GSV: Kaijumax (feat. Sarah Kennedy)

This is a cross-post of this week's episode of Giant Sized Violence.

This week, we're joined by writer and tabletop game designer Sarah Kennedy to talk about one of our favorite comics, Kaijumax by Zander Cannon! Kaijumax is a highly acclaimed kaiju-prison drama comic, unlike anything we've seen before. It's chock full of fun Tokusatsu references, and plays with the tropes of both prison dramas and monster movies in ways we never would have imagined!

Our guest, Sarah Kennedy, has worked on over 70 tabletop games, including Sentai & Sensibility, RPGs for Power Rangers, GI Joe, and Star Trek, as well as Werewolf the Apocalypse. She also has a Tokusatsu inspired comic of her own that she's working on that we can't wait to see come to life!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey folks, just a quick heads up about today's episode. This is actually a cross
post with our other show, Giant-Sized Violence.
We had Sarah Kennedy on as a guest, and I thought she was just such an incredible
creator within the trans community, working both within the realm of tabletop
and board games and comics as well.
And I thought that this actually might be a good fit for both show feeds.

(00:22):
Plus, I'm still catching up on a ton of work.
As you may have noticed on my last episode, I've been going through some stuff
in my personal life, And I also have a lot of exciting stuff coming up next
month with the launch of When We Transform.
But while I polish up the next episode of Transcending Comics and get that ready,
I thought y'all would enjoy in the meantime an incredible conversation with

(00:43):
Sarah Kennedy about one of our favorite comics, Kaiju Max.
Music.

(01:21):
And Sentai Insensibility. She's also contributed to short comics to various
anthologies, and she just might love tokusatsu shows and comics as much as I do.
So, without further ado, welcome to the show, Sarah!
Hey everyone, how you doing? I'm just glad to be here.
Yeah, I backed the Sentai Insensibility Kickstarter campaign,
and I'd seen your name and bio in one of the later rewards,

(01:45):
and yeah, I saw their bio, I saw, they said,
another like trans toku
person that did the power rangers campaign rpg and
like a million other things and now yeah
sentai insensibility like this person's too cool for
me not to try and become friends with them so reached out
via blue sky and now here we are oh thank you

(02:06):
it's it's so amazing to be
able to work on the stuff that i love i mean i've obviously
i've watched it since i was a kid but it's it's stuff that i still enjoy and
i love all of it like it doesn't matter if it's like labeled by the internet
as the world's worst you know like kaiju movie i will watch it and even if i'm

(02:26):
watching it to laugh at it or even if it's like something i secretly enjoy.
And i just there's so many like giant monster
movies that just make me so happy and also
sometimes i just kind of revel when it's really bad like you
know there's that energy you get where it's like oh man you remember
the power rangers movie from like 1999 or whenever it came out it's really bad

(02:48):
and yet i want to watch it again tonight my favorite item in all of my nerd
collection is a mcdonald's placemat from that mighty morphin power rangers movie from like 94 95.
That's now signed by, like, all of the surviving main cast members.
So, like, most of the Rangers.

(03:09):
Bulk and Skull I just had sign up, like, a week or two ago.
And, yeah, even most of the comic writers so far.
And every time I ask if they've ever seen this in an autograph line,
and I've never gotten a yes.
So, like, I know I have a one-of-a-kind piece of nerd merch that I hope I can
sell and retire off of someday. You never know. Maybe.

(03:29):
I would say get it laminated. but what if there's more names you
want to add to it my goal is that uh if i
ever someday get to write for anything power rangers
related i'm putting my name on my own collectible and
then i'll feel like it's really complete it always feels so
weird like like i love what i do but then there are times when people you have
to sign my book and my my favorite self-deprecating joke is you know half-priced

(03:53):
books won't take it it's smart last year when we were signing the star Star
Trek's Lower Decks Adventure Supplement for the Star Trek Adventures role-playing game.
We had like all these cool little boxes on the inside cover.
And then it just became a race between me and the other writers to make the
weirdest stuff that you could draw inside people's books.

(04:13):
And mine was the Gorn. Because I'm a great writer, not a great artist.
And so people are like, is that like a snake sock puppet? It's like,
sure. Or it's a really bad Gorn. Whatever you want.
Now speaking of like your writing and your work uh i'm especially
curious about like in what capacity you worked with the power
rangers rpg since that was one that really caught my eye i was even briefly

(04:35):
on a live play podcast for it so yeah i was curious how you like where you came
in on that i came in um so after they started getting the core book complete
they needed adventures and they need some of the proof the adventures and i've
known brian steel who used to be one of the
developers for Renegade Game Studios. And I've known him...

(04:56):
Most of our lives we used to as we affectionately put
it uh we dressed up and acted petty together aka
we were vampire larps and he's just
a blast because we're both at our hearts nerds and
we've literally just sat there like you know just
we sat at a mexican restaurant and then we were
bored if we were waiting on another person to join us and then

(05:18):
he was just sort of like yeah you know it's gonna be the focus of the next adventure
salsa mat and he's got this he's got the little
salsa thing dancing around the table and he's coming up with
little kung fu moves and i'm just laughing
and he asked me because i've worked
in the industry for a while if i could help out with getting it across the game
across the finish line and i worked on power rangers a jump in time where i

(05:40):
wrote uh more than half the book with him and that's the book that focuses on
time travel and one of my all-time favorite things is writing lore like i i
know there are people who say you know,
like they skip the lore sections because, you know, they've either watched the
show or they have a Wikipedia.
Like, even I have to admit, it's kind of hard for me to defend what I do.

(06:00):
And it's like, oh, so I can read about Zordon online.
It's like, oh, you could buy my book. My book's got some cool things about Zordon.
Or it's on a wiki somewhere.
It's like, yeah, yeah, it's a good wiki. You'll enjoy it. I stayed up three
nights binging the whole wiki.
But getting to write adventures where
I'm putting Power Ranger teams through traps or a

(06:23):
jump in time was one of my favorite things to write
because it's the adventure at the back half
takes a bunch of my favorite heroes and villains from across power rangers like
the one of the focus of it is the black knight has returned somehow not to rip
off star wars but it's returned somehow somehow if he's returned and he's trying to resurrect his

(06:47):
dragon and then even more monstrous form.
And he's stolen so many magical artifacts that now it looks like he's going to do it.
And he's rewriting time and the players are their time Rangers and they're watching
their reality slowly get turned into like ancient Camelot and they have to go
through time and they get to meet sheriff stranger,

(07:08):
AKA to the Tommy Oliver of the wild West.
I get to eat Tom Oliver, the mayor of angel grow, It was so much fun going around
finding all these little people that I enjoyed.
Even like the White Knight, who we see for, I think it's a total of 13 seconds.
The White Knight is an important part of the adventure.

(07:30):
And so, and Brian is a really great hype man where he'll sit there and have
the most serious face on and he'll just be like, yes, that's excellent.
That's really excellent. Yes. I like this. And you can't tell if he's joking,
but he's actually being very serious and you see the wheels turning and then
he's just sort of like, this is great.
Everyone will love it. I love it. I think it's great. And it's like,

(07:51):
I can't tell if you're joking.
And he's like, oh no, I really love it. It's super cool. But that's where I
come into Power Rangers, where I get to make this scenario that they get to
explore the universe with.
I get to proof dangerous traps and equipment.
It's a blast. And getting to write about Power Rangers going through time was

(08:16):
so amazing because I get to take people through ancient Egypt.
I get to take them through um man i'm
blanking on zordon's eltar yes uh
the guardians briefly and getting to
put in all these references to obscure people throughout the show
like i have the gold rangers the um

(08:36):
period triforia yeah like in ancient
egypt rad i i love
yeah it was so amazing it was a wonderful opportunity and
of course when our adventure gets submitted you know you're always waiting
to see what the licensors are going to say because they're not bad
people they have a brand to protect and they've literally
heard every bad idea for power rangers in the world and

(08:58):
you're just crossing your fingers like i don't want to be another bad
idea for power rangers you know i just want to have like ancient egyptian gold
ranger like because that would be super cool and uh is that usually the capacity
you work on tabletops because Because I know you had contributed a story module
to Sentai Insensibility as well.

