in the series, and Godzilla, in kind, stops retaliating. The human solutions to the Godzilla problem turn from “attack it with our feeble planes” to “lure him to some island where he’s away from us but able to live in peace on his own,” and, unsurprisingly, Godzilla ends up being fully in favor of the latter plan. By the end of the Godzilla series, Godzilla and his fellow monsters are living in relative peace on an island far off the coast of Japan, never attacking humanity because they are content. They only lash out when alien invaders attack the planet- races who, like H.G. Wells’ martians, have consumed all their own resources and armed themselves with the vicious war-like kaiju they have subjugated and turned into living Weapons of Mass Destruction. The last few foes from the original Showa Godzilla series are the dark future humanity narrowly avoided, and, rather than become an intergalactic scourge, humanity gets to watch as their titanic reptilian protector fends off their enemies instead. Yes, most of Godzilla’s movies are campy as all hell. They are silly Atomic era popcorn movies with implausible science and special effects that are more similar to muppets than anything convincing - which is to say they made expressive characters instead of realistic looking ones. The camp is part of the charm, as is the sillyness. But there is also something very strong in the themes of these stories - something very consistent and inspiring, if you’re willing to give it a chance. A story can be silly and smart, enjoyable and artistic, even cheesy and serious, at the same time. The Godzilla movies are all those things, and I think they deserve a look. One thing more: Godzilla is one of the most well developed monster characters in the history of long form horror stories. Let me explain why. Most horror stories begin as stand alone tales. Often they get sequels, which becomes a problem when most of the cast tends to die by the end of the first story. Often the only character who gets brought back for the sequel is the monster - the villain of the piece, if you will. Thus the monster becomes the single consistent element of the series. Generally the consistent element of a series is the protagonist and, as a result, the monster generally becomes the de facto protagonist over the course of the series. We’re “just here for Godzilla,” in other words. Now, I have this theory that the Horror Genre is actually based on a fraction of another genre - the hero myth. The first part of a hero myth is very similar to a whole horror story: life is normal, something strange happens, a monster appears and kills a lot of people, and eventually the normal people catch on to what’s going on. Horror stories then take the remaining two thirds of the hero myth - the part where a hero rises and conquers the monster - and either cut it altogether, or shorten it to, oh, say the last ten minutes. The monster runs amok and then, at the last minute, the day is saved. Because the horror is this stunted, half formed version of the hero myth, it follows the pattern of that myth when it gets its unexpected sequel. Heroes tend to be unusual - they are different from normal people, and different in a way that makes them superior. So to are monsters, and if the monster becomes the sole character to go from one entry of the story to the next, well… isn’t it a lot like the hero? This is why people talk about how they’re rooting for the monster - with the absence of a hero, the monster is next most interesting and effective character in the story, and thus the most compelling. Why should we care about Bobby Noname Canonfodder in A Nightmare on Friday the 13th Part 7 when we know he’s a personality deprived cypher who’s just there to up the body count? Why not root for the big spookum who’s killing these stupid clods in bold and visually interesting ways? While other horror stories try not to directly acknowledge the fact that their monsters become their heroes, keeping up the pretense that we should care about the stupid bland heroes, the Godzilla series embraces this change and does it on purpose. If Godzilla was going to become a hero, then dammit, it would be on purpose! It would be built up to. We would see the change. And see it we did. Godzilla is one of the most well known and beloved monsters ever created, right up there with other icons like Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. And he is this way because he is a character - a character who, like Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula, has motives, feelings, personal quirks, and an actual goddamn character arc! He’s more than just some big lizard - he is the true King of the Monsters, a beast with a brain and a heart. Long live the King! And for all the countless critics who hold up the 1933 King Kong as a far superior film, I can only ask: dear god, why? (Well, actually I know why - King Kong tells us brown people are bad and there isn’t a problem we can’t solve with shooting, which is a much easier lesson to stomach than, y’know, maybe we should stop making those big bombs and guns we have such a hard on for. Good thing we changed the theme of Gojira to “America can solve any problem by shooting it a bunch” when we remade it in 1998, right guys? AMURRICA!)

