KILL ALL MONSTERS!

KILL ALL MONSTERS!


(This interview is with Jason Copland and Michael May, two very good friends of mine who have a creative work they've brought to the public, called KILL ALL MONSTERS! I am biased, in that I know both well, and don't intend to chew any new assholes with this, but, the work speaks for itself, they are doing incredibly good work. Please click the images for a bigger, more clear and stunning look...)

Alex Ness: What is the concept?

Jason Copland: Giant Robots fighting Giant Monsters set in the near future.

Michael May: That pretty much sums it up. I always like to add though that it’s a future where the monsters have already won the war. They’ve obliterated most of humanity and left only a few people scattered across the world to fight back. Which they’re about to start doing, in spades.

Who came up with it?

MM: The idea to do a book about giant robots fighting giant monsters was all Jason’s. But some yahoo named Alex Ness came up with the basic world that the story would be told in, for which I’m eternally grateful. I came up with the story we’re telling and created the characters, but you created the starting point and it’s been a lot of fun building from that.



Why a webcomic?

MM: We’ve been working on it long enough that comics formats have changed as we’ve developed it. We originally conceived it as a traditional mini-series broken up into periodical issues, but as graphic novels started to become more prevalent, we started thinking of it in those terms. Even then though, a lot of the publishers we pitched to still wanted to publish single issues and it was tricky. Not knowing how it would eventually be released, we had to keep our minds open to either format.

Eventually though, we realized that weren’t getting any firm commitments from publishers. We had a couple who were interested, but no one was saying, “Let’s print this thing!” So Jason and I decided to take matters into our own hands. We know we have a cool story; we just want people to be able to read it and the Internet’s the easiest way to do that right now. We’ll figure out how to make money on it later.

What popular culture works have influenced this work?

Jason: For me, mostly Shogun Warrior comics and Godzilla movies.

MM: I didn’t grow up with a lot of giant monster/robot stuff. Other than King Kong, I don’t know that I saw any of the classic stuff until after we started working on Kill All Monsters. I was aware that stuff like Godzilla and Voltron existed, but I never watched it.

Probably the thing that more directly influences my storytelling style on this than anything else is the first Star Wars movie. Not plot-wise, but in lots of other ways: from how the story starts in the middle of a battle to the way the characters interact with each other to its PG-rating. Our main characters Spencer, Akemi, and Dressen aren’t direct analogues to Luke, Leia, and Han, but I wanted them to have a similar camaraderie in the way they work together. I want Kill All Monsters to have the same sense of fun that I experienced when I first saw Star Wars in 1977.

I should mention though that I had some help in applying that influence. I originally conceived a much darker story and Jason and I actually created an entire first issue from it. It focused on how bleak the KAM world is and was mostly a character study about what it would be like to live in that world. At the time, our friend Jason Rodriguez was helping us develop the book and he wisely questioned my approach; especially about how low-key the ending was. He told me we needed a big climax. “You have to blow up the Death Star,” he said. That was a defining moment for me. It not only completely changed my ending for that first version of the story, it contributed to our eventually deciding to scrap that version altogether and come up with a bigger, more adventurous story to tell.

Why does Jason talk weird?

Jason: I don’t know what you are talking aboot, eh.

Is the intent with Monsters needing to be killed to make it Kaiju big monsters or more Cloverfield big monster scary?

MM: Hm. If I understand the distinction, then it’s probably more Cloverfield than Godzilla. Or at least, it’s more Cloverfield than what Godzilla eventually became. We owe a lot to the original Gojira though, which had much more in common with Cloverfield than it did with – say – Son of Godzilla.

Our giant monsters aren’t at all heroic and they rarely fight each other. They’re more forces of nature. Again, more like the original Gojira, our monsters were created by human technology that perverted nature and came back to bite us on the butt. There’s a huge theme about technology vs. nature that runs through the story. It’s just as important for us to think about today as it was in the ‘50s when Gojira came out. We need to be scared about the influence our technology is having on the planet.



Michael what movie monsters do you dig?

MM: In any other context, I’d go straight to the Universal monsters from the ’30s and ‘40s. Especially Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man. I love how human those guys are in spite of their monstrous appearances (and sometimes, actions).