(09:19):
Or are you often working on the actual mechanics of the core rulebooks too?
Oh, I do a little bit of everything. With My Little Pony, I work with Andrew
Peregrin and everyone else. And that was...
It's weird to say that it was challenging because we had to approach role-playing
from a different perspective.

(09:39):
Like, everybody thinks about My Little Pony and a lot of people like to just make fun of it.
Like, being sick, that's for kids. You made a role-playing game out of that?
Wow. Do you miss working on adult stuff?
And it's like, actually, it's not that bad. You know, the show is pretty fun.
It's got a lot of, like, secret geek jokes. And John Delancey shows up as essentially Q.

(10:01):
Q in the My Little Pony universe. It was so much fun to work on it.
I did skew my demographics for YouTube because I would log into YouTube and
it would be like, oh, so you watch Bluey and you watch My Little Pony.
Do you like Little Einsteins? No, YouTube.
I do. I raise kids. I do not like Little Einsteins.

(10:21):
But I do fiction. I do game mechanics. I do some editing work.
I've written like lore. I make adventures and also playtesting where the joke
that every game designer likes
to say, am I allowed to make that kind of a crude joke? Oh, of course.
Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm really good at playing with myself.
You know, I mentioned profit out of it.

(10:44):
There are times like my partner will walk by and I'll have a bunch of pennies
on a map and I'm moving them around and rolling a die and just moving the pennies around.
And they'll be like, what, what you doing? You look like you're playing some
really low stakes gambling over there. I'm like, no, I'm designing an adventure.
The Rangers are fighting Tengu. The pennies are the Tengu.

(11:04):
And that stuff you have to work out before it goes to print.
Because if you make an adventure that you're sort of like, and the Rangers fight
50 million Tengu in a vacuum of space, and they've got to save some astronauts, they'll be fine.
And the adventure just sucks. Well, then people don't want to play it because, you know, it's not fun.
So you do kind of have to sit there and be like, I want to fight be like in

(11:26):
zero G with flying bird men.
And in 20 years, I've the only thing that I've not really done successfully is let me out.
And that's just because InDesign continues to thwart me.
As far as writing goes, I know you're also working on a comic book. Yeah.
Could you tell us anything about what you have in the pipeline for that and what kind of comic it is?

(11:48):
So I was talking to Bug, who is the one who created Sentai Sensibility.
And they're also a huge, like, you know, Power Ranger and Sentai fan. Yeah, you don't say.
I can put you in touch. They're amazing. Oh my God, please do.
And we're just talking about our favorite things.
And then I was asking them where they came up with the idea for the setting

(12:09):
of Sentai and Sensibility.
And it's not just like, oh, I wanted to make a Richard and Hacks and Power Rangers.
They had like all the stuff they wanted to do and all these stories.
And I was just like, that is so cool. And man, what if we did stories like this?
And somehow we both kind of settled on what would a noir setting be like for Power Rangers.
Teenagers and bugs like no no i'm not going to continue with this

(12:31):
i've got a game to make i can't make two things at once and i
said well i don't know i like the story and i just kept
spitballing things and bug was like sounds like you're working
on a story i'm working on my game and i
was like well you know what i'm gonna write the story and i actually
started it and i'm on like the third issue and
looking at artists right now it's kind

(12:51):
of weird and trippy like it'll definitely relate well to
kaiju max when we talk about that but uh do
you want to want to hear the basic premise sure yeah please share it's not
that i have notes queued up on my ipad which i totally do uh i'm and i struggle
with names so this name changes later on just assume that i said the name a
hundred times and it was like no that's a bad name um okay you're not doing

(13:15):
like i did with when we transform and transitioning the character halfway through.
Pretty much yeah but it's um sentai sun city the city.
Uh, it's, uh, very much an homage to like, not only 1930s, but 1950s esque,
uh, mystery movies, uh, which I've also been watching a ton of those with my mom lately.

(13:39):
And it follows, um, Samson Dane, who is the danger red Ranger who,
uh, lives in the city, which is basically just called super city.
And it is the final battle site where all these teams came together.
And we're talking this world's like, you know, Sailor Moon and Power Rangers
and Cyber Squad and VR Troopers.

(14:01):
I've even got a reference to Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters.
The city is basically where all the monsters were part of the Grand Army of
Evil were forced to settle because they all came to Earth at the request of
the Grand Empress to destroy Earth.
And they get defeated and all the major big bads are destroyed.

(14:22):
But now their armies just kind of left on earth
and nobody knows what to do with them so they settled
in the city along with everyone else who had ties to like super teams were like
great powers were destroyed and great leaders are gone so you've depowered sentai
and rangers just walking around and um samson he actually got hurt in the final

(14:43):
battle so he is constantly in his, like, he's got his suit on.
But he can't breathe that well, so he's always smoking the drug he needs to live, which is ironic.
But he's a detective, because he was what he calls a third stringer.
He wasn't part of the main team.
He was the guy that gets called in whenever they needed, like, additional help.

(15:05):
If you ever watched Samurai Pizza Cats, he's a member of the second team, pretty much.
The B-list of Samurai Pizza Cats. yeah his his mecha is uh power goose alpha a giant goose.
Zord and i'm really curious how you get this to fit in like a 50s sin city noir

(15:30):
setting but like you've definitely got my interest with this well and just the
basic premise is um one day his old
uh master is is found dead in
the city like he was in like a giant like jar
essentially um because not everybody came out of the final battle like to like
riches and fame a lot of them were just kind of abandoned and now he's trying

(15:52):
to figure out who killed his former master and he teams up with like several
other people like um olympette who is a former prison power
princess who is blatantly queer and was always being told to be dainty and petite on her team.
And she's very much like a muscular, very much like masculine woman, super lesbian. And.

(16:15):
And I'm not going to write something that doesn't have queer stuff in it.
Like, you know, cause it's weird when I write things that I'm not seeing in it.
And I know how important that is to other people, but yeah, it's, it's fun.
There's monsters. There's a surprise twist on who the actual killer is.
It touches upon all the shows from my childhood, even if they're really, really bad.

(16:37):
Like I love superhuman samurai cyber squad, but we can all agree.
It was the ultra man. That was not ultra man. it was
you know it was what ultraman grid defender or grid man grid man and grid man's
awesome like i did a whole episode on that grid man's great the american version
not as much yeah i love it but you know at the same time you know it's it's

(17:00):
there's a reason why it was a one season show.
And uh oh and one of the other bad guys references um i can't remember the show
now but they're They're essentially, Dracula comes back,
his ashes get reincarnated in a car, and now these three teenagers have to merge
with their trucks to become essentially truck rangers.
Wish I could remember the name of that series. It was really bad.

