The Blog Where Horror Dwells: fanzine

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...