But if we’re talking about giant ones, I’ll start with Godzilla as portrayed in the first couple of movies. Not that I hate the sillier Godzilla or anything. Another favorite is Mothra, who’s very much from that goofier world. And I love her because she’s so kind and unmonstrous with her island of peaceful worshipers and little fairy priestesses. I don’t so much dig the influence she had on Godzilla, but I like her.

On the flip side of that, I like King Ghidorah because he has the guts to stay evil. At least up to the point where I am in the series. I’m only just now digging into those movies.

Oh! Can’t forget King Kong. Especially as portrayed in the Peter Jackson version. I know that’s an unpopular thing to say among hardcore fans, but I never really felt Kong’s plight until I saw Jackson’s film. I intellectually acknowledged that Denham did a crappy thing, but I never felt anything about it. Jackson’s movie makes me cry.

My son and I are currently watching the Firebreather movie on TiVo and also really like Belloc. I can’t wait to dig into the comics and learn more about him.

After a while would you publish this yourselves if it does not get picked up for print?

Jason: We will definitely print this ourselves if no publisher steps up.

Imagine this work in film, how could it be brought to life, would it have to be cartoon?

Jason: No, I think it would work as a traditional film.

MM: It would be cool to see as a cartoon, especially if someone like Genndy Tartakovsky was to do it (if, you know, he wasn’t already doing giant robots vs. giant monsters on Symbionic Titan). But I agree with Jason. There’s no reason it couldn’t be done as a live-action movie and it makes me extremely giddy to imagine it that way.

Where can everyone find the work?

Jason: Here or Here.

MM: We’re the only comic at the Kamikaze website for now, but as Kamikaze adds to its pool, we’ll share that spot with other comics. The Review2AKill address Jason mentioned is exclusively us.

Giant monster/robot fans can also get updates on the comic as well as other giant news at our blog.

HORROR IS:

DEFINING HORROR
Noun horror (plural horrors)

1. An intense painful emotion of fear or repugnance.
2. An intense dislike or aversion; an abhorrence.
3. A literary genre, generally of a gothic character.
4. (The horrors, informal) An intense anxiety or a nervous depression.

Horror Fiction Encyclopedic entry

FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW
---------------------------------

For me a horror film or horror novel involves fear, terror, and boundless fascination with some force that is unseen and difficult to define. Almost always, good horror novels and films have to do with the supernatural and the way that it menaces human beings, or works in their lives in mysterious ways. But not always. The remake of The Thing was an excellent horror movie and the source of the horror was an alien who could enter into and take over human form.

---- ANNE O’BRIEN RICE Amongst the finest Horror authors, and writers ever



Merriam Webster gives the following as the primary definition of horror:

Horror: noun. painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay.

While it's certainly all that, I've got a bit of a different take.

If you want to see ice hockey being played, you may trudge to the Nassau Coliseum (if you're an Islanders fan), or Madison Square Garden (for the arch-rival Rangers), to take in the game. At the arena, you'll see fast play. Passing and shooting. Scoring, on most nights. You'll see fans rise to their feet, emotions unchecked, when the home team hits the twine. You may see the crowd agonize if a favorite player or superstar goes down with an injury. You'll see collective tension as a member of the opposing team races in on a breakaway, and a collective sigh of relief if the goal tender makes a save and the puck squirts harmlessly away.

What does this have to do with horror? Go back to the Merriam Webster folks' summation.

Figured out my take?

Horror is the arena. Horror is Maple Leaf Gardens or the old Spectrum in Philadelphia. Horror is where you, as the creator or as the visitor, choose to go to attend the thrill-ride. Like buying tickets to a hockey game. Or like strapping on the blades and the helmet if you're fortunate enough to be on the proactive side of the equation.

When I write, I'm lacing up. I'm taping my stick and sharpening my skates and heading out to the ice to do my thing. And, my thing will be, in part, to bring the pain. To make the fans in the seats uncomfortable. To cause them to hold their collective breath as the bad guy threatens to lower the boom, before, perhaps, letting the goal tender bat away the shot.

Or perhaps letting it tear off his hand...glove and all.