(17:22):
It was back in the late 90s. Everything's got to be Power Rangers.
Oh, shoot. So this was like a real show? Yeah.
I kind of know what you're talking about, but I had no idea a Dracula car was part of that.
Like futurama is ripping this shit off i got the name it is what you'd expect it to be vampires,

(17:45):
perfect yeah no notes perfect name it's
not great you pitched that name to me in the time
of power rangers and transformers and sold yes
we'll have any of the like early cable networks no one has make this it'll come
on between ultra force and the savage dragon cartoon oh yeah i love those it

(18:05):
is from 97 and not great oh the name of the first episode is those who have the fuel shall rule.
Imagine Bela Lugosi saying that. Now, before we get too lost in the 90s,
I think I should probably finally transition us to the topic of today's episode,

(18:26):
which is a comic that both Sarah and I really love by the name of Kaiju Max,
written and drawn by Xander Cannon.
I have wanted to cover this book on the show ever since James Herron mentioned
it in the back of one of the first issues of Ultra Mega.
Sega and when I finally got the chance
to check it out was not disappointed if anyone

(18:47):
out there is like at all a fan of tokusatsu anything Godzilla
movies or ultra stuff or Power Rangers this book
is absolutely for you this is like the ultimate love letter
to tokusatsu but with doing like new and
original things and I love it but shortly after finding
Sarah's work I saw her post about it on blue sky
and I'm like okay I gotta finally move forward I

(19:09):
gotta finish the rest of this series and so uh that
was a perfect opportunity to finally bring her on the show i discovered
this series when i was at pax unplugged the first
pax unplugged i think it was what oni press was there and they were uh they
were still figuring out the show as well and i was bored um and just in between
shifts at a booth and i'm like oh what's this comic oh i like giant monsters

(19:31):
and i read it on like the plane ride home which had to be really weird because
there's a kid next to me. The kid's like, oh, what are you reading?
I'm not sure you can read this. It looks like you should read this,
but you cannot read this.
But it's so good and so deep on multiple levels. I'll just say that like.
This takes so many like comical tropes that we've seen, even in like the cheesiest

(19:55):
tokusatsu shows and movies like Son of Godzilla and find some really creative,
dark twist on it and make something great.
And yeah, I mean, like everyone I've heard that comes across this book is like in love with it.
Like James Herron, who made my favorite toku comic, like really sung its praises
and was like, seriously, go read this.

(20:16):
Alan freaking moore is quoted on the
front of the book and like a lot of other prolific
figures in the realm of comics have seen this and been like oh my
gosh this is amazing and yeah i think it's
probably the perfect tokusatsu comic so especially
if you're like me and love toku enough to make a podcast about it
this might become your favorite book it's it's.

(20:37):
Weird like i mean it's not weird it's just it's
like a lot of risky elements intersect and you
look at it and you think oh like oh
like for people at home like if i was to tell you
that there was a comic book that had kind of like 70s era
looking giant monsters some of them being
intentionally cheeky looking like there's literally

(20:59):
like um i think just a guy in like a giant devil suit is
one of the monsters and there's like a rodan and
a bunch of silly looking bird people people um if
i told you that you would take a comic with those characters and
you would touch upon substance abuse issues uh human
trafficking um sexual assault rent

(21:19):
problems prison problems just everything you
would be like okay i want to talk about those because those are very
serious issues but not if you're making fun of it and
it doesn't it incorporates it in a
way that i think makes it so relatable even
though it's it is a comic like like okay
that sounded bad what i mean to say is like it's brightly

(21:42):
colored it's like it looks like like a comic from the 70s and yet it's talking
about very serious issues and not in a condescending way you actually empathize
with the characters and when horrible things happen to them you're like oh no
i hope they get revenge because that sucks.
Yeah, and there's so many huge concepts in this that like, yeah,

(22:05):
it's definitely a cartoony depiction of all these things, but like.
If you were to give this the art style of, like, Matt Frank or Dan Mora or something,
well, the comic would be beautiful and, like, look like the tokusatsu movie of your dreams.
I think it would be way harder to take, like, the type, like.

(22:26):
To stomach the talking kaiju and then, like, dealing with very human issues.
And also just like there would be too
much spectacle for the kind of story this is
trying to tell because it is a very grounded human
story that just happens to be about giant monsters
yeah like one of my favorite stories
um in the comic i'm not gonna spoil everything

(22:49):
but they essentially encounter um they
go down to uh ryla you know the the lovecraftian undersea
city and when they go down there it's got some escape the
main characters are escaped fugitives at that point and they
try to shack up with someone who's down there and they
learn how there's it in this version
of a lovecraftian world they're still like substance abuse and

(23:12):
um young people having too many kids
in a system that doesn't support them uh deals with
the generational trauma and you read it
thinking oh this is a horror story and then you learn
that the horror is not what you expected it's not a strange
creature with multiple eyes from beyond time and space it's oh
in the real world there are people like this who

(23:33):
are not getting support and we're not helping them and in simultaneously like
cushions your landing so it's not like hitting you in the face with it really
hard but it makes you think about it because that's well things made me think
about it for sure now before we get into like all of our favorite subplots and
the things this book Explorers.
I'd like to just kind of do a quick summary or more ask like Sarah.

(23:56):
How would you pitch this comic to someone that you think would be interested in it?
Man um it's like oz the
tv show oz meets venture brothers meets
1960s godzilla cartoon
yeah i think that's the perfect amalgamation
of things to get this thing's like look tone

(24:19):
and content because yeah like i also say
like this is a prison drama with kaiju
with all of the tropes and
narrative staples you would expect from a prison trauma
so like do take that as your content warning
going into this series like this handles if you
expect to see it in an r-rated prison movie expect

(24:41):
to see it here and that includes like sexual violence
uh like various things regarding
discrimination and depression so like.
The hefty content warning with that
said i'll say i think they handle all those
things pretty respectfully like even though this
is happening to giant monsters and people

(25:02):
that look like ultraman like it at least takes
the ramification seriously and we see realistic human consequences
to all these things it's not just like doing it
for shock value or to give characters
motivation or like fridging them in a sense like
it's done as a way to explore trauma and that's the way i want to see this stuff

(25:24):
shown in comics it just now happens to also feature like kmart brand godzilla
and ultraman and it's incredible when like like i think that for me that's what
helped me identify more with it because.
For me i got drawn in with yeah i like giant monsters i like giant robots oh hey it's like
Ultraman that's the kind of like you know a team of Ultraman working

(25:46):
as prison guards and on the
surface you know like I admit I grew up with like several prejudices um
that you know I'm still working to overcome today and so
I'm like oh wow what if I was like you know a super powered prison guard at
a prison for monsters and then you see what a lot of like modern prisons are
like in the comic and um the creator has been very honest about his feelings

(26:11):
towards uh prisons prisons,
the justice system in the United States.
And this really does kind of like put it all out there for you where it's like,
yeah, you've got the good guard, the guard that wants to do things right and
will take care of the prisoners and believes them.
And then you've got the five or six bad guards who don't.
And I had a friend where he read it and he just talked about how it hit him

(26:37):
hard because he had family members who had spent time in prison.
And it wasn't a comic that he was going to recommend to them because he felt
that it would be too triggering for him.
But the stories that they told him, he saw in the comic.
And he said, yeah, it sounds comical. We all joke about, hey,
I'll trade, you know, like five bucks for a cigarette.
Or, you know, or we make inappropriate jokes about how, like,

(27:00):
people get turned out for, you know, like soups, essentially.
But some of that actually happens. And this comic really teaches you a lot of
like substance abuse issues.
And like one of the one of the subplots is about the main character who's Electragore. Yeah. Yeah.
Electragore is this kaiju. It's like a beetle shrimp guy.

