Our regular Kaiju United readers will know that one of our great passions is highlighting the independent creators inhabiting our community. To kick off 2025, we went back to our roots and discovered Stomped, an epic kaiju anthology featuring creator Ross Radke, plus his various collaborations with artists and writers. Now being collected in a beautiful single volume in a Zoop campaign, KU got the chance to catch up with Ross and ask him about the book, his process as an artist, and why this book stands out to kaiju fans and comic lovers alike.
Jacob Lyngle: Hello, Kaiju United! I’m here with our first guest of 2025! We’re excited to sit down with the illustrator and creator behind Stomped, an epic kaiju anthology series, Ross Radke! The comic features a different collaboration with an artist/writer each issue to build a large and compassing world full of monsters. Ross, did you want to go ahead and introduce yourself?
Ross Radke: Yeah! My name is Ross Radke, I’m an indie writer & artist that has been doing their own thing for the past five years. I am the creator of Stomped, which is a Kaiju comic anthology series that I have self-published. We have crowdfunded four issues through Kickstarter since 2020, and now they’re being released in a paperback collection. I’m also the creator of the webtoon series SpandEx, which is on hiatus right now, as well as the artist for Milagro, which is a Lucha Libre graphic novel. I recently released a comic called Bill the Platypus, which is about a hybrid bounty hunter. And I plan to do more with that as well. I’m really excited about putting out this Stomped collection, because it’s been a long time in the works.
JL: In your supplemental materials for the comic, you mention the genesis of Stomped being created around the pandemic era. Did you have ideas for the book before then?
RR: I’ve been drawing my entire life. For as long as I could hold a crayon, I’ve been drawing monsters and superheroes. I’ve always had ideas for characters and stories and things, so a lot of the projects that I have worked on and would like to work on in the future, have been a part of my creative landscape for a very long time. Stomped is relatively new. The project was born in 2015; at that time I started really getting serious about wanting to have a career in comics. I started taking my own artwork more seriously and started going to Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle and Rose City Comic Con in Portland on a regular basis, showing my portfolio at the shows. Every year, Emarald City Comic Con does an art book called Monsters & Dames, so one year, just for fun, I drew a picture of a giant monster impaled on top of the Space Needle, and in the foreground was a young woman with pink hair, shaved side of the head, and tattoos. It was just meant to just a fun one off illustration, but the wheels started turning and a story started to develop.
A few years later, I kind of had this idea for this story that would be at least a graphic novel, if not an ongoing series. But I knew I was never going to be able to complete it, so I came up with the idea of introducing the world of Stomped in an anthology format, and that I would collaborate with different artists for each story. I’ve been a lifelong fan of monsters, film, and books, but kaiju specifically, when I got the idea for this, is when I really started to take a deep dive on that genre.
JL: How has the experience been discovering all of these kaiju films? Going through that journey, did you start from the beginning? How did you navigate the films?
RR: I love to experience things in the context of when they were made, as well as the evolution of that media. For example, with my favorite musicians, I will binge listen to their entire discography in order. I especially like people who are really prolific, like Miles Davis or David Bowie, enjoy listening to everything they released in the order that came out, and kind of experience the evolution of them as an artist. With kaiju films, I did that too. I started with Godzilla and went through his films. Then, Gamera’s movies went up on Prime Video, so I checked those out, and so on. It was really fun for me to experience them for the first time. For in a lot of cases, most of these films I had never seen before, or had vague memories of them being on TV as a kid. But, actually sitting down and watching them in order was really fun to see how the ideas progressed.
With my work, I’m not someone who’s afraid of other media influencing my work. I think sometimes creators are like, oh, I don’t want to be influenced by what’s already out there. I’m the opposite. I want to know if I’m trying to make something that fans of a genre will love. I want to know what those fans like about the genre, what they expect from the genre, and what they are going to be like looking for. I want to find a way to give them that, but also maybe subvert it a little bit or maybe come at it from an angle that’s unexpected, and hopefully that’s what I’ve been able to do with Stomped – give the fans a sampling platter of how the genre can be a multitude of different stories.
