What do you get when you cross the dramatic, flavorful narratives of telenovelas, the stoic heroics of Mexican supermen, luchador icon El Santo, and the rampaging destruction of a Godzilla movie? I’d have called you insane, and that it would be a pipe dream of mine to see come to a fruition. Well, thankfully, it has! Monster Matador is the latest in independent kaiju comics that we’ve come across on Kaiju United, and what true entertainment spectacle of a comic it is!
I had the chance to chat with the writer and creator of Monster Matador, Steven Prince, to discuss the comic, collaborating with Brazilian artist Fabio Alves, and of course, the power of the monsters that we all cherish. Currently on their third mini-series, Monster Matador is going strong, and continues to captivate and bring laughs to readers all over the world. And of course, because they’re so theatrical, I got a Monster Matador shot glass from them for backing the Kickstarter. Who else would have done that? Read on, and get a real insight into our favorite slice of Mexico and kaiju!
Interview:
JL: Jacob Lyngle
SP: Steven Prince
JL: Hello, Kaiju United readers, listeners, viewers — however you’re tuning in. I’m here with Steven Prince, the writer of Monster Matador. MM is an amazingly entertaining independent comic book. Steven, do you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?
SP: Sure. My name is Steven Prince. I’m the creator and writer of Monster Matador. I used to be in the toy industry in marketing and product development where I developed toys for retail and animated series. I’ve been doing comics all my life, but I kind of taken started taking it a little more seriously after I got laid off. And in 2020, we launched Monster Matador with Fabio Alves our artist and Alex Zief our colorist.
JL: I didn’t know you had a toy background! Can you name some of the projects you were on?
SP: The main one was called “In My Pocket” and the big brand from that was “Puppy in My Pocket”. Then pretty much anything in your pocket like “Jungle in My Pocket”, Baby, etc. We also did one called “Stink Blasters”, which were these figures that you squeeze they smelled like puke, cigarettes, and other gross stuff. One more that I co-created was Power Buggz. Unfortunately, the company went out of business right as the show was going into production. It was like Ninja Turtles, but with bugs.
It would have been amazing. This type of thing happens more often than people know or hear. You get right up to the finish line and then it doesn’t happen for budgeting or whatever reason. It was pretty heartbreaking.
JL: That’s truly unfortunate. You said you’ve been doing comics for pretty much all your life. When did you start doing them on a professional level?
SP: So I would say probably around 2013-2014. That’s when I really got going. I had Monster Matador as an idea and a concept since like, 2008. Truthfully, I just didn’t really know what to do with it, but around 2014, Comixology Submit started, so I went to actually do it.. At the time, I was kind of in-between jobs, so I just decided to start writing and drawing this comic. My drawing level is nowhere near Fabio’s, of course, so it was a bit simplistic; plus I was just doing it for fun. I only meant to do like one or two issues just to kind of get a feel for the character and the world he exists in. I felt like that was the best way to develop this universe. And then I had a kid, and my time just got sucked up. But I just I just kept doing it and wound up doing 12 issues.
The plan was always to find an artist, someone at the level of what you see Fabio doing. I wanted to do it seriously in tone. Fabio’s art is light years ahead of mine and not as cartoony, so it’s kind of a different tone and I decided to kind of reboot the book. I was going to shop it around to publishers, but then the pandemic happened so we went the Kickstarter route. We’re on our seventh Kickstarter campaign!
JL: Are you planning on 12 issues like your original idea? Or are you going to do more of a limited series?
SP: Pretty much.We’ve done a three issue “Tango of the Matadors”, a 68 page book called “Afripocalypse”, then we did a collection of those with a bonus story. Now we’ve got the new one — it’s called “Once Upon Some Monsters in Mexico”. In this one, we introduced a team of monster-fighting luchadores, which readers will find fun. This one’s going to be four issues and after that, there’s going to be a follow up series. That’ll round us out to about 12 issues of content. That will be kind of, I hate the term, but it’ll kind of be our Phase One.
If you read the story, we’re laying the groundwork for the world and everything like that. I don’t want to give too much away, but essentially, it’s be a bunch of little stories within an overarching 12 issue story arc. That will set up everything moving forward. But don’t worry, everything is reader friendly! You can just pick up any story at any time! All you have to know is that he’s a Matador and he fights monsters!
Art by Fabio Alvez
Colors by Alex Zief
JL: My starting point was “Once Upon Some Monsters in Mexico”. I really appreciated being able to jump in on your 7th comic, and not be completely lost!