(27:23):
And he makes raw plutonium nodules on his back, which we learn is to feed his
kids because that's how his kids feed.
They need radiation to live. All the monsters in this world,
they get high off energy.
But some needed to live and he essentially has
to people realize he can feed them narcotics because
too much of it makes you high and he gets

(27:46):
essentially like threatened and almost trafficked around this
prison because he can make drugs that get people high
and seeing him trying to survive as multiple
prison gangs which man zander really
chose like his ability to blend what sounds like comical but that's also what's
also serious is incredible because some of like the prison gangs are like that's

(28:08):
a cryptid gang they're made up of cryptids like mothman and nessie you don't
mention the cryptid gang and over there you've got i think it's the.
Shokugawa which is their term for the old monster movies and they're led by
uh godzilla s character yeah they call him ape whale which i think is like a
literal translation of gojira uh right like what that name drive from.

(28:31):
And all of his gang is like very clear analogs to classic, like show era Godzilla
villains, like King Adora and Rodan and Anguirus and such.
And it works. It's just so incredible. Like for anybody watching this,
like it is, I just recommend like go to your library, see if they have the first
trade or take a chance. I really think you'll enjoy it.

(28:55):
It sounds silly on the surface, but I assure you, like, I know I'm probably
reassuring people for no reason, but it is just a really thoughtful comic that
just, it'll teach you a whole lot.
Obviously, you know, don't end your education there.
Go on, read blogs, like, you know, read, like, go on Wikipedia, watch YouTube videos.

(29:17):
I know there's, like, there's great podcasts out there now made by people that
either are now out of prison. I think there's even some made by people in prison
that are very real to like what that experience is like.
So like there's you can if this piques your interest and you want to learn more,
you can learn directly from the people experiencing this.
And it it really like opens your eyes.

(29:39):
And I know I always try to keep learning and, you know, improving for context.
I grew up on like the east side of Indianapolis.
I grew up in a really poor neighborhood. my i love
my grandmother but my grandmother was extremely prejudiced and
not just in a oh she was just prejudiced you
know for a person from her era no it was love grandma
spears but yeah no it was pretty bad and as

(30:02):
i got older i realized you know having to overcome a lot of that you know just
innate i'll be blunt internalized bigotry where i was never someone that like
threw out like slurs left and right but it was also someone that um like if
you found me back Back in high school, I was probably that little shithead who would say,
why are you running if you didn't do anything wrong?
You know, if you're innocent, you don't have anything to fear from the police.

(30:24):
And, you know, that's the sort of thing where like this comic will definitely
be like, no, here's a look at why someone might not trust the police.
Here's a look at why someone feels they have to run because maybe they had a
bad experience with a cop once and they don't want to have the shit kicked out of them again.
And it uses that blend of whimsy and humor to really just kind of show you oh

(30:46):
no in case you didn't believe people that like you saw talk about this online
how about have like a corrupt Ultraman.
Beating someone up because he was paid to by uh
space bunny mafia it it's
really awesome i yeah i'm here to talk about this comic and i
hope i'm not sounding sarcastic it really is awesome yeah i

(31:08):
guess to give people an idea like because i'm assuming most hearing
this probably haven't read the comic yet but like our main
plot focuses on this electragore character as he's
captured taken into kaiju max for a
grand theft electricity like he was just feeding on
power cables under the ocean to turn into energy for his kids uh gets taken

(31:28):
into kaiju max and we follow him as he's uh trying to escape and trying to reconnect
with his kids that he knows are still out there in the world uh and through
this through his eyes we get to see like all the realities of what kaiju deal.
With kind of as like these second-class citizens
of sorts uh like there's various kaiju

(31:50):
law uh like a whole legal system around
like how this world deals with
kaiju uh there's a lot of good background world building
on it and then yeah like it's just chock full of
really good side plots that like explore
this world further like one of uh that's
like the dark twist on godzilla's revenge or son of

(32:11):
godzilla where we see a little the son
of ape whale starts seeing a little boy who starts
telling him to do worse and worse things to like climb
up the ladder of the like that particular gang we follow guards and like seeing
how like a good guard can make a mistake and it turns them into like being agoraphobic
they don't want to shrink ever or like yeah other guards owing money to cartels

(32:37):
and that fueling like all the messed up stuff they They do that.
We get a Mecca Godzilla stand in.
That's like now a pacifist and seeing how like Mecca Kaiju is.
Respond to all this is like kind of religious zealots
of sorts that worship the cloud the great cloud
yeah yeah like one day all will be
in the cloud all will be uploaded why

(33:00):
yeah we get like an abusive relationship between a lady
ultra man guard and like the most awful
monster in the series and
seeing how that affects her in her life and other characters
lives and uh personal small favorite was i
forget his name but the goat man that's being manipulated by like
an evil volcano we find out yeah

(33:21):
like i i really like what
they did with his story and how things turned out like there were
moments that made me cry with that character he's
um based off the the pope lit monster
which is apparently a demonic devil goat but
in the i went to kentucky recently i found out about it
and i'm like oh that's what i read the comic and yeah uh

(33:44):
he's the literal son of the devil but his body
is a little goat dude and yeah it's
it's yeah his storyline i was so happy with how it ended but it takes some dark
dark turns yeah like he's kind of the real victim of kaiju max that you see
like just trying to survive is like generally a really innocent character like

(34:07):
Like he, I don't think he did do anything wrong.
We find out like he's just kind of taking the rap for what others have done
and finding out like he's always been in this position is like the son of literally the devil.
Like a super religious mom comes and she's like a nun. And then we find out she's a Satanist nun.
I was like one of my favorite twists ever.

(34:28):
Yeah. I just love the sweet moments too, where, you know, it's just, yeah, it's so good.
I know that's not a way to pitch a comic. You can't just keep saying it's so
good. But I think about all the stories, like one of my favorite things that
just popped up about that was also like they go to court. Yeah.
One of those, like you talked about it earlier. They talk about how tough the

(34:51):
public defender system is because, you know, so there's Pokemon in this world.
They're also Kaiju, but Pokemon.
And imagine if Meowth was a really tired public defender and he works two showboating
attorneys and he's trying to convince people to be like, no,
no, look, just plead guilty.
You plead guilty. We'll get three years. If you fight this, you'll get the chair.

(35:13):
But come on, if you just plead guilty and you see how people like to make fun
of public defenders and how he's showing up in an old suit,
kind of like, um, better call Saul and all like the prosecutors and even some
of the more high profile public defenders,
like they represent clients that can pay them like a
million dollars or those weird little discs they

(35:34):
use in the comic but he doesn't get
paid that but people still need they need
a defense and they need a good defense like they talk
about how everybody's entitled to a defense in the united states
but not everybody gets that that was one
thing i liked about the structure of the series like i had
thought it was only three volumes long for a while because that
was at howell's city of books when i looked through

(35:56):
their massive indie comic section i love and like
the first three volumes tell a very full story that
like follows electragore and like explores the world but
then in the second half the last three volumes
like each one takes a pretty clear
source of inspiration yeah the whole fifth volume is

(36:16):
very pokemon focused and like we even see they have like reverse pokemon battles
like there's underground ground dog fights but with humans instead like even
treating it like a pokemon battle i remember because i just remember just like
a kid gets put up against like a former soldier and it's.
It made me definitely think, I love Pokemon. I play Pokemon Go every day.