JL: You say you’re not afraid of being inspired by other media. Were there scenes or moments from these movies that directly influenced the comic as you were watching through them?
RR: Honestly, I wrote the scripts for most of these stories before I watched all these films. So most of the direct influence, I would say, are kaiju adjacent. I would include stuff like John Carpenter’s The Thing, Jurassic Park, and other stuff I saw as a kid or when I was in film school. With these stories, you could point to specific stories and go, okay, that’s the Jurassic Park story. That’s The Thing, or Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I wear the classic mythologies of these monsters on my sleeve, but there was a few things that I made rules for when building this world. A few rules that I wasn’t going to do in the anthology. One of those rules – no giant robots. The other rule was no monster fights. I wanted to get away from that sort of video game, beat them up, pro wrestling dynamic, because that’s already out there. I love that stuff, but it’s already out there.
A few of those stories are very much taking that slice of life approach, and the monsters are kind of just there, looming in the background. And that’s where I’d say, like you mentioned earlier, I’ve worked on this through the pandemic, and I think that that was more of a direct influence on me, I think, than the movies I was watching in a lot of ways. That’s because I’m thinking to myself, wow, I hope this is the closest I ever experienced to what it would be like if there was a giant monster that had just parked itself in the middle of the city and everyone had to stay at home.
JL: That reminds me of Cloverfield, where they have a standard goodbye party that goes horrifically wrong when the monster arrives. I got that same kind of vibe from the Stomped story “Blind Date,” where two strangers meet up and their coffee date is interrupted by a giant beast. Something ordinary that is interrupted by a kaiju.
RR: That’s funny, because the first story I wrote for the anthology was Blind Date. That was originally something I had come up with as a portfolio piece; it was to be a superhero comic. The original idea for the story was that you had a Gwen Stacy type character meet up with a Peter Parker type character, and neither of them know that the other one is a superhero. During their date, there’s an alien invasion or a giant monster or something… basically something happens, and they both do the oh, I gotta go to the bathroom, and change into their costumes. As they’re fighting the threat, they both realize the truth about each other. I still like that idea. I might do it someday. But I kind of adapted that when I came up with this character, Kim Corgan, and the world of Stomped being based around that character.
The truth is, I did that as a pitch piece after reading Bryan Hitch’s Ultimate Comics Studio. Mr. Hitch is the artist for numerous comics, but I think his most well-known is The Ultimates for Marvel. In there, he basically says if you’re doing a portfolio pitch for a big publisher, you want to show that you can do the everyday civilian stuff. So, start your portfolio page with something mundane, like a diner, and find a way to make that interesting. And then introduce the superhero stuff on page two. I took that very literally. I was like, okay, I’m literally going to start this comic with two people at a date in a cafe, and then the monster shows up, having the story take a turn.
JL: With designing the monsters of Stomped, I feel like there are two schools of thought with monster design. The first is making it as otherworldly as possible; something that couldn’t possibly exist. The other is basing it off of an existing animal, perhaps bigger mutated, and with more teeth. Where do you fall between those ideas in designing your kaiju, and what influenced your designs?
RR: I gave a lot of thought about that while developing the project. I’m a huge animal nerd and I love weird animals. When I go on a vacation, and I see a weird beetle crawling on the fence next to me, or a gecko or something that I don’t have, I get excited. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so we don’t have animals like geckos, it’s too wet. We don’t get a lot of reptiles. I encourage the artists that I collaborate with to draw inspiration from nature as well. The general rule that I gave people was trying to avoid bipedal body shapes on monsters. There are a few kaiju in the book that that do have more of that traditional Godzilla or Gamera sort of look, but a lot of them are more like insects. They’re crawling on multiple limbs and things.
