The Blog Where Horror Dwells: Ed Godziszewski

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Godzilla: The First 70 Years

I've written at length, on this blog and elsewhere, about my lifetime passion for Godzilla and daikaiju in general, particularly regarding my involvement in the very early days of giant monster–themed fanzine publishing (most recently with "Early Daikaiju Fandom Strikes," June 19, 2025). It was by way of creating Japanese Giants when I was a teenager, back in 1974, that I met lots of other daikaiju fans, most notably Bill Gudmundson and Ed Godziszewski, both of Chicago. We subsequently became good friends, and they took up the torch to keep Japanese Giants alive after I discovered I did not have the financial resources to keep it going on my own. When I moved to Chicago in 1983, we three Japanese Giants Guys became officially known as "THE Japanese Giants Guys," and Ed, bless him, financed and oversaw the magazine for many years, up through the early 2000s. It was during his proprietorship that he became well-acquainted with numerous executives and staff members at Toho Studios, and he not only traveled frequently to Japan for business, he trampled his way onto the studio set on numerous occasions, including during the filming of Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992) and others. (Okay, he didn't really "trample" anything, but he got there!)

Ed's passion for tokusatsu led him to become a bona fide giant monster film historian, and his scholarly approach became most evident in the last few issues of Japanese Giants. He and frequent collaborator Steve Ryfle became regular providers of commentaries on the DVD releases of numerous daikaiju films, and they also wrote the informative and downright fun documentary about the making of Godzilla, Bringing Godzilla Down to Size, which originally appeared in 2008 as a bonus feature on the Classic Media DVD release of Rodan/War of the Gargantuas. In 2017, they penned a comprehensive biography of frequent tokusatsu film director Ishiro Honda, titled Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa.

Godzilla: The First 70 Years is Ed and Steve's ultimate tribute to and study of the Godzilla films, from the 1954 original to 2023's Godzilla Minus One. This volume is truly Godzilla-sized—over 400 pages, weighing in at 6-plus pounds, featuring hundreds of rarer-than-rare photographs (many taken on the sets by consummate Godzilla fan, writer, and occasional actor Norman England), and exhaustively researched text. Director John Carpenter, a longtime Godzilla aficionado, and actress Megumi Odaka, who played psychic Miki Saegusa in six of the Heisei-era Godzilla films (1989–1995), provide forewords recounting their long experiences with Godzilla. Producer Shogo Tomiyama closes out the book with an insightful Afterword.

I have pored over the pages of this big volume, though I've barely scratched the surface of the text. It's going to take some serious time to read in detail, but I'm looking forward to it more than I've looked forward to reading anything for quite a long while. Knowing Ed and Steve and their writing styles—both informative and engaging—I can't imagine that I'll be anything other than thrilled.

The retail price is $75, but for the moment, it can be purchased on Amazon.com for $60. Right now, it's ranking as the #1 seller in numerous categories. For any Godzilla fan, THIS is the book for you. Get it. Get it now!

Godzilla: The First 70 Years
at Amazon.com

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Japanese Giants Gallery

Many, if not most, of the folks who visit my blog might remember that I first dove into the publishing arena with Japanese Giants, a fanzine I created when I was in ninth grade — Spring 1974, to be precise. It was an 18-page, offset-printed love letter to giant Japanese monsters, featuring part one of a Destroy All Monsters filmbook, reviews of the TV shows Ultraman and Johnny Sokko & His Flying Robot, a couple of editorials, and a bunch of art that several of my friends and I drew for the issue. Inspired by my good friend Greg Shoemaker's renowned Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, I hoped that Japanese Giants might go on to become prominent in the fanzine landscape of the mid-1970s. And it actually did, though not quite in the way I had foreseen.

I sold a good number of the 200 printed copies of issue #1, but it wasn't enough to cover the full cost of producing it, and my allowance in those days couldn't quite make up the remainder. I sadly resolved to pack it in, but more or less out of the blue, a young gentleman named Brad Boyle from Salt Lake City, Utah, stepped in and offered to take the Japanese Giants torch and run with it. He produced issue #s 2, 3, and 4 before he, too, let go of the reins. By this time, I had become friends with diehard daikaiju fans Ed Godziszewski and Bill Gudmundson, who thought that, as a trio, we should keep JG going. Ed was a few years older than Bill and me, and he had a real job with substantial disposable income. So, the three of us became the official Japanese Giants Guys, and the magazine continued — the last few issues under Ed's sole editorship — until issue #10.

Here are the covers of the full set of issues. Note that issue #8 — possibly the rarest of them — sold out quickly, and I have no idea whatever happened to my copy. What you are looking at gentlemen, is the cover of issue #8, as science has been able to reconstruct it for you...