(36:39):
But it is weird when people are like, is it like animal fighting?
And I'm like, oh, I hope not, because I love this game. But also,
that would make me very, very sad.
And yeah, the world of references they build in this.
It's everywhere and very sentimental, usually, even when it's something silly.
We find out the prison warden and the person he answers to are what I've heard

(37:02):
other kaiju podcasts refer to as Kenny's,
like from Gamera like the little kid sidekicks
that they focus on yeah the prison warden and his superior
are both like Kenny's that had this really
traumatic experience with a giant turtle kaiju that they were trying to champion
but like it was just their imagination that he was good he was still just there

(37:24):
to eat people yeah like oh no he's good yeah he knocked over that tower in that
school bus and now he's devouring that school and the children on the playground and And yeah,
that would probably be my luck where I'd be like, no, no, Gigan's a good guy.
I love Gigan. You know, he's great to his mom.
He's got a buzzsaw on his belly, but surely he's a good guy.

(37:44):
Oh, he's killing people. He's killing a lot of people.
Siding with Ghidorah. Yeah, no, this isn't good.
What I think was the most impressive about Xander Cannon's use of references,
though, is that like he really builds like a kaiju language
full of like slang that is
believable but also clear references to various toku

(38:07):
properties like uh anytime they say god damn they say god damn as in like the
first three letters of gojira like oh okay i see what you're doing there uh
or like red king is what they use in place of the f word or as an insult which
is It was like reference to an Ultraman Kaiju.
I think one of my favorite was like, no one respects Woofie, the son of Ape Whale.

(38:32):
That's like, he looks like Minya.
He's that like nervous and goofy looking and like doesn't want to fight.
So they call him a Zuki-ass kid, like God Zuki, the little dragon from the 60s cartoon.
And yeah just everything they put in
there like i i don't know
if i've ever seen a comic like build a language like this this

(38:54):
well and it it just it flows so seamlessly like
i love battlestar galactica from the
the 2000s but you know there were times you
know they relied on fract so they could say the f word on tv
there are times when it just didn't really work it was just very
much like it was a made-up word and put in
place in the sentence they really wanted to be like you mother fracker

(39:16):
and it's like oh we know what you were trying to say okay but
in this one like it like they'll
say like what's up my zilla as they say there's a
yard and it works and all the other things with
the culture too like i talked about how they feed on radiation but some
of them like they dose with it and like they'll inject themselves with industrial
waste to get high or instead of cigarettes they have smokestacks post smog that

(39:43):
they puff out of it like a cigar it's taking the the the normal and horrifying
and kind of making it into like the.
Extraordinary but also horrifying that's really
a tough line to walk and i i just
was like it made me laugh a couple times when like
you're reading through it and you just see all these things like uh one of the

(40:05):
main characters the one that we mentioned was agoraphobic he just keeps growing
weapons he can't control it he just as he gets scared more weapons pop out but
he doesn't know how to put them back so he's walking around he's kind of like
a giant turtle full of cannons.
And uh his arc was wonderful especially when
he um uh i guess i can't i don't get too much away but

(40:25):
yeah yeah i know i kind of meandered there because again there's so many cool
storylines to follow for a six volume series it's got so many interwoven plots
you would think it was easily 10 or 12 yeah and it's not i don't think there's
any one of these subplots i'm like ah this character Like,
no, I'm very invested in every little side plot line they do here.

(40:49):
The only one that I hated at first involved the unicorn.
When I was reading the issues, I was kind of iffy because they introduced a
character who's basically a giant kaiju unicorn who's fond of children.
And I wasn't sure where they were going with that because as a queer person.

(41:09):
I was wrong to doubt the writer because the writer actually,
you know, I can't give you all the storyline, but the writer delivered.
But there was that moment when I'm like, oh, where are we going with this?
This could be very, very bad because this is a giant monster obsessed with children.
And it's a rainbow unicorn.
Where are we going with this? And the storyline, actually, it's meant to be hard hitting.

(41:30):
And that was the only time in the series when I'm like, I don't think I'm going
to like this because I live in a conservative state. They I hear about conservative
laws that are passed all the time.
There are times when, you know, I like to see myself represented in comics.
But then there are times when I'm like, oh, no, I've not that storyline because
that's really hard hitting.
This one did deliver and it is horrifying.

(41:52):
But I think the people who read it, you're you're going to it's one of those
long arcs where you're going to get the payoff much later.
But there is a payoff to it. But it's also something I think we've talked about.
It's just how creepy the comic can be at times too because that
character hits every button on purpose where
it's not just like this um and i say these words you

(42:12):
know with respect the unicorn is portrayed as like a
very like mincing feminine gay guy like mannerisms how he grooms himself how
he walks it almost seems like when you meet this character it's like oh is this
a very poorly thought out stereotype but the xander cannon does explain a lot
more about that but that was

(42:32):
the only storyline that I read it or started reading it.
And I'm like, Oh, this gives me pause. Cause this could go horribly.
Yeah. And I mean, I really enjoyed aspects of that character in that,
like, uh, we've seen drug use among the Kaiju, but he kind of embodies like psychedelic culture.
Like I would say he's like, he's.

(42:54):
Like if miss frizzle from this magic school
bus was instead of giant kaiju that just makes kids trip
balls and that's their magic field trip like
there's even school bus stuff involved but like there's
a lot of familiar language from like figures
in the psychedelic culture some like

(43:14):
more problematic ones of like oh yeah like
it's a good thing or like we're gonna let them
go hard and they'll face inward and uh like
it's clear he's kind of trying to manipulate them and like
position himself somewhere in there like he's the charismatic leader that's
using psychedelics as a tool to get what he wants yeah like the way he wins

(43:34):
over people and um seeing how creepy his magic is i mean we talked about a character
earlier that was the son of a devil but he looked like a cute little goat creature.
And then this character is, he very much plays on the, the fear of like an intruder of a threat.
And it works in the fact that it does, it kind of tells you upfront,

(43:58):
you're not going to like this character.
Like you kind of hold out hope and you're kind of like, but it's a unicorn.
I love unicorns. But then you see just enough things where it's like,
oh yeah, they're tripping balls in a bad way.
They've got like blood coming out their eyes. he is
not a good guy especially since he's just walking around
giving people acid like really really

(44:19):
strong acid to giant monsters really my
highlight of the series of like okay if you're gonna check out one
volume of the book and say your library's missing
volume one volume four works pretty
well on its own and is everything i could want
out of a comic without ever realizing it's what I wanted from
a comic and that this one follows the women's prison of Kaiju Max and it's orange

(44:45):
is the new black meets Power Rangers and that's the perfect comic for me like
the warden is the freaking the
green ranger like she's got the same chest thing and a giant dragon mech.
And before this point, all of the mechs we've seen have been like more Gundam
inspired, I would say, or maybe a little ultra inspired.

(45:06):
But this is one like they really lean more into like the Sentai Power Rangers
vibe with their like, quote unquote, heroes or wardens.
And that also like it talks about things I think like I wasn't aware of that
I had to look up like Commissary Day, which is very important in prisons.
Comparisons and how if you're someone where

(45:26):
your family forgets to float up your commissary card
you have to watch all your friends go and get things that
they need or even just also things that they want and you
don't you don't get to partake in that and how
that can be damaging to your mental health where people
are buying things like you know shampoo lotion you know
um other things they might need but then also occasionally chocolates

(45:49):
and things to make them feel happy and if
like um one of the characters her boyfriend who
is a bit of a jerk keeps forgetting to load her
commissary card and so she doesn't get anything she has to just stare at people
and she doesn't get a comb she doesn't get any makeup and it it one of those
things where i learned how that can just be it's like a miniature holiday for

(46:13):
people in prisons where that's the day when I know it sounds silly,
but if you've really been wanting to get a bag of chips and you've been eating
nothing but what's in the commissary for a week, that's that's to be important.
I mean, it's I've never been in prison, but as someone with like,
you know, like stomach problems, I've had to give up food.