SP: I really like what Mike Mignola did with Hellboy, where he did a series of mini-series that you can just kind of pick up anywhere and you don’t feel lost. They’re self-contained stories within a larger universe of stories.
It makes it easier for Kickstarter. What we’ve found is that people will try it out and then come back and grab the ones they missed. With this approach, you don’t feel the weight of having to be like, oh, man, they’re on issue seven or eight. Now I’ve got to catch up!
JL: You mentioned Mignola. Are you a comic fan or reader?
SP: Big fan of comics!
JL: What runs would you recommend to readers of Monster Matador?
SP: I love The Metabarons byAlejandro Jodorowsky and Juan Gimenez. I love pretty much anything Paul Pope does. The Chris Claremont X-Men. There’s a book that Eddie Campbell did called Bacchus. It’s basically about the Greek god of wine. It’s really hard to describe because it’s pretty much everything you can imagine going into a comic! I read so much; it’s hard to come up with a list!
JL: That is me and movies. As soon as you said Alejandro Jodorowsky, I was like “I hope he’s seen The Holy Mountain!”
SP: I’ve seen it! Jodorowsky was here in LA a few years ago and I got to see him twice. So that was pretty cool. I’m on Letterboxd too, that movie app for your phone. I feel like I watch even more movies than ever before, because I’m chasing numbers. I watch a lot of movies!
JL: Letterboxd is great!
What’s your relationship with monster movies like? You’re doing a monster comic — are you a fan of kaiju films?
SP: Yeah! I grew up watching Godzilla on TV. Every now and then I would catch an episode of Ultraman. Whatever and whenever it was on. But those movies, I love them. They’re just fun for me. I’m not deep into the lore and things like that. For me, it’s just the enjoyment of it. Godzilla, all those movies, are just really fun to watch. I got that Criterion Collection set that they put out and I just love them. They’re so quirky and weird, you know?
JL: Especially the 1970’s era.
SP: Yeah, they’ve just got so much charm to them. I haven’t seen Minus One yet, but I hear it’s amazing. The ones that Legendary did are really fun, but, personally, to me, the more serious Godzilla like that, kind of loses something for me. I love the man in suit sort of vibe, it’s just pure fun.
JL: That 60s-70s era is just ripe with fun monster designs. I think of Baltan, the alien sejin with the pincer hands from Ultraman. You would not see a monster that looks like that anywhere else.
SP: Right? That’s what kind of inspired the tone of Monster Matador. It’s serious, but we try to keep that quirkiness.
JL: Monster Matador has a unique style, too. It has its own unique “Flavor”, in both the writing and visual presentation.
SP: I watch a lot of El Santo films. You know, the Luchador movie star? I used to write comedies and things like that. Fabio plays it so straight. To give him and Alex credit, it’s definitely the melding of the two, of the writing and the art that creates that kind of “flavor” you brought up. It’s really funny to see how stoic and melodramatic the Matador is drawn. It has that telenovela type feel to it. Comics are awesome like that, you can get two things that you think wouldn’t mix very well, and then they end up creating something new and flavorful.
Art by Fabio Alvez
Colors by Alex Zief
JL: It’s like cooking! Two flavors you wouldn’t expect to come together end up making a great dish because of the chemistry. The comic is very pulpy. I’m a huge fan of Santo films, too, so hearing that you guys enjoy them makes a lot of sense!
SP: It’s funny you mentioned that pulpy aspect because the Matador character’s background is right up that alley. He’s an orphan and was adopted by a matador family and that’s how he was trained. Then he married the daughter. And, of course, he’s a bit of swashbuckler. Super pulpy.
JL: Regarding your artist, Fabio — How did you meet him? You’re in California and he is based in Brazil. Did you guys meet through networking online?
SP: Fabio drew a book for a friend of mine, Rylend Grant, who’s a writer/screenwriter. They had done a book for Action Lab called Banjax, which won a few Ringo Awards. I had a different artist in mind when I when I had written Tango of the Matadors whose style was a bit closer mine. Like I said, mine was a bit more cartoony. Unfortunately, that artist got busy and he couldn’t do it.
I was talking to Rylend, and I mentioned that I needed to find a new artist. Fabio had just finished Banjax and Rylend offered to introduce me. I’d been impressed with how well he was able to visualize Rylend’s scripts, but his style was not really what I was looking for. And I remember kind of looking at Banjax again and being like, yeah, it might not be the thing that I’m thinking of, but I’d be an idiot not to work with him.