Iconic Characters from Horror Fiction 17: Anguirus

The last time I drew Anguirus, I remember thinking, “Man, I sure am glad I’m just doing this for fun and don’t have to shade this thing! Those spikes would be such a pain in the butt!” Ha ha ha… haaaaaaaaaaaa….. Anyway, I don’t quite have all the Godzilla out of my system yet, so I’m going to talk about some more monsters in his movie series. Luckily, doing so will also help us explore the Atomic Horror Genre more closely, so that’s pretty keen! And I’ll start with my second favorite Toho monster, because I’m self indulgent. Anguirus here was Godzilla’s first opponent and the second kaiju made by Toho studios. His beginnings were pretty humble, to be honest. Anguirus was basically there to up the stakes - while Gojira and other kaiju flicks were content to just have ONE giant monster, Godzilla Raids Again would have TWO! Both were powerful, both were vicious, both were prehistoric, but only one was King of the Monsters. Anguirus and Godzilla are both really good examples of the Prehistoric Monster archetype I talked about in the Rhedosaurus entry. Their designs cherry pick traits from various prehistoric creatures - for Godzilla, you take the basic form of T.rex, the arms of Iguanadon, and the spikes of stegosaurus; for Anguirus, you take the armored carapace of ankylosaurus, the nasal horn and crest of styracosaurus, and the tail of, I dunno, probably kentrosaurus - then add some modern animal anatomy (cat ears and alligator skin for Godzilla, a crocodile’s face and hedgehog-like spines for Anguirus), and finally exaggerate certain features of the face like the eyes and cheeks to make the creature more expressive, and VOILA! you have a bona fide movie monster! They look like something a 1950’s paleontologist would classify as a dinosaur, yet also look incredibly distinct as monsters too. They’re exaggerations of those outdated ideas with a lot of personal flair. My point is that these are really good monster designs. Give Toho your money now. So Anguirus started off with very little in the way of personality. He looked cool, but he was just there to fight Godzilla, get his throat ripped out, and die in flames. That’s not really much character, is it? We-he-he-he-ellllll…. In 1968, Toho Studios had made a lot of kaiju flicks. A LOT. And most of them resided in the same universe, which was pretty unique for that time period. Most other monster movies were stand alone or, at best, had one or two sequels. Meanwhile, Godzilla is basically doing the 1960’s equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic universe, introducing some monsters in stand alone films and others in sequels to monster movies whose names held more clout. Toho wanted to end things on a high note, so they decided to bring as many of their monsters as they could together into one movie: Destroy All Monsters. Godzilla, of course, was a must have - if we continue the comparison with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Destroy All Monsters is The Avengers, and Godzilla is Iron Man. It just wouldn’t work without him. But Toho was going all out, and they decided to mix in some lesser known but fan favorite characters amongst the big names, and one of those characters was Anguirus, who even got to have a new suit! (the original Anguirus costume was lost after Anguirus’s debut movie in a situation too complicated and stupid for me to describe at the moment) It was Destroy All Monsters that let Anguirus shine. His new, slightly friendlier suit was part of it - Anguirus now looked less vicious and more like an adorably grumpy curmudgeon. Since his rubber suit was new, he was written into more scenes - it’s a lot easier to make a monster movie when your monster suit isn’t falling apart, after all. The new Anguirus wasn’t a rival to Godzilla anymore, but a trusted ally, fighting at Godzilla’s side through thick and thin. His biggest moment, though, is during the final fight. Anguirus is one of the first monsters to charge into the fray, and he immediately gets his ass kicked - hard. But the spikey croco-saurus doesn’t give up! He keeps fighting even when he’s being pummeled and stomped on, and soon enough Godzilla and the other monsters come to his aide. Anguirus toughs out the battle and continues fighting all the way to the end, despite taking far more abuse than any of the other monsters. In that moment Anguirus became defined as a character. He wasn’t the strongest monster, but he could take more damage and, more importantly, would never, ever give up the good fight. Few kaiju are as courageous or loyal as Anguirus. Anguirus would star in a few other movies as Godzilla’s go-to sidekick, fighting alongside Godzilla against opponents with metal claws, lazer beams, buzzsaws built into their chest, and countless other technological horrors at their disposal. Anguirus fought them with tooth and claw, and he never, ever backed down. This is one of the reasons Godzilla is such a good monster series - there isn’t just one monster who’s a character in it, but a whole pantheon! And as lovable as Anguirus is, even I have to admit there are some kaiju in Godzilla’s gallery of friends and foes that are even more interesting…