(46:33):
And then there are days when I'm like, no, this is a day where I'm going to
have like a really big steak.
And if I don't get the steak on that day, I'm sad. And obviously it's not the
same as someone in prison,
but having been the person at a table watching everybody else enjoying whatever
steaks they want or and me just staring at them while eating just my basic food,

(46:53):
it's it really teaches you like how we need to do more to help people in prison.
And I'm not saying that everybody who goes to prison should be treated with
kid's gloves, but I am a really strong believer in reform.
Unless we're intentionally going to keep these people for the rest of their
lives, we have to let them out eventually.
And why are we not working on making them into better people?

(47:17):
It seems like a lot of prisons, from what I've observed, a lot of them are just
cruel and mean and beat people down, and then they just let people go one day.
And i think that we should be doing more to help
people with their problems and figuring out why they do
it it's very expensive i'm not doubting that
but unless again unless we're going
to keep someone for the rest of their life we should really do something

(47:40):
to help people and i do think this fourth volume kind of explores that like
it looks through the eyes of like a prison where the warden is trying to do
good and make a better place and like seeing the pitfalls even that has Like
they still have to struggle with guards that are like being brutal.
We're like outright abusing the prisoners in outright damaging ways.

(48:03):
And I wouldn't say it demonizes all the idea of like trying to reform prison,
but like instead showing just how, even with the best intentions,
like this is a fundamentally broken system with that's.
Historically employed some very damaging
people and like how hard it is to even work
within the system to bring that reform into being yeah

(48:26):
and some of these people are like a really strong
theme throughout the series is some of
these people who are picked up are essentially um they're illegal
immigrants it's how they're treated like electro gore
yeah he feeds on power lines which is damaging but he needs it to live he's
not walking around destroying city But he gets arrested one day where he leaves

(48:48):
to get food and he gets picked up and he's processed and sent to a prison where
they're like, this is where you monsters belong.
Monsters live on Monster Island. That's where you belong.
He's taken away from his family and he wasn't meant for prison and he didn't do anything wrong.
He just bet on electricity. electricity and i

(49:08):
think that that was just xander's way of talking
about how in prison yeah there's some bad dudes
in prison but there's also a lot of people where either they were immigrants
who got picked up and for some reason were in jail instead of like deported
or maybe they were framed for crimes they didn't commit or even also um what
if the crime was really minor i mean electro gore yeah he damaged power cables

(49:30):
you know which to a human that's like a million
dollar problem that's really serious you know that could be really
bad but in a world with like
quantum computers time traveling aliens starships he
just nibbled on some power cables why is he going to prison for
the rest of his life on a lighter note i do want to
call out one of the jokes of this volume that like i felt so seen uh so every

(49:56):
member of the crew at this women's prison has a giant mech they get into for
the most part they're just regular people that like one's got a dragon mech
there's one kind of like gamera a bunch of different ones,
And then at the end of the night or when things like get escalated at the women's
prison, they all combine into one giant mech. And then they casually because

(50:17):
it's the board of directors driving it, they casually mentioned that they call it the mega board.
Like, oh, my God, this this joke was written specifically for me.
Mega Zord pun. Oh, my God. I can't believe I found this in a comic.
And yeah, I was freaking in love. Like I was resold on these later volumes that

(50:39):
I had only just discovered existed.
Well, someone told me like the bunny cartel apparently comes from some joke
about medieval manuscripts where bunnies were the villains.
And like the sidebars were like bored monks withdraw bunnies attacking people.
And apparently in one of those, the bunnies are seen coming down from the moon.

(50:59):
So you have a bunny cartel on
the moon who make money robbing people
and staking their stuff that makes me
wonder like was this just a few people's like fun doodle that caught on like
an old-timey meme and now uh like anthropologists have to wonder if this was
like a deeply held religious belief or cultural belief that oh yeah i can't

(51:23):
don't mess around with bunnies so they're They're evil.
I don't know. Like there are times you look through those sidebars and you find
like snails with like literally flails for eyes.
And you're thinking this guy was bored. He just got really bored.
Then there are other times, though, like one of my favorite anecdotes about
medieval lore, because I have a degree in history, is that Christianity used

(51:45):
to be a whole lot cooler at times.
And you could go on like pilgrimages and go to like churches known for fertility.
And they would give you dick pens that you would pin to your cloak.
I would literally just be like, oh, you went to the church over in Italy for fertility.
It's like just a giant, it's balls in a dick. It is sometimes wings.

(52:06):
Sometimes it has a halo. And I just want to imagine like back then,
because, you know, we think about in the middle ages, how the church is kind
of like very oppressive.
What bishop signed off on that going, man, we got to increase tourism.
You don't increase tourism.
Dicks. and just somebody else going all right let's make dick pendants let's

(52:28):
make dick pens you know got gotta fill them pews somehow and that might be what
i call this episode uh dick pins.
On dick pins and kaiju max featuring sarah kennedy how do you like that being
in your google search results i love it i love it better than some of the search
results for my dead name where my dead name is uh john kennedy so there apparently

(52:50):
was someone very famous in the 60s,
then i started going by like john d kennedy but i didn't google that first so
that i googled it one day thinking oh i've jumped to the top of the search results
and confederate general john doby kennedy ah oh that's not fair and like three
down it's me but it's like oh come on.

(53:12):
Dang i mean i know you said you were raised with some prejudice like
in a bad southern town but federal general sarah
geez i i don't know if i can be okay with that that's great well i'm gonna delete
this recording uh we've never met yeah not getting canceled for this that's
how i felt though when it's like oh i've been telling people to look for john
d kennedy online they must think i'm just really into like the confederacy oh

(53:35):
good another thing i guess we touched upon it
was also like um some of the racism that's talked
about in the series too when we didn't talk about like the
cryptids and like the the other ones but the series
does a really good job of like how there's even like the normal
looking monsters like there's a monster who's
something like geo knight something and he's

(53:56):
yeah and he looks like
a giant wooden knight and everyone loves him but the
hero that saved the town multiple times is
this um i believe she's called to mongo and she's like
this ogre like kaiju who has
saved the city more times but they
arrest her on site where she beats like the big menace

(54:17):
and they go that's the monster gotta arrest her and it's
interesting how it talks about appearances where some some
of the creatures in the prison look completely threatening and then others look
peaceful and benign like a giant volcano where it just shows you your deepest
darkest secrets in a horrifying way on purpose and i was I was really curious
about Geo Knight and really all of the South Korean kaiju they show.

