On Free Comic Book Day, Things From Another World Universal held a signing featuring three creators that worked on Godzilla vs. America: Los Angeles. The day was filled with laughter and fun, with all proceeds from the signing/book going towards a good cause. Kaiju United had the opportunity to catch up with some of the crew behind the comic – writer Jordan Morris, artist/writer Gabriel Hardman, and illustrator Nicole Goux, to get a glimpse into how the book came about and their thoughts on Godzilla as a whole.
JR: Hi! This is JR over here with Kaiju United at Things From Another World. We’re here to interview the team behind IDW Publishing’s Godzilla vs Los Angeles. So, first things first, I want to say thank you for TFAW for inviting us to come hang out, and on top of that, thank you all for being here for such a great charity event! First, can you tell us what the charity [BINC] is all about?
Jordan Morris
Yeah! [We’re here for] Godzilla vs. Los Angeles. There’s four awesome stories about Godzilla crushing LA and all the money goes to wildfire relief. So, yeah, you get a great book, and the money goes to a good cause. Everybody wins, well, except for the city of LA in the book, which gets destroyed. That city does not win. Everybody else does!
JR: How did this particular project get approached/come to fruition?
Gabriel Hardman
The editors reached out to me, and the idea of it being local appealed to me; the ability to tell a story that was about the neighborhood I lived in. I really think that even though there’s this element of the wildfires and real disasters that happen in Los Angeles, I do think that there’s a really legitimate aspect of Godzilla that’s about grappling with tragedy, right? I mean, that’s the origins of the of the character and that is the appeal to me. personally.
Jordan Morris
I was just like… this is a great project! To me, I’m like, yay, Godzilla!
Nicole Goux
They had already put the story together when I got called in to work with Jordan on it. So all of that was kind of set. But what a joy to be able to tell stories about Godzilla, who is just a big, fun, chunky boy, in the city that we’re all from. I had recently started watching more of the movies and getting more into it, and so I have this growing love for Godzilla. There’s so many fun stories that can be told with Godzilla, and so it was just a pleasure to get to be a part of it.
JR: Do you think there’s something deeper that resonates with the people of Los Angeles and Godzilla?
Jordan Morris
Yeah. I mean, like, obviously Los Angeles just went through something really devastating. I think Gabriel said it really well. Godzilla stories, they’re about a monster smashing things and sometimes smashing other monsters. But the at the core, they’re about humans and how we deal with disasters, and, you know, people stepping up during a tragedy. It felt really good to integrate some of that into the story. And yes, we were planning the story before the wildfires, but got to do a little bit of rewriting afterwards. It was nice to go back and inject some of that love for LA and love for humanity, and try and really highlight the point that these stories are about how we step up for each other.
JR: Would you guys mind telling us about the importance of the cause these proceeds are going to?
Gabriel Hardman
It was very important to me. Like Jordan said, this was all already happening, you know, before the wildfires. But when the wildfires happened and I had evacuated and everything, I immediately reached out to the editors, and I was like, “Is this appropriate? Is this something we should still do?” After that, they came back to me with the with the charity idea, and I felt like that was a good move.
Nicole Goux
I definitely had family members who didn’t end up evacuating, but were so close to the line of fire, and I know so many people who have lost not just their homes, but also their art studios from that. And so I think, as an artist, I don’t always feel that I’m able to do enough. You know, my job is… not I’m not a nurse. I’m not someone who’s giving back constantly in that way, so to be able to use art to give back, especially to something that has affected so many people that are close to us was really, really great.
JR: What are some of the challenges working on an established legacy character like Godzilla? Were there any notes from Toho?
Gabriel Hardman
Godzilla has really tiny little ears that I never noticed until I had to draw them, and I had to go back and,
and make tiny changes to all of the pages to make sure that the ears were in there, because that was really important to Toho!
Nicole Goux
I mean, we were kind of given free rein to take Godzilla and make it our style. But then, whenever you work with licensers, there’s always some things that they’re like, yeah, but like, make it a little bit this way. So we did have to go back and do some changes. But, you know, I think broadly, we all were able to really interpret Godzilla, kind of in our own ways. And I think that’s great, because not all licenses will let you do that. So it’s been really fun.
Gabriel Hardman
I don’t know about everybody else, but I definitely told the story that I wanted to tell. I didn’t have notes
on anything more global in the story; the notes were incredibly tiny and specific, and mostly about ears.