If Toho studios perfected the Prehistoric Monster story formula in Gojira (and I do believe they did), then they began stretching and flexing it with Rodan. Toho made a LOT of kaiju flicks, and after the first couple it was clear that the creators wanted to get more creative with their plots. Rodan begins standard enough. A small mining community is doing their business (mining) when some of the miners begin to disappear. Eventually they discover that giant grubs the size of rhinoceros have been awoken inside the mine by a nearby nuclear test! The miners fight off the insects, and it all seems pretty standard. Giant bugs were one of the most common variations on the kaiju story, after all, and fighting them in a tight, underground, claustrophobic area was likewise a pretty tried and true formula, occurring in movies like Them! and The Black Scorpion. Things change when one miner gets trapped inside the mountain by a landslide. He finds a massive cavern where all the bugs are gathered… and a large, strange boulder in the center of it. The boulder begins to stir and crack - it’s an egg! And then, right at the start of the second act, everything goes from bad to catastrophically worse as the egg hatches, revealing a massive flying reptile! It devours the insects before flying off to wreak havoc. The monster’s reign of terror proves unstoppable. Worse, it is soon discovered that there isn’t just one flying reptile, but two - a mating pair! The Rodans work together to hunt stray humans and destroy a good section of Japan (not in as much grisly depth as the attacks in Gojira, mind you). Eventually the humans discover that these monstrous reptiles are sleeping in a dormant volcano, which the humans reactivate. The volcano erupts, but one Rodan escapes! The other, however, swallows too much smoke and begins to spiral down into the lava below. The escaping Rodan turns around and joins its mate, choosing to die with it instead of live alone. It’s a haunting ending, and another reminder that the monsters in these movies aren’t evil, but victims - as Ishiro Honda said, they are “born too big, too tall, too strong - that is their tragedy.” Rodan is a really solid Atomic Horror story with some great twists and a lot of scary moments for its time. I have a lot of nostalgia for it, too. I remember being a little kid who was just beginning to get into monster movies in YE OLDE DAYS where TNT had its wonderful monster movie marathons. It’s amazing how distinct the memory of those nights is - I remember sitting on the old maroon carpet of my parent’s place as the announcer said in that wonderful, theatrical voice, “It’s TNT’s MONSTERVISION!” and on came Rodan in bright colors and grainy footage. I remember how the bug scenes scarred the crap out of me (not literally, thank god), and how I audibly gasped when the first Rodan hatched out of its egg and devoured them like worms. Good times, good times. Rodan would eventually crossover with Godzilla and another big hitter of Toho’s creation. At least one of the flying reptiles survived its lava bath and would form a brief rivalry with Godzilla before becoming one of his most valuable allies, even if their friendship was always a somewhat competitive one. I’m really surprised none of the American Atomic Horror films tried this out - it worked for the Universal Monster films before them, and with Japan proving that the formula still worked, you’d think someone would try to get an American monster mash going. Life’s full of mysteries I suppose.

Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction 19: Mothra

Right now some of you are thinking, “Hold on! Including Godzilla in this series was fine. Having a second monster from his series was, y’know, ok. A third was manageable, especially since he had his own movie. BUT FOUR? This is supposed to be a celebration of horror stories, not Godzilla! You’ve gone too far this time!” Haha, no fuck you. Ok, ok, in all seriousness, I’m actually building to a point with these entries. Yes, as a Godzilla nut, making this many entries of the first entries in the Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction series Godzilla characters is somewhat self indulgent. However, they’re also allowing me to have some important talking points with the Atomic Horror Genre as a whole so, y’know, settle down. Mothra is one of the strangest kaiju flicks you’ll ever see, especially for its time. Toho broke the mold a bit with it, but they did so in a way that built off of the kaiju flicks they made before. As I talked about with Rodan and Gojira, Toho never intended for its monsters to be unsympathetic. They are antagonists, yes, but we are meant to pity them more than hate them. The true villain of these movies is war, specifically humanity’s unnatural desire to engage in it regardless of the cost. Needless violence and destruction is the real enemy, and the kaiju are merely victims of it who turn their pain against humanity. Well, Mothra just gives up the pretense that the monster is the villain. The titular monster is unambiguously benevolent, and mankind’s greed and entitlement issues are the true cause of all the terror in the movie. Instead of beginning with an atomic bomb, the monster just… exists. Alone on a secluded island is Mothra, a massive insect of marvelous power. She is worshiped by the humans who live on the island who, while technologically inferior to the explorers who find the island, are nonetheless happy under the protection of their giant