Another thing I’d do is encourage people to add eyes along their bodies, because my way of thinking is, like, if you have a creature that’s the size of a skyscraper, perhaps they’d have weird stuff like that. For instance, supposedly dinosaurs had multiple brains and hearts and stuff to pump blood from one end of the body to the other end. I always thought that was interesting. Even in the Godzilla films, they are like, oh, Godzilla has a brain in his butt. (laughs) I would think about little things like that that in an attempt to try and create some sort of internal logic and aesthetic. Because all the kaiju in our universe look totally different, but I wanted there to be a little bit of elements to imply that they’re mysteriously connected in some way… with the reasons why that is to be revealed as the story goes on.
JL: What makes a great kaiju design?
RR: I think a great kaiju design is when said design somehow reflects the themes of the story, or the nature of the creature. There’s a lot of ways that can happen. King Kong is an ape, right? So there’s automatically going to be a certain level of empathy that human beings, as primates ourselves, will project onto something that is a similar humanoid. It’s harder for us to feel that same level of empathy for something that looks like a giant wasp or a three headed dragon. The farther you get away from mammals and domesticated animals, the more you have to work for the audience to feel a connection to it.
It’s amazing to me that people care about Godzilla because not everyone is going to be thrilled to see an alligator in their backyard, right? But the design of Godzilla over the years has changed when, when Godzilla is meant to be more of the protagonist of the movie. Usually, Godzilla’s features get softer. The spines on the back are less jagged. The snout is a little bit rounder, almost like a puppy dog face. The expressions are more emotive. Then, you’ve got a 180 on that with Shin Godzilla, who’s just like this nasty, rotting, strange, googly-eyed thing. After that, it turns into this hardened, almost like molten lava or a scab, to reflect the nuclear allegory there.
I know not everyone is a fan of the monster from Cloverfield, but that’s a very unique looking monster design. The way it kind of crawls through the city, even though you don’t get that many clear shots of it, the proportions, and the angles that its limbs move, are just bizarre and add a little more to it. It’s not a plushie of a lizard or a monkey you want to hug – this is a thing meant to be as horrifying as possible. But overall, I just want to draw something I think is cool. Sometimes the “cool” factor is what elevates these comics.
JL: You are funding this comic through Zoop. In the past, you have crowdfunded your comics through Kickstarter. Is there a reason comic creators are going to Zoop? What is Zoop?
RR: Zoop is a crowdfunding platform that only focuses on comic books. So whereas Kickstarter, there’s movies, video games, fashion, board games, any sort of creative project you can think of, you can fund through Kickstarter. It’s an amazing platform. I’ve had modest success on Kickstarter. I will probably continue to use Kickstarter in the future. The big difference between the two, I think, is that you have to do everything yourself on Kickstarter. With people doing first time projects, there’s also a risk in backing people’s projects, because you don’t know if they truly know what they’re getting into. I get it, I’ve backed a few projects that have gone unfulfilled. There’s an inherent risk. But crowdfunding has been a majorly successful way to get indie projects funded for over a decade now, so it clearly works.
Zoop differs from Kickstarter in many ways, firstly that the people who run Zoop take a much more collaborative approach. Of course, that approach varies from creator to creator. From my understanding, there are people who just launch projects on Zoop, and they do everything themselves, just like Kickstarter. However, there’s also creators where the Zoop team is much more hands on:, they’re creating the campaign page, helping you crunch the numbers on different printing options and things. Sometimes, they also help with the printing and fulfillment in terms of shipping and all of that as well. It’s very helpful to many creators, but again, it will vary depending on the project.
JL: What are your methods to get into the “zone” and focus on your work? Is it music? Routine? What helps you commit to finishing an entire book?
RR: Everyone’s a little bit different… I think there’s a few different artist stereotypes. But for me, drawing has always been a compulsive behavior. As a kid growing up, I drew all over my homework. Some teachers loved it, and some teachers would get annoyed by it. (laughs) Even in adulthood, drawing has always just been something that I did. When I was working in retail and putting in long hours, I’d be in the break room on my lunch with the sketchbook. As I said earlier, when I decided to commit to getting into comics, I started to be a little bit more analytical in my approach and thinking a little bit more intentionally about how I drew things.