(54:41):
Because I do know that there's like plenty of kaiju movies from that nation.
And I was wondering if like Geo Knight and Mongo, like if those were direct
parallels with movies I'm just not familiar with.
But like... I don't know either. It was good though. He was cheesy and dumb. But yeah. Oh, yeah.
Probably a weird note to bring up towards the end of the episode there is

(55:03):
um a whole lot of kaiju sex in there like
consensual sex too so uh like geo
knight scores it big with a
space empress and you don't see like completely graphic things but the way it
just pops up randomly it's like where's geo knight what's he doing and then
it cuts away and he's getting it on on top of a bunch of destroyed buildings

(55:23):
with like a ufo mech looking thing yeah now things i want to make
sure we touch on like i just want to know if there were any like
favorite references of yours you caught in this that we
haven't touched on yet uh i love the voltron references
especially in the first two volumes where um the world is protected by all these

(55:44):
different um like guardian teams and one of them like it's a giant robot that
continually summons like thunderbirds-esque vehicles to give it more weapons
and these weapons are sometimes like
a jet that turns into a chainsaw or a ship that turns into a boot.
And it made me just giggle just because I'm trying to imagine a world where

(56:06):
there was an engineer who had to work on that.
A friend of mine's band, they're called the Shake Ups. They do homages to different
cartoons and one of them is Voltron.
And my favorite song from them is literally I'm a leg.
It's a catchy song. It just made me think of that the whole time I'm reading
it. I really liked the whole rap battling kaiju just because,

(56:31):
There's this kaiju where he's like trying to fit in, be normal,
be the ex-con with a noble job.
And he's trying to not talk and rhyme. He's trying to fit in with coworkers
after work. And then he gets really mad.
And then, you know, he gets really mad because he starts rapping and battling.
Yeah. And him and his brother are like direct references to War of the Gargantuans. Yeah.

(56:53):
Gargantuas. Yeah. Like the weird Frankenstein giants, which I hear is like a
great classic token movie, but haven't seen.
But it's on the list i just love all the little
references but those were my favorites and uh
oh and just because it's super cheesy but i really love
it i love seeing the the mechagodzilla characters um heads up display and how

(57:15):
he just has like weapons everywhere and they're all really silly sounding like
x-ray cannon um eye drill yeah eye drills would sound horrifying i really.
Liked some of the references to like non toku things like
it was a small throwaway line but uh they interrogate

(57:35):
one of the creatures from like the underworld lovecraftian
area and like as they're giving the report of what they learned they just have
a line of like also uh time is a flat circle but i'm not sure how that relates
to anything which i had just finished watching true detective and that's like
what matthew mcconaughey is always going on about time is a

(57:57):
flat circle that was and i was i i love that series oh
yeah i i didn't expect to love it so much but like i
i wanted a lot more of that matthew mcconaughey
afterwards like i i just know i'm being all
memed now but i think god i
ain't true detective is such a vibe like i
love to just go on little mcconaughey rants anytime

(58:18):
a psychedelic idea comes up it's it works like oh man i know i've said that
probably like 90 times but it almost like the series needs that humor where
like I think if the series didn't have that humor you would lose interest because
after a certain point it would almost be like a really whimsical sociology study.
And the jokes, the inside jokes, you know, I think it has to remind the reader

(58:41):
that it's like, yeah, we're having fun. We're learning, but we're having fun.
One of the things I also enjoyed was there's the character I mentioned,
like, I think he's like red gargantua or something.
And he's like, smoke all my smokes, man. He's holding up these upside down smog stacks.
Oh, and I forgot about the guy to keep sharks like they're pigeons.

(59:02):
Like, oh, yeah, like megalodons. like megalodons that's
like a special treat for him yeah he keeps them alive though
and he has all these names for them and if i
was a giant creature i have giant sharks as pets like i would of course uh i
think my favorite thing of like i can't believe you put this in there it didn't
need to be there but the book is better for it they bring in like a shipment

(59:24):
of human-sized kaijus like what you'd see in a like common writer episode or
something and they're like
an acting troupe and they put on this musical play that's like about kaiju history. Yeah.
And it's clear they're doing Hamilton, but the plot is the original Godzilla
movie and like the scientists in it and like the invention of the oxygen destroyer.

(59:49):
And like, that's just the whole through line of the volume is like,
they'll keep cutting to this kaiju history as wrapped by little kaiju.
It was, because they show it from like the perspective of the monster and talk
about how it's like hey you're born and you you're in this new world and you've
got all this power but everyone hates you.
And yeah you accidentally destroy a city but there

(01:00:11):
are times when you want to destroy a city and it's like you know
what i'm a good person but also if i was a giant monster and there was a city
and i was reasonably sure it had been evacuated i'd probably destroy the city
i mean i would i would i would aim for like you know like the shopping mall
like the abandoned parts of the city yeah the place of the power rangers are
always fighting like you know it's the safe ground.

(01:00:34):
Those scenes with the Hamilton crew made me wonder if Xander Cannon actually
has some stage experience,
because one of the issues ends on this like really genius,
like lighting effect of like they kind of shine a skeleton onto the exterior
of an actor to like portray the oxygen destroyer going off or like his death.

(01:00:56):
Path and like it's a really subtle effect they apply
over a couple panels and like maybe zander is
just a genius artist but like this feels like someone who knows
a thing or two about stage lighting and seeing giant monsters
be stagehands was also just like i
i did stage crew back in high school which was forever ago so i'm not sure if
my experience really applies here but i could definitely see where it's like

(01:01:18):
you see monsters in the background trying to stay off stage while While they're
like simultaneously moving curtains or having giant monsters portray humans
where they're like, I'm Mr.
Scientist and I've created the oxygen destroyer and he's got glasses and a giant trench coat on.
He's like walking like a human across the stage, waving at everyone.
One of the like ones that really surprised me, but like was a delightful little reference.

(01:01:43):
Um, when one of the female guards is going to be like giving birth in a later volume.
They call 911 in the paramedics that come to help deliver the baby are the dino
bots from transformers all decked out in like paramedic gear with like a hologram
hospital. They project.
And like, that was just when I, it really clicked that just how like in an adventure

(01:02:09):
bros, how they always bring in like some character briefly mentioned or seen
in the background for like,
anytime they need a new plot relevant character in this, like,
Every time there is a narrative hole that needs to be filled,
Xander Cannon comes up with some, like, hilarious reference that,
like, it's just, like, it's clever, but it also fits what's needed really well.

(01:02:33):
And it's like, yeah, the paramedics didn't need to be the Dinobots,
but, like, it makes me really happy that they're here.
One of the Sentai protectors of the world, he flies around on a flying bike,
which looks just like Captain America's bike. from the Captain America movies from the 80s.
A silly, cheesy hang glider bike, which we still don't know why Cap's rolling

(01:02:58):
up on the Red Skull on a hang glider bike, but that's basically what it looked
like. It's called style, baby.
Now, having addressed, I think, all of the great standout references that I
had written down as I was reading the series,
I think we're probably ready to start wrapping up for the question of the week,
unless you have any final notes you want to throw in about kaiju no

(01:03:20):
other than it is a series where if you're
someone that always wants crisp clean artwork like
if you read like the current run of avengers and you're used to that kind of
artwork this is not going to be a comic book with that kind of artwork but the
art style really works for the story they're trying to tell and i think i think

(01:03:41):
if you give it a second chance it's a really fun series that will make you think
so today for for our question of the week.
I wanted to tailor it to you as someone who has quite a bit of experience with
tokusatsu-adjacent games.
Do you have any particular favorite or highly
recommended games specifically related to
kaiju and tokusatsu that like shine out above the

(01:04:03):
others right what's your personal favorite kaiju related
game that can be a tabletop an rpg or
even a video game that is hard um and just
just games not like movies or anything just games uh yeah
just games has to be in the realm of games so hard because there's
a lot of them there's one from like the sega genesis era which
i want to say it was called destroy all monsters it was an

(01:04:25):
arcade beat-em-up where you played as like eight different giant monsters
yes i'm cheating by looking at my tablet off camera
um i really
like pacific rim from uh evil genius
games uh which is another game that our friend brian's worked on
it uses a system similar to fifth edition dnd
and okay so it's a tabletop yeah and

