Happy 6th Annual International Read A Comic Book Naked Day!

I’m betting at least a few of you forgot what day it is. You were going to go home tonight and get hassled by your significant other for being a total dirtbag and forgetting to bring some comics home. That’s why we’re here, friend. To help you in your time of need. So stop off at your local comic emporium, snag a few for you and your loved ones, and indulge in the decadent mingling of two of Mankind’s greatest sins. And, as usual, if you’re living in the tundra like me and aren’t able to get outside for your four-colour fix, we’ve got you covered after the jump.

One of the classes I looked forward to the most when I went to college was storyboarding. Unfortunately, they cut the class the year I began. It was a real let-down. Every once in awhile we’d get a storyboarding assignment, but usually it was for a sequence too short to really sink your teeth into. Surprisingly, the only exception was Drama class, which was considered by most to be a low-priority.

The following is for an assignment where we had to storyboard a sequence involving a damsel in distress being held captive by a villain. No, really. Anyway, I whipped this up in the class before I had to hand it in, without reference, which is why Godzilla looks worse than GINO. And I don’t even want to talk about Mothra, though I kind of like Anguirus and a few shots of Megalon. Also, I stripped the Notes, Camera Movements and Dialogue, mostly because they consisted of “Truck-in to Monster Island” and “Curoo Curoo”.

Get naked, enjoy, and make sure you check out concurrent IRACBND celebrations at Flat Earth and I Was Ben!

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The Brooklyn Rail has posted a terrific little interview with Death Note director Shusuke Kaneko.

“At the same time the creepiest part of shooting was when Light was actually writing down the name. I was focusing on his hand; it’s only writing but at the same time it means he’s killing someone, it kind of symbolizes the death of another person. So for me it was a stressful procedure just to shoot that particular scene.”

What’s especially gratifying about it is the interviewer’s knowledge of the director’s intriguing career choices and Kaneko’s willingness to talk about it. They run through Kaneko’s past as a director on roman-porno, his miraculous revamp of Gamera, their favourite kaiju, and even talk about Death Note a little. The only thing missing is a discussion of Kaneko’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, possibly the best of the Millennium Era entries.

A few warnings upfront. The quality here is atrocious, particularly the sound. Also, Paramount has been taking these down fairly quickly, so I can’t guarantee how much longer this particular video will be available.

People have been speculating as to the nature of the J.J. Abrams-produced project code-named Cloverfield for awhile now. The trailer seen above has only added fuel to the fire.

In the event that you won’t, or can’t, see for yourself, the teaser shows a group of young adults throwing a farewell party for a friend in an apartment in New York City. Distant rumbling, power outages, and inhuman roars prompt the partygoers to go to the roof to see what’s going on. An explosion blocks away causes everyone to panic, making their way to the streets. There a giant projectile falls into the crowd, causing all sorts of property damage. The trailer is seen through the lens of the video cameras from the party and apparently the entire movie will be shot the same way.

The general consensus seems to be that this will be a giant monster movie, with some speculating that it is in fact a remake of The Host or Godzilla. Others are convinced that it will be a Lost tie-in.

Despite the quality of the video, I’m sold. I’ve been anticipating a ground-level kaiju movie for years.

Datajunkie offers up an incredible amount of Ditko delineated giant monster madness discovered within various issues of Charlton horror comics.

Stan “The Man” Lee may have made a number of morally questionable decisions over his career, but deciding to place Steve Ditko on Spider-man wasn’t one of them. Ditko was at least as stylized as Kirby, but when it came to superheroes he was a bit of an odd fit. That’s why he was perfect for certain characters, ones which required a special kind of nervous energy that seemed to work on the inside as opposed to simply bursting out. Ditko’s philosophical beliefs may have been black-and-white, but no one has been able to visually craft characters living in conflict quite as effectively as he did.

Steve Ryfle, author of Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star, was the first North American to write a book centering on the history of Godzilla. With the release this week for the first time on DVD in North America of the original Gojira, CHUD conducted an interview with the author to get his thoughts on over 50 years of The Big G. Here he pretty much nails the appeal.

