Home Wrecker

Dammit. And I had just cleaned house, too. This is the new Hiya Toys 1991 King Ghidorah figure engaging in his favorite pastime. I guess he knows how to have fun.

GMK—"You Big Bully!"

I created a little diorama this morning, inspired by Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001), and added a few effects using Photoshop. Here's both the color and black & white versions. I've found myself partial to the B&W versions of most of these, as they convey a more atmospheric scene.

It always struck me as kind of shameful that Baragon is left out of the title, since he's my favorite of the monsters in the film. Here, Godzilla is the NECA 6-inch figure, and Baragon is the 4-inch figure from the smaller-scale Mezco Destroy All Monsters set.

Happy Hedorah Day

1971 Hedorah vs. 2004 Hedorah

It's the Smog Monster's birthday, so here's a double-dose for you in the photo above. Godzilla vs. Hedorah (a.k.a. Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster) came out in Japan on this day in 1971 and was released in the United States in February 1972 (and I saw it at the drive-in theater on its opening night). The photo above is a Photoshop/diorama I put together a while back using a couple of the figures I've collected. I've been on a real daikaiju kick recently, mainly because I'm kind of on a daikaiju kick all the time. I guess I've had the fever a little more than usual due to the release of friends Ed & Steve's Godzilla: The First 70 Years, which I wrote about here just the other day.

I have not been a collector of much of anything for a few decades, but when I did collect things, it was daikaiju- and anime-related goodies, mostly back in the 1980s, during my days of living in Chicago. But two or three years back, for reasons unknown, I got monster figure fever, and so, little by little, I found myself collecting daikaiju again—mostly Toho monsters. Then I decided to create some dioramas, enhanced with Photoshop. Most of the ones I've done are quick, down-and-dirty efforts so that I don't waste valuable writing time playing around. However, I can't say that I haven't enjoyed the hell out of composing some of these beasties.

Therefore, I'm gonna post a bunch of them here, just for shits and giggles. If you like giant critters, then maybe you'll find these enjoyable.

My earliest diorama(s)—Godzilla and Anguirus (or Angilas, as I much prefer), which were Kayodo resin kits I built in 1985; in 1992, I built myself a miniature city out of cardboard, and these are a couple of the photos I took back then.

MechaGodzilla, Anguirus, King Seesar, Godzilla (sort of reproducing a publicity shot from Godzilla vs. MechGodzilla, 1974)

An S.H. MonsterArts figure of Gigan (Godzilla vs. Gigan, 1972)

Godzilla and Angilas (Godzilla Raids Again, 1955)

Baragon, from Frankenstein Conquers the World, 1965), roaming about in my neighborhood!

MechaGodzilla 2, Titanosaurus, and Godzilla (Terror of MechaGodzilla, 1975)

Gorosaurus (from King Kong Escapes, 1968)

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Godzilla vs. Hedorah, 1971)

Godzilla and MechaGodzilla II slugging it out at Ferrum College! (Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, 1993)

Shin Gomess (Shin Ultraman, 2022)

Godzilla meets Megalon for a serious talk (Godzilla vs. Megalon, 1973)

A hell of a thing to wake up to! (Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla, 2002)

A diorama I created today, using 1:300-scale miniatures and some Photoshopping (Godzilla 2000, 1999)

And another one using the same miniatures as above (Godzilla 2000, 1999)

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

---

EARLY KAIJU FANDOM Strikes!

From the early 1960s, when I became acquainted with Godzilla and so many other giant Japanese monsters, I found myself not just enamored of the beasties but addicted to them and the movies they rode in on. I've written at length on this blog about my numerous memorable experiences with daikaiju, and it's probably common knowledge among my friends and acquaintances that, in 1974, inspired by the late Greg Shoemaker's legendary The Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, I launched a fanzine of my own: Japanese Giants, an 18-page offset-printed labor of love that featured a filmbook of the Toho blockbuster, Destroy All Monsters, articles on Ultraman and Johnny Sokko & His Flying Robot, a couple of editorials, and a bunch of photos and artwork. My intention was to continue the magazine for as long as I was able, and...as things turned out...that first issue was as long as I was able.

In stepped the right honorable Bradford Grant Boyle (known then as just Brad Boyle), who wanted to produce a daikaiju-themed fanzine of his own. Since I was no longer using it, he asked if he might carry the Japanese Giants brand forward, and I excitedly agreed. He published three issues before he, too, gave it up to go stomp on bigger cities. By then, I was in college and had made the acquaintance of Ed Godziszewski and Bill Gudmundson, both of Chicago, both of the daikaiju-loving persuasion. With the Japanese Giants title once again floating free, the three of us grabbed it and began producing it again as a collaborative effort.

After college, I moved to Chicago myself, where Ed, Bill, and I became officially known as "The Japanese Giants Guys." We collaborated on several more issues, though eventually, Ed became its sole proprietor (and got by with a little help from his friends). In 2001, Ed produced Japanese Giants #10, the final issue. (Ed has gone on to write several scholarly books about Godzilla, kith & kin, as well as provided commentaries on numerous Japanese film DVDs/BluRays.)

