Imagining Ourselves As The Giant Monster– Talking Kaijus With ‘Stomped’ Creator Ross Radke

The Kaiju anthology Stomped is back in a new crowdfunding campaign on Zoop. If funded, the new edition will combine the first four issues of the series, putting the individual stories in chronological order while also adding new material. Comicon.com discussed the project with series co-creator Ross Radke, who discussed why we are so drawn to these monsters as well as the new story he made for this collection.

Tom Smithyman: Why do you think we love kaijus so much? I mean, most of the time they are pretty bad news for puny humans, right?

Ross Radke: I imagine part of why we love kaiju relates to why most children, after building an impressive castle out of blocks or sand, delight in its catastrophic destruction under their mighty kicks. Imagining ourselves as the giant monster is a sort of power fantasy akin to superheroes or epic fantasy, where we imagine having god-like power, to save and destroy in equal measure, depending on the whims of our heart.

Although for me, I find just as much delight in imagining being tiny. I’ve always been fascinated by reptiles, insects, fungi, and the microscopic realm. The worlds beneath our feet, under the bark of trees, in tide pools. The kaiju genre allows for a playful inversion of scale.

I believe that the essential function of storytelling is communal bonding through shared catharsis. In many cases kaiju represent the existential threat of natural disasters and nuclear weapons. And like superheroes, kaiju can exist in many different genres, from horror and fantasy, to comedy and romance.

Smithyman: What makes a great kaiju?

Radke: Visually speaking, while I do have a fondness for rubber costumes. My sensibilities gravitate towards more alien designs directly inspired by the wonderfully bizarre creatures found in nature.

Interesting things can be done with an essentially humanoid body plan (the Xenomorph and Hedorah being two of my favorites), but it’s always fun to see things that push the boundaries of what a giant animal might actually look like. Biollante, Legion (from Gamera) and Garth Edwards’s Monsters are all great examples.

Ultimately though, a great design is wasted without a good story. A great kaiju should serve to reinforce the dramatic themes being explored. If the monster can somehow visually relate to the heart of the story, that’s usually a good thing, though how literal you get depends on its function in the plot.

Smithyman: This anthology takes the individual stories and reorders them in chronological order. Why was this approach important to you, and why choose crowdfunding to make it a reality?

Radke: Stomped was originally conceived as a standalone graphic novel, but the world kept growing in my imagination, beyond my ability to tackle on my own. I came up with the idea of introducing the world of Stomped in an anthology and wrote eight standalone stories that I could collaborate with other artists on.

I was still working 60-hour work weeks as a retail manager when I started working on the first anthology issue. Crowdfunding the anthology as four double-sized issues – with two main stories and some extra shorts and back matter – was simply a necessity to be able to finish the project and pay my collaborators.

What I did not anticipate was how reader feedback would influence the final shape of the anthology. I underestimated my own strengths as an artist and storyteller and found myself retroactively trying to add more connective tissue to the individual stories.

I had time to figure out how to weave characters and story elements across multiple stories, which was largely absent from the original scripts. I think they still work as standalone stories, but they definitely benefit from being read together in the proper in-universe chronology. This collection will be my preferred way for new readers to discover the world of Stomped.

Smithyman: You wrote and drew a new story for this collection. What was it like coming back to these tales for the first time in several years?

Radke: I’ve been actively working on the anthology issues and future Stomped comics for over 5 years, so despite some gaps in releasing new material, it’s never felt like something I took a break from. That being said, while organizing the stories for this collection, I was able to look at everything with fresh eyes and realized there was an opportunity to use this new story to comment on the larger meta-narrative.

The “new” story is actually one of the first scripts I wrote, which never made it into the individual issues. There’s a character that ended up appearing in multiple stories, that I’ve never drawn myself, so I found a way to include them in this one in a way that hopefully bring some closure to this phase of Stomped.

Smithyman: While you did thumbnails in addition to the script, this is the first time you wrote for another artist in André Díaz. Talk a little about that collaboration. 

Radke: I am so fortunate to have had André Díaz as a collaborator on the first issue. He took a huge leap of faith with me! My first self-published comic, my first crowdfunding campaign, my first time writing for another artist – it was an incredible learning experience!

A lot was worked out through trial and error. I sent him a full script and thumbnail layouts in an effort to make things as easy for him as possible, not for lack of confidence in his abilities as an artist and storyteller. His creature designs blew my mind – it was like he had pulled them straight from my imagination and then improved them!

We both work digitally, so it was relatively easy for him to make revisions when necessary. There was one page he had to redraw because there was simply no way for me to fit the expositional dialogue (my fault entirely). He asked if he could expand the 10-page script to 12 pages, which improved the pacing of the ending. I asked him to set the story in any city he wanted to draw, so he, a native of Spain, chose to destroy an iconic location in Madrid.

Had it not been for André, the Stomped anthology might never have happened.

Smithyman: You had a number of other collaborators on this project. Was managing everyone’s inputs a challenge, or did it all come together easily?

Radke: I wouldn’t say it came together easily, but I will say that every artist who appears in the book is someone I’d be happy to work with again. I hope they feel the same! Everyone brought their best to this project. Working with artists from around the world gave the project a diversity of style and an international perspective that I couldn’t have accomplished on my own.

So credit where credit is due: André Díaz, Hugo Feal-Permuy, Guy Pradel, Dominic Black, Joshua Green, Chris Doray, Matthew Sargent, Matt Strackbein – thank you all for your contributions to Stomped! Also, shout out to Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, who lettered almost every story.

The anthology was created as a kind of collaboration workshop. In some cases, I wrote full scripts, loose synopsis-style scripts, provided layouts and even included a few shorts written by the artists. In all cases I encouraged them to give me input on the story and come up with their own character and creature designs. Some worked digitally, some traditionally. Some gave me regular progress updates and asked for feedback, some I barely heard from until finished pages showed up in my inbox. Some artists wanted to color their own work, some I colored.

I also got to commission pinups from a few incredible artists – Grim Wilkins, Callum Diggle, Christian Gonzalez and Maria Wolf.

Smithyman: OK, the world is again being invaded, and you are about to get stomped to death by a kaiju. Describe the creature and how you want it to finish you off.

Radke: My first instinct was to say I hope I’m with my loved ones when the ends comes, but then I realized that means they’d all die horrible deaths with me! So I guess I’d rather be out enjoying the solitude of nature, taking in the view of a beautiful landscape and then having my skull swiftly crushed before I even realize what’s happening.

For some reason, I’m picturing something like a pterodactyl grabbing my head with a weird claw and tossing me into its beak before taking flight towards the nearest city.

Smithyman: What a way to go! Thanks for taking the time to talk about Stomped.