bug goddess. Mothra is also served by two tiny six inch tall women who are explicitly called fairies in all translations of the story. These women are Mothra’s priestesses, giving the monster a voice to communicate with humanity. They, like Mothra, merely want to protect the island, and warn the explorers not to harm the people there. Well, some of the explorers believe these priestesses would make them lots of money, and decide to kidnap the two fairies and force them to sing in shows. It’s kind of like King Kong in reverse, with supernaturally tiny people being exploited instead of a supernaturally large ape. And, to continue the reverse King Kong vibe, the giant monster then chases after the women and breaks into the world of man to save them. Mothra doesn’t purposely destroy buildings in a vicious rage like Godzilla or Rodan. She has one clear goal: save the little women. Mothra follows that goal to the letter, swimming through seas and crawling around and through buildings to find her priestesses. The military tries to stop her, but their weapons prove mostly useless. Mothra seems to be dead at one point, only to wrap herself in a cocoon of silk. The military then tries to destroy the cocoon, but Mothra survives, emerging in a beautiful flying form and coming to the rescue. She gets her priestesses, causing a lot of collateral damage in the process, and returns home. So basically, Mothra is Taken, except Liam Neeson is a giant moth. You might be looking at that plot and thinking, “Uh… that’s not a horror movie. That’s… like, fantasy or something.” Well, what horrifies us has changed a lot more than you may realize. It’s not constant. The first horror novel, The Castle of Otranto, begins with a scene that feels like it’s our of Monty Python’s Flying Circus: a giant helmet falls out of the sky and crushes a dude. Seriously, that is literally the first scene - hell, the first PARAGRAPH of the first horror novel ever written. And, in it’s day, it was terrifying. On the surface, Mothra looks exactly like a typical horror movie of the 60’s: a giant bug destroys buildings and crushes people. That was scary as hell at the time. Mothra just gives this a big twist by making the insect - which, traditionally, is one of the monster types that people are least inclined to sympathize with - the protagonist and hero of the story. Oh, Mothra does horrible things, yes, but the real horror is the fact that we as the audience know that the humans, our surrogates, deserve to have this happen to them. Mothra is raining down righteous fury on humanity, and every crushed car or flattened building is a blow we deserve to take. We stole Mothra’s friends. We stole her voice. We stole two harmless little sentient beings that Mothra cared about - tiny little women who warned us not to trifle with the big bug because they were concerned for our safety. We, humanity, saw these helpful little creatures and decided to exploit them for our own amusement. And when the giant insect tried to get them back, we tried to kill it. Oh yes, we had it coming. Mothra builds on the themes of Gojira and Rodan by showing what these kaiju - these personified forces of nature - could be if we treated them better. Mothra is a protector, a benevolent and powerful force with great strength, valor, and determination. This is the ally humanity could have if it would only cast aside its vicious lust for violence and petty greed! This is what the natural world could be for us - a powerful creature that nurtures and guards us. And, if we build on my theory that horror is only one half, or really one third, of the traditional hero legend, Mothra helps the Godzilla film series move towards completing that story - its movement towards reclaiming the missing parts of its inherent story structure. Gojira and Rodan and the other Toho monster flicks before show that something is rotten in the state of Tokyo, and that humanity has created a huge, supernatural obstacle - a pantheon of monsters - to face. In Mothra, we discover that there is an opposing force - a supernatural hero - that can face them. And the story will only build from here. Another thing I’ve noticed is that people tend to think Mothra is a different sort of monster than Godzilla or Rodan, who seem to be strictly atomic mutants. People think Mothra is purely Fantasy fare - a magical being - while Godzilla and Rodan are creations of science alone, i.e. SciFi. This makes perfect sense from a Western standpoint - we like to keep our magic and spirituality separate and far away from our science and logic. Buuuuuuuuuut it’s ignoring an aspect of Japanese culture, one that I’m going to have to explain in vague terms because I’m not an expert on Japanese religion and am worried I might botch up badly if I go into specifics. This is something I learned from other people about Godzilla movies - from essayists and my older sister, who has studied Japan more closely than I have. Ok, so, in Shinto religion, it is believed that all things in the world have souls or spirits - not just humans, not just animals, not just plants, but literally all things, including rivers and mountains and inanimate objects. And, when a thing is wronged in some grievous manner, its spirit can be corrupted and become monstrous. This is why there are so many Japanese folktales about monsters that were inanimate