During the 1970s and early 1980s, fanzines devoted to giant Japanese monsters proliferated, running the gamut from the most primitive rags to professionally produced periodicals. In the years following, the world has seen no shortage of daikaiju-themed publications, but the products from those early, pioneering days pretty much went the way of the dinosaurs. Some of us who had collected them held on to as many of the old, decaying paper zines as we could (I've still got bins full of them) but a whole new generation of fans, writers, and artists had taken over the scene, and few remembered the glory days of typewritten (and sometimes even handwritten) text, oftentimes crude pen & ink illustrations, poorly reproduced photos, and the magic of pre-video age filmbooks, which told the stories of the movies, including dialogue, usually transcribed from tape-recorded soundtracks.

Again, enter Brad Boyle (yes, now known as Bradford Grant Boyle). A while back, Brad undertook the Herculean task of collecting every early Japanese monster movie fanzine that ever existed and publishing each in its entirety in a set of volumes titled Early Kaiju Fandom. To date, he has produced four volumes, the fourth having just been released (and it features one of my pen & ink monster renderings from forty-some years ago on the cover: Gaila, the green gargantua from War of the Gargantuas; see the last image in the row at the top of the page). In these volumes, you'll find complete reproductions of dozens of those old fanzines, so true to the originals that their visual flaws appear (again) in all their lack of glory. Of course, you'll find Japanese Giants, but also The Japanese Giants Fanletter, an almost, sort-of monthly publication that Brad produced. which offered the best and most comprehensive daikaiju-related material of its day; Monsters of Japan; Japanese Movie Sci-Fi; Giants From Japan; Godzillamania; Oriental Cinema; Giant Japanese Monsters; Giantdom; Japan's Giant Monsters (by now you may have noticed a theme); and many more.

I am in awe of the work that Brad has done with these volumes, and I've been happy to contribute to them with both articles and art. This may be a niche market, but hey, it's devoted to the BIGGEST niche monster that ever walked. You may just want to check these critters out.

---

Early Kaiju Fandom by
Bradford Grant Boyle at Amazon.com

---

EARLY KAIJU FANDOM, VOLUME THREE Is in the House

Last year, writer/editor/kaiju fan Bradford Grant Boyle put together an omnibus of the fanzines he had published in the 1970s, titled Early Kaiju Fandom, Volume One. A great big book, it included reproductions of the original pages of his projects, including issue #s 2, 3, and 4 of Japanese Giants, the fanzine I created in 1974 and that he took over in 1975. He published Early Kaiju Fandom, Volume Two a few months ago, which included several fanzines he published that predated JG. And now, Early Kaiju Fandom, Volume Three is in the house, with reproductions of essentially all the rest of the 1970s/80s-era kaiju-themed fanzines, including JG issue #1, and a foreword by the Old Dude. Excerpt as follows:

“As far back as early childhood and as recently as just now, anyone who’s made my acquaintance, even briefly, would know me as a diehard daikaiju nut. I caught both Godzilla – King of the Monsters (1956) and Gigantis – The Fire Monster (a.k.a. Godzilla Raids Again, 1959) when I was around kindergarten age, and if ever a kid were smitten with city-stomping monsters, that kid was me. I was already keen on dinosaurs, and Godzilla elevated my fondness for oversized reptilian critters to a whole new level.”

These volumes by Mr. Boyle are the culmination of countless hours of tracking down copies of literally every page of every fanzine from those glory days (excepting Greg Shoemaker’s Japanese Fantasy Film Journal, which kicked off this whole shebang and will be featured in yet another volume), and compiling them in a series of high-quality publications. In addition to Japanese Giants #1, the fanzines in this one include Richard Campbell’s Godzilla Mania, Barry Kaufman’s Monsters of Japan, Damon Foster’s Japanese Movie Sci-Fi, and Mike Martin’s Giants From Japan. Granted, after so many years, some of the old pages were in a condition barely fit to read, and the reproductions reflect that fact — not to mention that many of the original page designs scarcely reached the level of “crude.” But for those of us who were active in those days (and whose devotion to all things kaiju continues to this day), these volumes represent a most welcome labor of love on Mr. Boyle's part. To be sure, this endeavor isn't one to make anyone rich, but to their target audience, the contents of these are enriching beyond words.

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

Many...Monsters!

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (a.k.a. the Smog Monster)

As far back as the early 1970s, I had amassed a pretty huge collection of daikaiju movie memorabilia, including the then-available plastic monster models from Aurora — Godzilla, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. And in the early-to-mid-1980s when I lived in Chicago, I did a lot of modeling, primarily military aircraft, giant mecha from various anime franchises, and... daikaiju! Inspired by my good friend and roommate, Bill Gudmundson, I put together a few Japanese monster resin kits, brought to us by Mr. Miyawaki, who owned Kayodo modeling company, and scratch built a handful of my own. After the 1980s, I pretty much quit collecting, well, anything.

Relatively recently, however, I took a shine to some of the available daikaiju figures from Japan. All too many of them are way beyond my price range, but I have occasionally picked up some of the less-expensive figures and customized them a bit. And these can be fun to pop into some composited digital scenes, which I'm including here just for the hell of it.

MechaGodzilla, Angilas, King Seesar, and Godzilla from Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla

Gigan from Godzilla vs. Gigan

Godzilla vs. Angilas from Godzilla Raids Again (No, I don't care what Toho has done, I will not spell it "Anguirus"; Angilas was good for a lot of years, and it's perfectly proper.)

Baragon from Frankenstein Conquers the World

MechaGodzilla 2, Titanosaurus, and Godzilla from Terror of MechaGodzilla

Gorosaurus from King Kong Escapes

Godzilla and MechaGodzilla from Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2

Hedorah 1971 vs. Hedorah 2004