He did a couple pages and it was like, you know, like a light bulb, “Oh, wait a minute, this is exactly what Monster Matador should look like.” What’s funny is that I had written the scripts in a certain kind of way for this other artist and I didn’t wind up changing it for Fabio. It worked because there were bits of stuff in that book that were just like straight comedy that Fabio played serious. It’s so serious that it just gave it this whole other layer; it just became so over the top and melodramatic.
I think that kind of gave the book its uniqueness. It was really just good timing and luck. We’ve been doing it now for four years. It’s been a lot of fun! We’ve been working long enough now that my scripts are a little looser in the sense that everything he needs is on the page, but I’ll let him play with layouts and visuals. We have a really good working relationship.
JL: Going into this discussion, you mentioned that he speaks Portuguese, and not too much English. How does the language barrier work when you’re working on a comic like this? Do you just have to translate back and forth?
SP: Here’s a funny story. When we were doing Tango, which was the first series, sometimes he would send layouts and I would be like, what are you doing here? This isn’t what I wrote. At one point in production, he had sent something that completely baffled me. At the time, we talked through Facebook Messenger and I asked if we could just do a call? That might be better for us to communicate.
And he’s like, I don’t speak English. This whole time, I thought he spoke English. Oops. So to help improve the process, I simplified my writing. Usually, I’d write how I’m talking, but that doesn’t always translate into a different language. So that’s where we were getting kind of mixed up. And it wasn’t anything bad, it was just off script. So now, I just write very straightforward and literal, not conversational.
JL: Universally.
SP: Exactly.
JL: That makes a lot of sense. And I know from experience doing this website — going to Japanese, back to English to Japanese, sometimes, like, almost, you have to structure your questions in a different manner. I speak Spanish too. So it’s like, going back and forth. Even the structuring of sentences is just so different. I think a lot of people that speak English as a second language have said that speaking English is almost backwards, in a way.
SP: Very true. I speak a little Spanish, but I speak French, too. It is backwards if you if you translate Spanish and if you ever listened to a native Spanish speaker who speaks English sometimes the words are flipped. That’s just a straight translation of the language.
JL: With the monster stuff, is there a distinct way that you approach your kaiju? I know you go for fun in storytelling, but what about design? Are you involved with that at all, or is that Fabio’s territory?
SP: I try to do something that kind of fits the country or the area the story takes place. The first one took place in Guatemala, and have these black flies there. So that’s where Volagante came from, which is a kind of giant Mothra type thing. I designed that one with it a skull shaped print on its face.
The second one, Afripocalypse, took place in South Africa andgot changed up a little because I started writing that and then the pandemic hit. The idea for that one became something more like “How do you fight a virus?”, and that’s where we got the idea of the jungle actually coming to life. It’s not like a traditional kaiju. Finally, for Once Upon Some Monsters in Mexico, we have the giant cockroach “Megaracha”, and we’ll also have Chupacabra coming in soon. I try to keep it relevant to the region.
Art by Fabio Alvez
Colors by Alex Zief
JL: So, when directing Fabio, you would say something like, “A gigantic cockroach appears!” and then just let him bring that to fruition?
SP: Exactly. It’s funny, we were doing a bonus story right before Once Upon Some Monsters in Mexico, and the reveal at the end is the Megaracha, the cockroach. Fabio did several versions of the reveal, but the scale wasn’t quite right. When we did the main series, he did a new version and nailed it
It’s comparable when you see a movie and there’s an after-credit scene or they ran out of budget, and they’ve got the thing and it looks like a certain way, but then you see the sequel and it’s like, they have the money for it and the design is completely different. I thought that was a nice touch, right?
Especially because it kind of fits in with the kaiju films where Godzilla is always evolving or changing looks each movie. So I thought that was kind of fun that kind of change in between. It’s almost like, okay, now we have a budget, now we can do this massive kaiju. Whereas before, we only had this little cockroach and he looks more like an actual cockroach.
What’s nice about doing it that way is that we do play a little fast and loose with things like that. Sometimes we will do things like that very consciously because it kind of adds a bit of flavor to it. I love those old kaiju movies, the man in suit, and I think it gives it that kind of vibe. Other times we’ll just play around with it, like the cockroach.
JL: You’re a marketing guy. You’ve been involved with toys and multiple animated series. Have you ever thought about branching out Monster Matador?