Horror encompasses everything we have in the emotional toolbox of human existence. It's not just the painful and obscene and terrifying. It's the quiet dread, like a fan might feel before facing a favored opponent whose team leads the league and has all sorts of weapons on offense. It's the very rafters of the building. It's the seats upon which we spend all that time on the edge. Horror is all the negatives of our existence, put into black and white and stuffed down our throats, no different than the box scores in the paper the morning after a true whippin' at the hands of another team. Horror is the inescapable. You're there, in the building, trapped in your seat, or mucking about in the corners looking for a shift change. It can be exhilarating, it can be nerve-wracking, it can be heart-stopping. It does not have to be bloody...but sometimes it is. It doesn't have to be violent...but sometimes it is. It doesn't need to stay with you...but when it's good it does, following you around like the lingering afterimage burned into your retinas of a pass taken in full stride and fired into the net in the blink of an eye. Something you stop, examine well after its occurred, and can still find awe-inspiring, or blood-chilling.

Horror is our arena for taking people on the joyride. For others, the arena may be comedy or drama. For those of us who live and breathe the darkness; who seek to mold the unseen and unthinkable into our tools of the trade, horror brings us all together, tears aside our defenses and sends the lowest-common-denominator of our fears hurtling at us on an end-to-end rush.

That it breaks the rules, or occasionally locks the EXIT doors and pins us to our seats as the rafters threaten to crumble in upon us, is just part of the price of admission.

--- JOE MONKS Horror author, and Director



Horror is a feeling. People often want to define horror as the thing that CAUSES that feeling, but that's too vague. The causes for horror are too subjective. What horrifies me may not affect you the same way. Horror is personal.

It's more than simple fear. It's shock. It's revulsion. It's primal. It's so strong that we crave it until we actually experience it. Then we want to get as far away from it as humanly possible.

--- MICHAEL MAY writer and blogger



Like all genres, horror's main function is as a marketing tool: it lets book publishers and movie producers tell you succinctly, through the use of a universally recognised code, what sort of story you'll get if you buy a particular book or see a particular movie. It helps consumers to avoid the wrong kind of narrative surprise - the kind you'd get, say, if you were all keyed up for blood and gore and you found yourself reading a Mills & Boon novel.

Once you get into the specifics of the code, of course, you find that it's more subtle and variegated than you might expect. Horror narratives are distinguished by being - at least potentially - frightening or shocking or disturbing, but within that there are supernatural narratives, there's slasher fiction, there's the sort of cosmic horror of Lovecraft, genre fusions like urban fantasy, and monster movies that (at one extreme )may intentionally be far more cheesy than scary. there's no one, universal thing that both binds these stories together and separates them absolutely from other stories. It becomes a question of weighting and emphasis. Maybe you can still get away with saying that horror tells stories about things that are now or were once thought to be frightening: or maybe you should look at the narrative purpose of horror instead.

Brian Boyd's book "On the Origin of Stories" discusses the possibility that all narratives confer adaptive advantage - that they evolved because they're useful to our development ad our survival. If that's so, then one thing they do is certainly to allow us to test our responses to situations we've never encountered, so that arguably if we *do* then encounter them we don't freeze up from the sheer strangeness of the sensory input. Horror would be an extreme example of that process: it pre-adapts us to the most hideous and appalling events, toughening us mentally and emotionally.

Or maybe it's just fun to get pants-wettingly scared when there's nothing really at stake for us...
--- MIKE CAREY Writer of Hellblazer, Lucifer and far far more.



TWO HORROR AUTHORS in print have said

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. --- H.P. Lovecraft * Supernatural horror in Literature (1927)

Fear is an emotion that makes us blind. How many things are we afraid of? We're afraid to turn off the lights when our hands are wet. We're afraid to stick a knife into the toaster to get the stuck English muffin without unpluggin' it first. We're afraid of what the doctor may tell us when the physical exam is over; when the airplane suddenly takes a great unearthly lurch in midair. We're afraid that the oil may run out, that the good air will run out, the good water, the good life. When the daughter promised to be in by eleven and it's now quarter past twelve and sleet is spatting against the window like dry sand, we sit and pretend to watch Johnny Carson and look occasionally at the mute telephone and we feel the emotion that makes us blind, the emotion that makes a stealthy ruin of the thinking process.

--- Stephen King, Night Shift, foreword (1978)

And lastly Me

Horror is what humans do to each other, like war, terrorism, racism, and violence.