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...

Issue #1                                                                      Issue #2

Issue #3                                                                      Issue #4

Issue #5                                                                      Issue #6

Issue #7                                                                      Issue #8

Issue #9                                                                    Issue #10  

Here are a few links to sites with info and images from and about Japanese Giants:

• VANTAGE POINT INTERVIEWS: Documenting Giants from Japan! Stephen Mark Rainey on Creating the Celebrated Fanzine Japanese Giants

• VANTAGE POINT INTERVIEWS: Memoirs of a Godzilla Fandom Pioneer! Bradford Boyle on Publishing the Seminal Fanzine Japanese Giants

• TOHO KINGDOM Interview with Ed Godziszewski

• WIKIPEDIA: Japanese Giants

Supercycle Eleganza!

When I was a kid, I wanted a motorcycle something fierce. Or, at the very least, a cool mini bike. A slew of my friends had mini bikes, and my really cool friends had small off-road motorcycles, like the Honda SL-70 Motosport or Yamaha 60 Mini Enduro or Suzuki TS-90 Honcho. My folks weren't inclined to let me own anything so liable to send me to the ER, but — perhaps oddly — they never chafed about me riding other people's motor bikes. And since I had any number of generous friends, I rode them quite a lot. There were trails galore in the area, and when nobody was around to let me ride their motorcycles, I'd just ride my bicycle like a maniac through the woods.

Recently, I found online a copy of the very first motorcycle magazine I ever purchased (and I ended up a passel of them). It was the October 1971 issue of Supercycle, and when I was 12 years old, I read that thing over and over, never mind that I didn't understand half the technical and mechanical stuff the magazine focused on. I just loved the pictures and the reviews of off-road bikes, motocross races, and... the fashion?!

Well, I don't know that I really did, but when I picked up the magazine the other day, it fell open to that Eleganza ad you see up yonder. I reckon it was one thing to never end up with a motorcycle of my own, but how I survived my teen years in the 1970s without Eleganza, I'll never know. Perhaps I'll leave that to you to figure out.

Darkness Is Just Across the Street

I am very pleased to announce that my short story, "Night Crier," will be appearing in the premiere issue of 34 Orchard, a new online literary magazine edited by Kristi Petersen Schoonover.

From 34 Orchard's website:

"If it’s not a ghost in your own home, it might be the ghost that lives in that house they told you about at the end of the block—the one that’s always for sale, or the one that is abandoned, staring at you with darkened windows like doleful, empty eyes: 'Stay away from the house at 34 Orchard Street,' the older kids told you."

My story is part very painful autobiography, part unsettling fantasy. Middle-aged Bill Caswell has lived his life terrified by eerie cries that ring from the woods every Halloween night. His mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, begins to hear the sounds as well, which proves that Bill is not suffering from a mere product of his imagination. He learns he must venture back in his mind to the days of his youth and conquer an age-old darkness before it comes forth to conquer him.

Visit 34 Orchard's website here, and please do reserve a copy of the first issue for yourself!