For me, a lot of it was just like taking away the excuses and setting clear, accomplishable goals. So if I say, oh, man, I have to draw this 20 page comic, I’m going to get overwhelmed. That’s never going to get done. If I go, okay, if I can draw one panel a day, and there’s an average of five to eight panels per page, I can ask the question – how long is it going to take me to draw this? The answer is, I only have to draw a panel every day. That’s doable. If I had a long day at work and I’m exhausted when I get home, it’s never a lack of motivation or inspiration. If I lack the energy to fully commit, I’ll just do something small, like rule out the panel borders, and if that’s all I get done, at least I have accomplished something for the day. That’s progress! I think where a lot of artists struggle is looking at the whole forest instead of the individual leaves.
I do listen to music. I will often find soundtracks of movies that are kind of the same vibe of the story I’m working on. I listen to a lot of film scores as well. In general, I have a very eclectic musical taste, but I always like to have something on, preferably not something with lyrics, because that can be distracting. I do almost all of my drawing on an iPad, so I can just draw from anywhere. I can sit on the couch, at the dinner table, I can be in my bed, or I can be on a trip visiting family. That portability makes it really easy to just sit down and draw something.
JL: Why should kaiju fans flock to Stomped?
RR: First, all of the artists that I have worked with are incredible. If you love comic art and you love cool monster designs, I feel like you’ll really enjoy this. Additionally, what’s set Stomped apart from other kaiju comics and film, is what I was talking about earlier, where I initially started this project and continued to draw from influences that were like outside of the kaiju sphere, pulling from a wider range of influences. I think if people are looking for something a little bit different than an IDW Godzilla comic, or something that’s a little more grounded and less punchy and wrestling-esque, this book is for you. Our story is grounded without being embarrassed by the tropes of kaiju. I genuinely love Godzilla, Gamera, and King Kong. Of course, my love also extends to more recent movies like Pacific Rim, The Host, and Cloverfield, too. I love it all; I’m putting all of that into a blender and giving it a little bit more of a person on the ground kind of perspective.
The characters in our world are not all super scientists. They’re not superheroes. Many of them are just individuals just trying to live their lives. I just think it’s really interesting. On a personal note, I will say, at my day job, I work with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. There is a story in Stomped that is directly inspired by my experience working in a group home during the pandemic, when there were fires nearby filling the air with ash. I was like, oh, wow. I’ve never seen a Sci-Fi or Horror film from the perspective of someone at home with their autistic brother. I think that’s a selling point. Sometimes I get embarrassed or nervous about sharing that, but I do think that’s a selling point in the sense that it’s seeing a genre that I love through a perspective that you don’t often see in fiction.
JL: How can we keep up with your work? Where can we find and support you?
RR: I just started a Substack! If you’re interested in keeping up with what I’m doing, my focus this year is going to be to build a pretty robust mailing list to send people newsletters. That way, people who want to read it can read it at their convenience since it’s in their email, and if they don’t want to, they can ignore it. That enables me to do what I’m excited about. Substack also helps, because if I want to send out a really detailed piece about my process or what I’m working on, I can do that. If I need to just send out a quick update and be like, hey, here’s a new thing that I have launched, I can put that out there. In my opinion, it’s more flexible than X, Bluesky, or Instagram, where you’re kind of confined by the format in what you can share. So yeah, I would encourage people to subscribe to my Substack. That being said, I’m on Bluesky and Instagram, too. I still post art almost daily on both of those places. That’s three places right there! Finally, just Google me. There’s not that many Ross Radkes out there, and none of the other ones are drawing monster comics.
JL: Thank you for speaking with Kaiju United.
RR: Thank you very much. This was fun.