We watched everything growing up – this was before video when you could get anything at any time. Growing up we watched any monster movie, but what stood out about the Japanese films in particular are their sense of imagination. They take place – especially the films of the late 50s and early 60s – take place in a kind of alternate reality. I always found a lot of the American giant monster movies kind of boring. I would sit there waiting for the monster to show up. They were so dry a lot of the time, and they were so interested in the cause and the relationship between a nuclear explosion or a genetic experiment or whatever it might be, and the monster. My favorite example is The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, which opened with a nuclear bomb. You see the explosion and you see the monster come out from under the ice – how much more direct can you get?

The Japanese films reinvented the genre in its own image. The films became less and less concerned with that, and had a world where giant monsters just exist. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world like that? I would.

It’s somewhat rare that kaiju films get it right and place you within that world, but it’s certainly worth the wait when they succeed. In a weird way, Godzilla and co. are almost Lovecraftian in nature. There’s a weird mix of fear and fascination that comes with viewing something that not only cannot exist, but cannot be ignored.

Mike Sterling, my mirror universe counterpart, has posted another one of his fine abridged message board debates, this time concerning what would happen if Wolverine attempted to fight Godzilla.

“This is a retarded thread. Against the real Godzilla the entire Xmen roster would be dead. You even knew this when you made the thread, so what was the point?”

Read through to the end of the post. The final comment had me on the floor.

I’ve been on a Kaiju kick recently, spurred on by X-Y-Z-Cosmonaut’s run of Godzilla soundtracks I mentioned a couple weeks ago. In fact, I’ve compiled about 20 Japanese monster films that I’ll be plowing through in September. So the recent news that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone will be helming an homage to those films makes for a nice replacement for Snakes on a Plane in my heart.

They plan to follow with “Giant Monsters Attack Japan!,” a film scripted by J.F. Lawton (”Under Siege”) that will combine live-action with the “rubber suit” techniques made popular in Asian imports like “Godzilla.”

Parker will direct each film and Stone produce; both will work on the scripts with the writers. Sean Daniel and Nickelodeon will also be producers on “Giant Monsters.”

Nickelodeon? Oh, my.

Found via Bloody Disgusting.

X-Y-Z-Cosmonaut’s CosmoBlog is one of my favourite sharity sites. I was going to post a clip of the day to his extensive Dr. Who selection way back when I first began The Horror Blog, but one thing led to another and it got lost in the shuffle. Recently, after a short hiatus, the X-Y-Z-Cosmonaut has produced a whopping 15 soundtracks from various Toho giant monster movies, including Godzilla Vs. The Thing, Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero, and a symphony presentation of some of Akira Ifukube’s more memorable themes. Sprinkled throughout are a smattering of other Japanese fantasy treats, from children’s Godzilla storybook records to the Mahou Sentai MagiRanger album and much more. In fact, all this kaiju talk has inspired me to crack out a dozen or so Godzilla films for a Tokyo-destroying movie marathon.

The Kaiju madness begins here and moves forward to the present.

Bookgasm recently showed some Kaiju love by reviewing the Marvel Monster collection. This book contains both the recent parodies/homages of the sub-genre released last year, and the atomic age comics that inspired them. These were the creatures that stalked the pages of Marvel Comics before the advent of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Avengers and most of the characters that made the company famous. In fact, in many of those early super-hero comics you can see Kirby and Lee easing into the super-hero racket by featuring bouts between the new-fangled heroes and the brutes that came before.

To whet your appetite for four-colour monster mayhem, may I suggest The Monster Blog, which not only tracks every monster comic Marvel produced back in the day, but is also home to every Kirby monster comic not yet reprinted in the modern era. From Monstro… The Menace From The Murky Depths to I Accepted The Deadly Challenge of Zarkorr, we’re talking 39 wonderful stories by the man who would become what many, including this author, believe to the greatest superhero artist who ever lived.

Don’t ask! Just click it!

The art blog Drawn has the goods on The Graphic Imperative, a poster exhibit devoted to sociopolitical causes such as awareness, tolerance and civil rights. They also seem to have an odd appreciation for giant movie monsters.

The image encourages reconciliation between two “giant” nations, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., symbolized by Godzilla and King Kong. The poster was designed to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. It was included in the “Images of Survival” exhibition project organized by the Shoshin Society, Washington, DC.

Wait a minute. Which one is the U.S. and which one is supposed to be the U.S.S.R.? And why is Japan getting the shaft here? The Cold War was so confusing.