objects, which isn’t a particularly common trend in the west (where “souls” are, for the most part, strictly a human thing). Likewise, when a soul is particularly strong, its body can become something supernaturally marvelous. Godzilla, Rodan, and all the other kaiju in the Godzilla series are more than just large animals - they’re nature spirits, personifications of the natural world itself that inhabit the bodies of mighty beasts. Their forms are biologically mutated, yes, but also spiritually mutated. They are scientific and spiritual at ones - both fantasy and sci-fi, and horror all around. Mothra, having escaped the scarring presence of mankind’s cruelty and scientific progress, only shows the effects of a spiritual mutation - a positive one, at that, as she has become something akin to a demigod. She is what Godzilla and Rodan should have been, had they been treated better by humanity, and what Godzilla and Rodan could become if they were shown some kindness. Mothra’s role in the overarching story of the Godzilla films is absolutely crucial. She’s the moral compass of the kaiju, the kindest of the lot, and the one who helps them become a team. With her two priestesses she works as a diplomat between man and monster, helping both sides come to an agreement. I really like the difference in appearance between Mothra’s two forms. Her larval stage is pretty ugly, and has often been compared to a big turd. A lot of people try to change it when they adapt Godzilla, but they really shouldn’t. Mothra is all about love and empathy, and a big part of that message includes extending kindness to things we aren’t inclined to be kind towards. Mothra wants you to love the ugly and the beautiful equally, so it’s important that one of her forms is kinda gross. Mothra’s larval form is also specifically based on a silk worm, which, while being ugly, is a caterpillar that is renowned for being helpful to humans by producing silk. Being helpful and kind is, again, a huge part of Mothra, so that resemblance is important. Her imago form, with its bumblebee body and butterfly wings, really only vaguely resembles a moth. Instead it’s an amalgam of many different pollinating insects - creatures that help the environment in a multitude of ways just by existing, as their flight helps countless trees and plants survive. Mothra is beautiful, yes, but that beauty also has a great utility to it. Mothra is made of creatures that encourage and help life survive. You can’t get more benevolent than that. A lot of Godzilla fans detest Mothra because she’s “weak” or “girly” or “too pretty,” while others idolize her because “she can beat Godzilla despite being girly and pretty.” I think they’re both wrong. Mothra being having a peaceful nature and pretty appearance does not make her weak, and likewise, her greatest strength is not her physical might. She can hold her own in a fight, yes, but that’s not what’s awesome about Mothra. In a world filled with violence and roaring and death, Mothra charges up to fire spouting lizards and the destructive machinery of mankind without a trace of fear, telling these stupid, cruel creatures that there is a better way. Mothra sees a world of war and preaches peace. Mothra sees hordes of deadly enemies and gives them love and understanding. Screw your multicolored horses - Mothra is the true face of love and harmony. My final point for this entry: I began work on this series when I started hearing people refer to “The Kaiju Genre.” As a person who has been in the kaiju fan community for more than a decade, one who has researched and discussed kaiju movies in depth, and one who has made a fairly successful series of kaiju stories himself, I suddenly found myself wondering if there actually was a Kaiju Genre. I was an English Major in college, so the word “genre” has special weight to me. A genre can’t be defined just by having one element - a genre is a recipe, not an ingredient. Are there enough common elements in Kaiju stories to make it a genre a part from others? It got me thinking about the roots of Kaiju movies - how they share elements in common with the Alien Invasion movies of the Cold War, and the smaller scale monster movies like The Creature from the Black Lagoon. That, in turn, got me thinking about how Cold War horror stories differed from ones in the Victorian era, and how movies from the 70’s and 80’s differed from them, and so on and so on. I started developing a theory of not just one subgenre of horror, but several - a taxonomy of horror. Mothra is the movie that lets me say yes, there is a Kaiju Genre. It is part of Atomic Horror, yet has elements that set it apart from other Atomic Horror stories. Like Atomic Horror, the source of horror in Kaiju movies is always progress - specifically the impatient, thoughtless kind of progress, the impulsive need to advance without thinking of consequences. Horror comes in kaiju movies when people spend so much time thinking of whether they could do something that they never consider whether they should. That theme is enough to tie it to Atomic Horror. The Kaiju Genre differs, though, in the fact that it also strongly shows the opposite end - that thoughtful, considerate progress can relieve terror, and that kindness and empathy can make progress a blessing. The supernatural elements in a kaiju story can be science fiction and fantastical at the same time, while most other Atomic Horror stories are strictly sci-fi. Finally, kaiju stories can complete the three acts of a hero myth, letting their horrors turn into equally supernatural heroes, or fall by a hero’s hand. The Kaiju Genre has access to archetypes other Atomic Horror stories can’t, or at least won’t, touch, and can use story arcs other Atomic Horror stories refuse to attempt. It’s not just about having a giant monster in your story - it’s a genre. So thank you, Mothra, for taking us to a strange place, and allowing the tale of Godzilla and his monstrous kin to reach an even greater potential. There is only one more essential piece of the puzzle left to complete the story’s potential: a great villain…

Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction 20: King Ghidorah

Alright, one last Godzilla character (for now)! After this Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction will resume picking characters from different horror stories (for now). We end (for now) our journey in the Godzilla universe on a high note with perhaps the most dastardly, fiendish monster in Godzilla’s pantheon of giant monsters: King Ghidorah, the planet destroying King of Terror! Introduced in Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster, King Ghidorah is notable for a variety of reasons. Let’s begin with the reasons connected to his first film. First, while Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster is technically a sequel to Gojira, it is one of the very few that does not feature Godzilla’s name in the title. No, only King Ghidorah gets billed this time around, showing the dragon’s importance: he upstaged the King of the Monsters! Second, Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster is a big crossover event. Before this, Godzilla had two other crossovers: one with King Kong, and one with Mothra, both of whom had fairly big names. Toho decided to up the ante and have not one, not two, BUT THREE big name monsters crossover for this film: Godzilla, Mothra, AND Rodan would all join together for a big brawl. This was a big deal. One on one monster mash crossovers had happened in movies before this, often to great success. But the only time you had THREE big name monsters appear together before this happened with THE big name monsters, the ones so famous they became Halloween staples: the Universal Monsters - Frakenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf Man. Toho was making a ballsy choice, in my opinion. Having this many monster suits in one movie required a big special effects budget, and Toho was depending on the movie to do impossibly well to justify it. For The Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein, that wasn’t such a huge deal - they were in movies made by a Hollywood studio and had been household names for decades. Godzilla might have had a similar sort of fame, but Rodan and Mothra were both relatively recent - there was no assurance that these two would make enough money on their reputation alone. AND THEN Toho continued to up the ante by bringing in a fourth totally unknown monster, AND by giving it top billing, cutting the other more well known creations out of the title entirely? Madness! It’d be like doing a crossover between Spider-Man, Blade, and Ghost Rider, and then calling it “Morbius the Living Vampire!” and expecting it to sell. Yet… sell it did. King Ghidorah himself is an imposing villain. Yesterday I talked about how Mothra is what Godzilla and Rodan could be if they hadn’t been wounded. I think Ghidorah is the opposite - he’s what Godzilla and Rodan would be if they had been wounded completely. The text doesn’t state this as clearly as it does with Mothra. It’s obvious that Mothra is the good example Godzilla and Rodan should follow, mainly because we see her origin. We don’t see what created King Ghidorah, but we can infer some things about him. Godzilla and Rodan are both angry beings, and their violence is born out of that anger. All of the monsters in the Godzilla series work like this - the more they are hurt, the more they are angry, and the more they are angry, the more violent they become. Ghidorah takes his anger and violence to extremes that even Godzilla and Rodan find distasteful. Godzilla and Rodan are angry, but Ghidorah is downright hateful. His fury has become a sadistic malevolence, a desire to destroy everything. In his first movie it is said that he has already destroyed one planet in our solar system (Mars or Venus, depending on which translation you’re watching), killing every living thing on it and making it utterly inhospitable. In later films Ghidorah forms alliances with vengeful aliens whose worlds are dying, wiping out civilizations for them out of a sadistic desire for death. The Godzilla movies always state that if Godzilla will destroy the world if his anger isn’t stopped. Ghidorah has destroyed worlds. They state and show that Godzilla, Rodan, and other monsters only act out when they are hurt first. Ghidorah acts out in the extreme. They show that a monster that is loved and respected becomes a benevolent protector. Ghidorah is a malevolent, merciless sadist and murderer. It’s never stated in the text itself, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that Ghidorah, like Godzilla, was a physical nature spirit that lived on