(01:04:46):
i'm i'm a huge fan of that universe where i thought that universe
has been criminally under explored like
we got one really great movie and then one okay movie
and then a very confusing anime but it's
one of those it is one of my favorite settings and um
oh one of my favorite kaiju board games is king of tokyo yeah that was the main

(01:05:07):
one coming to mind for me that one's a lot yeah that's so cool i've spent a
lot of hours playing that game i used to play a similar game which was a miniature
game it was called monster apocalypse which is um still out although i.
Haven't played it in years but they've covered like every single kind of trope
where last time i looked at uh the website that had the game they had um uh

(01:05:28):
giant apes they had invading soviet union.
Doppelgangers and giant tank mecha um it's one of those things where the miniatures
always seem to be more collectible to me than the game uh because i enjoyed
the game but i also just like collecting more.
And that Pacific Rim one, I had no idea that had a tabletop,
but does that play with the whole synchronization thing between two people is

(01:05:53):
one of the mechanics? It is.
I love reading the books. I haven't got a chance to play it yet,
but I know that you pretty much pair up with someone there at the table,
although they have an option to have a three-pilot Jaeger, just like it was in the movies.
And you work together to pilot a
jaeger as you're fighting uh the kaiju and of

(01:06:13):
course you know you're you're not playing right you with the setting you're
playing as the rangers which again i love how
the reference to pacific river is like wait you're all rangers that's
a very specific name for people piloting giant
robots yeah i gotta look into that because like my one major complaint about
the power rangers tabletop at least its base game release was like I thought

(01:06:38):
the mechanics for the combined Megazord were really vague and really sparse.
And that was the main mechanic I wanted from that game.
Since there's a million superhero games out there that I can rework to be more tokusatsu-flavored.
But I specifically wanted a game designer better than myself to come up with

(01:06:59):
mechanics for how to get multiple players to control one giant mecha in a way
that's fun and satisfying.
That's so hard to do like because a lot
of games they're like one of you's the pilot and then the rest
of you just kind of like hangers on like literally and it's like oh that's
not as much fun at the table and then other games have
tried to be like oh well what if we just pass the ball around and

(01:07:21):
like everybody gets to be the pilot for a turn but that can be
frustrating because then what if you each player wants to do something different but
um i think that we're now kind of like in a nice era
of like game design where um it's not
just like the 1980s and it's like we've got this thing
called a d20 how do we use a d20 and
make a giant robot now it's um oh well

(01:07:42):
we've got like you know this setting and we can modify it with this hack
and we can get a pretty good game out of this and all
roads pretty much like lead to fun and i think
the answer i would throw out there that i'd tie into
this would be uh chroma squad which is like a computer kind of Final Fantasy
Tactics style RPG tactics game where you play a group of actors that are on

(01:08:07):
a show like Power Rangers and like you have to upgrade their special effects
and suits and over the course of the story,
you start to realize like, oh, this might be like kind of real what they're doing.
But uh their giant robot fights
i think have the closest thing to a mechanic that like if
i were a better designer i think could translate of

(01:08:27):
like uh depending on what mechs you use there's
like cards of the moves available to you
so like if each character depending on what robot
they contribute has like a number of like
what set moves they're able to do on their turn either
passing the buck or like okay i can buff
us in this way or i can contribute this

(01:08:49):
to a turn with this kind of cool down or something would
probably be the way i'd want to do it but uh yeah chroma
squad's great it's on sale on steam like all the time and yeah like the thing
is that from a pretty cool studio and like i love the story of it i love its
world and if any of the people behind that game are out there i would love to

(01:09:09):
make a chroma squad comic because like It's Power Rangers,
but you can do almost anything and play with the fact it's a show.
That's an awesome creative sandbox.
I will gladly enrich this IP.
Let me help. I love really meta comics and everything, too. So that would be my jam.
Now, Sarah, as far as your upcoming projects go, what can you tell our listeners

(01:09:34):
about any upcoming games or other things you're working on?
We just had My Little Pony, a story for all seasons drop, where it's four themed
adventures for each of the seasons.
And then I run an adventure which features the Griffins, who are one of my favorite
characters to explore in My Little Pony.
I get to write about Griffins. And I know it's weird. I like obscure,

(01:09:58):
weird animals, but I've always loved birds.
And so bird-themed monsters are really cool. getting to work on the griffins
and explore their culture and talk and not just portray them as like you know
because it's the negative stereotype of oh yeah they're obsessed with greed
and gold and trying to move beyond that and be like they could be heroes too
i mean they're great bad guys but they could be heroes.

(01:10:19):
Um i just had the uh werewolf fifth
edition storyteller screen drop so if you're a big werewolf fan.
And you need more help with running your games it's a pretty nifty
add-on and then oh um for from renegade
i designed a lot of the equipment and mobile bases
for the the gi joe quartermasters guide
where i got to i know this is gonna sound super nerdy

(01:10:41):
for the people at home but i got to look up old school toys look
up the little things on the back of the boxes for the old school toys and
then be like okay what if i was actually a weapons manufacturer
trying to pitch a terror drone to some
terrorist be like this is your
terror drone this is what it's used for this is the many uses
this is its weaknesses this is its price point wow that

(01:11:04):
sounds like the most fun way you can like repurpose those
are like i love that you got to look at the backs of
old toy boxes for a job like for
professional reasons that that's rad it's fun
and i i couldn't afford
um the the cool gi joe vehicles
when i was a kid so i'm reading all these things like the

(01:11:25):
the weird like shark looking submarine
that cobra had and the weird laser
weapons it has attached to it trying to come up with a practical and reasonable
reason for like the cobra covert spy post which is basically like a barricade
and binoculars and be like yeah so this is a real piece of equipment and why

(01:11:46):
it would be useful and not just take the binoculars off and hide in a tree and.
Now, Sarah, where are followers that want to know where they can follow your
future projects, games, and hopefully this comic someday?
Where can they find you? You can find me over on Blue Sky as Triceratops.
Triceratops.BlueSky.whatever their naming thing is. But Triceratops.

(01:12:09):
Really wish I had grabbed by Ceratops, but, you know, it was already taken.
And then you can find me over on Twitter as, I hate that I'm so old, I look up my own name.
Cerastone83B over on Twitter. I post rarely over there, but it is one of the
best ways I could promote my work because my engagement is pretty big over there.
And yeah, I'm a I'm a big old fan of Blue Sky. Like it feels just tailored right.

(01:12:33):
I'm not getting a bunch of crap suggested at me.
All the bigots still have Twitter. So I think they just don't really bother to move to Blue Sky.
And Blue Sky has some really nice blocking lists for the transphobes that are on there.
So, yeah, big endorsement for Blue Sky for me.
Like it's my own little mini twitter of the
creators i really like that are super yeah and it's it's

(01:12:56):
still fun it's got some kinks it needs to work out but.
Overall i i really enjoy it as a platform because
it reminds me of how twitter used to be the only thing
that i really hate is how if you comment on someone's post
it shows up for everyone else not that i say anything
like salacious or you know mean over there but it's
just people are like you talk a whole lot about the paper shortage

(01:13:17):
in the gaming industry and that's clogged my feed and
i'm like oh sorry but it's kind of important sorry i
could talk about paper a lot and they do have settings that like okay a response
has to receive so many likes to show up on your feed and that that does come
in handy because i had the same problem when i first signed up of just like
a lot of responses to conversations i was not following being the majority of.

(01:13:40):
My yeah but bringing this home here uh if it wasn't.

(01:14:40):
Music.