SP: Absolutely. I have a partner who I’m working with on that. And obviously, with the strikes that happened, everything was on pause for six months, seven months. So I’m hoping next year we can hopefully try and get some movement on that. I kind of wanted to wait till we had a collection to start pitching the project. Now that we have that, fingers crossed!
JL: I kind of thought it would work well animated like that brand-new “Blue Samurai” series on Netflix. The way Fabio draws Matador gives me those stylized, but not cartoony vibes.
SP: When I do cons, I can’t tell you how many people will walk by and say be like, “That’s a great concept. That should be a movie or series!”
JL: There’s a nice renaissance of indie kaiju comic books occurring this year that we’ve extensively covered on the site. How does it feel to be a part of this nice revolution and innovation of kaiju stories within the comics medium?
SP: It’s fun! You know, I think Kickstarter has really opened that up, because it’s really given a home to books off the beaten path. I don’t know why no one publishes more kaiju books right now. You can clearly see that it’s blowing up with the success of Minus One and the MonsterVerse.
I’ve discovered a lot of really cool books and creators through Kickstarter. Territory by Blake McCarthy is one that I really enjoy. With this new campaign, because I’m stupid and didn’t think about it earlier, I’ve started getting more involved in the kaiju community and fandom. I got to tell you, comics can get really crazy sometimes, and every community has it of course, but the kaiju community has been really welcoming.
People have been really excited about the book. I think there’s real hunger within the community for these types of stories and that’s really cool. And I love looking at everyone’s collections. My wife would kill me if I if I bought this stuff, but there’s some really killer figures. This morning before our interview I saw this awesome Godzilla statue and the back fins all lit up. It was unbelievable!
JL: There’s a guy in Australia that I just added to the Kaiju United group that’s got a home theater set up. He’s got professional movie theater posters with all the movies everywhere, nice lighting and sound, and concessions. I’m like dude, can I have your job? That’s my dream!
Art by Fabio Alvez
Colors by Alex Zief
JL: So, Steven, a few more questions for you before we wrap up.
What do these monster movies mean to you on a deeper level?
SP: Outside of being fun, I think it’s always that it’s about the people to me. Monsters are these kind of existential threats that we can’t truly get rid of. They’re just too gigantic. They’ll always come back. I think on a subconscious level, they’re kind of comforting in that sense, where you kind of go, you know, there’s all this stuff going on in the world that you have no control over. And that’s sort of what monsters are. I think that in some subconscious way, that’s why we all connect with them. Because there are things that are beyond our control and our ability. It’s almost cathartic, right? When you’re watching these to see that, yes, there is hope that we can overcome these monsters and these greater threats and make a better world for us all.
But on a conscious level, I just freakin’ love watching monster movies! (laughs)
Bringing it back to Monster Matador, l always pitch that it’s about a dad who wants his daughter to grow up in a world that’s peaceful. And no matter how much he fights, no matter how many monsters he defeats, there’s always more. As a parent, he tries to shield her from that. And as a parent myself, you kind of see as your kids get older, you sort of lose that ability to kind of shield them from like, the monsters in the real world. So I think that that’s where those stories really resonate.
As a writer, I’ve always written comedies and stuff. If you told me 10 years ago, 20 years ago, you know, the thing that most people would know me for is a crazy comic about a Matador that fights monsters, I’d be like, no way. But I love it. It’s a crazy world filled with monster fighting matadors and luchadores and giant cockroaches, but at the end of the day, it’s a very grounded and real human story about a father and his love for his daughter.
JL: Real quick — since you brought up that human story, it made me think of Godzilla: Minus One. I won’t spoil anything, but you should definitely give that a watch.
SP: My plan is to try and catch it in the theater in the next week or so!
JL: Awesome!
What’s next for Monster Matador? Where can we find the MM team?
SP: We’ve got the pre-launch for our next Kickstarter campaign live. That will go live January 8, so please support us if you can.
You can find us in several places – www.monstermatador.com is the main site. Fabio, Alex and I are on Twitter on our own accounts, and I also run a Monster Matador Twitter account.
JL: Steven, it has been a lovely time chatting with you about Monster Matador. I just wanted to thank you for hopping on with Kaiju United.
SP: Yeah, absolutely. It was great. Thank you.
Monster Matador Links:
Kickstarter Pre-Launch
Official Website
Monster Matador Twitter
Steven’s Twitter
Artist Fabio Alvez’s Twitter
Colorist Alex Zief’s Twitter