some alien world and endured some horrible tragedy at the hands of the civilization of mortal creatures that lived there. His soul was corrupted by his agony and he grew monstrous, but they, unlike the humans in the Godzilla series, never learned how to coexist. So King Ghidorah destroyed them all, and in the process became more monstrous and corrupt. He flew through space to new worlds, and, still consumed by his rage, destroyed them, becoming more corrupt still. By the end Ghidorah became the very evil that created him: a weapon, a living force of thoughtless unnecessary death and destruction. King Ghidorah is the horror that made Godzilla and the horror Godzilla could become - the wicked extreme in opposition to the benevolent possibility presented by Mothra. While I think King Ghidorah is strongest as a solo villain, like he is in his debut film, I can understand why it makes sense for him to work with alien races in the later Godzilla movies. The Invading Aliens in the Godzilla films are very similar to the Martians in The War of the Worlds: they are the dark possibly future of the human race. Each of these races - the Xiliens, the Kiilaks, the roaches from Space Hunter Nebula M, the Black Hole Simians, etc. - come from dying or dead worlds, and in each case their problems were caused by the same evil tendencies that humanity has. They polluted the environment, they over-consumed resources, and they engaged in countless violent wars. Not once did these aliens stop to think about their actions, and not once did they consider the consequences. Inevitably it got too late to fix it, and so the aliens did the only thing they could think to do: find another, better world, kills its residents, and take their resources. This kind of evil corrupts kaiju, so it figures that a corrupt kaiju would be drawn to it. King Ghidorah, having long since lost his revulsion at cruelty and instead choosing to embody it, would leap at any opportunity to inflict his violent passions on an unsuspecting world. He has a grudge against Earth, as it is the only world he’s been too where the kaiju are benevolent enough to repel him. Why not join up with reinforcements and continue his war? It’s a dark counterpart to the character arc Godzilla has: while mankind gains Godzilla’s protection by healing his wounds, the aliens gain Ghidorah’s mercenary assistance through their shared commitment to their self destructive vices. A civilization can devote itself to either harmony or war. If they choose harmony, they survive in beautiful peace. If they choose war, then their ultimate fate is one of a parasite that feeds off death, living on barren, hideous rocks and struggling against their very nature for every meal. I like that Ghidorah is so glossy and pretty compared to Godzilla, Rodan, and even Mothra. The path of war and wickedness seems appealing, with shiny tanks and jets and brilliant, beautiful explosions. You can be tricked into thinking it is noble and, in some way, beautiful. When you see it in action, however, you realize it is worse than the more homely, honest path of the righteous. Ghidorah causes mass destruction with gaudy, revolting glee, his war cry being an insane, cackling laugh as his necks and tail flail with maniac glee and rain death haphazardly in every direction. There is nothing beautiful or noble in the way Ghidorah acts, no matter how pretty he may look. So too is the way of War. Nature and harmony, on the other hand, are more subdued. Sometimes the truth is homely or dull and lusterless, like Godzilla and Rodan. Sometimes it even looks a little unpleasant, like the repulsive look of Mothra’s larval form. Yet when you stick to the righteous path and follow through, it does reveal a beauty to you - like the colorful yet tasteful look of Mothra’s imago form. It may not shine as brightly as Ghidorah’s scales, but good is beautiful all the same when you give it time. Some people try to write or interpret King Ghidorah like he’s a being out of Cosmic Horror - they make him out to be some vast, unknowable eldritch monster like Cthulhu. I can understand this to some extent: it’s born out of that Western disconnect between science fiction and fantasy. Ghidorah looks like a dragon, but we don’t think that should gel as well with giant bugs and dinosaurs as it does, so we try to relate it to a more science-fictiony sort of mythological horror - and Cosmic Horror fits that bill. But there really isn’t a mystery in King Ghidorah. He’s an apocalyptic dragon, the kind you get in countless mythologies - the Bible’s beast of the Apocalypse, Typhon from Greco Roman myth, and Orochi, the eight headed serpent of Japanese lore who actually inspired King Ghidorah. His motive is obvious: he wants to kill everything, because that’s what an apocalypse dragon does. His biology is like any other monster, and that’s because he is the same sort of being as Godzilla, Rodan, and Mothra: a nature spirit in physical, bestial form, albeit one corrupted far beyond their scope. You can merge sci-fi and fantasy in Kaiju stories, and, in the case of the Godzilla series, that’s exactly what they did from day one. We won’t be seeing more of the creatures from Godzilla’s films for a while, but we haven’t left Atomic Horror yet. Stay tuned for the next entry as we continue our Halloween blitz on Iconic Characters of Horror Fiction.