Jordan Morris
From the writing perspective, I’ll also say that everybody was very cool and permissive, and I don’t think we got a ton of notes on the script. I think just like, the secret of these stories, and the thing that they told me going into it was just, “Hey, these are stories about people. Godzilla will be there. He’ll smash stuff. Everybody will love it. But just make sure there’s a human story there.”
JR: Were there any disadvantages on structuring a story around a character like Godzilla?
Gabriel Hardman
I feel like I took to this very well. I mean, I like being able to tell a story that is… I mean, it’s not really like a high concept, right? It’s about people in a circumstance, and that circumstance happens to be Godzilla. My story is very oriented towards Godzilla; they end up on top of Godzilla and whatnot. But telling human stories in sort of, you know, chaotic situations, is what I always do, so that fit very well for me.
Nicole Goux
I guess for me, it was really a joy to get cast for this, because I’m not known for drawing monsters. It’s not a thing I do very often, but I love Godzilla, and kind of taking the time to really sit down with the designs and find what I liked or disliked about them, and figure out what my own design was going to be, was super fun, and I just had a blast drawing him. So I kind of surprised myself a little bit on that, because I thought it was gonna be challenging, and it ended up being delightful. I loved it.
Jordan Morris
Not from my perspective. Something that I love about Godzilla and the Godzilla franchise is that he can encompass so many tones. For example, you have something like Godzilla Minus One, which is a very beautiful, heartfelt story about survivor’s guilt, and then you have something like, one of my favorites, Son of Godzilla, which is funny. It’s campy; there’s comedy. The reason we’re sitting here talking about Godzilla in 2025 is that you can tell so many stories with them. Me and Nicole, our story is a little more comedy heavy. It’s got some heart, I think, but yeah, it is a little more funny and light than other ones. I like that you can have so many different tones. Like in this one book, there’s four stories that are different genres, despite all being Godzilla stories, I think that’s just part of what makes him one of the coolest characters around.
JR: Did you guys take any specific inspirations from the Godzilla films themselves?
Gabriel Hardman
I’m the pretentious guy here, and I’m gonna say that I did. I do love the first Honda movie [Godzilla (1954)] and I think it’s a great film. It’s a serious movie dealing with some heavy stuff. I’m a huge fan of that, but I also love that things get crazier and campier through the 1960’s and early ’70s. That era of stuff is also stuff I love. I do love it when we have to just sit down and take it all at face value, for instance, something such as Frankenstein being a giant person [in Frankenstein Conquers the World]. I’m not that discriminate.
Nicole Goux
It’s so good!
Jordan Morris
It’s one of those gems.
Nicole Goux
That movie [Frankenstein Conquers the World] is just delightful. I also just really love the original Godzilla, because it’s so much heavier and more meaningful than you think it’s going to be when you’re like, I’m going to watch a monster movie. That and the design of that suit being like, weirdly floppy and obviously just a man in a suit is like, it’s such an incredible thing to see them building these cities and destroying them and using the tools that they had to tell a story that they kind of didn’t have the technology for yet, really. I think my design takes more from the Heisei era, some of the later stuff, because I love how he’s kind of like cat-faced and has the little ears, which I love. Tiny ears… so good. I loved Godzilla vs. Biollante, that’s one I just watched recently. It was super fun and really good. But all the films, they’re all fun to varying degrees, right?
Gabriel Hardman
I do have to stick up a bit for the for the model work and the likes: it’s all very earnest. The people making them are clearly passionate about this stuff. It’s not about being goofy and cartoony necessarily, so much as like, you can feel the amount of passion that people put into the making of those movies.
Jordan Morris
As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorites is Son of Godzilla. Great movie. I still hear Baby Godzilla’s little voice when he’s getting attached by the three Kamacuras and goes, “Wah Wah!” It’s one of the greatest sound effects ever. I love Godzilla vs. Megalon; it’s a big favorite. Big Jet Jaguar guy right here, (gestures right) Oh hey, Jet Jaguar is over there on that table. There’s our boy, speaking of chunky fellas we love.
Obviously, I mean this is a cold, cold take, but the original Godzilla is a legitimately great movie that you might be a little surprised is so great if you just kind of know the campier Godzilla movies. I’m having a bunch of fun with the new Legendary movies, too. I think they’re a blast. [Godzilla x Kong] The New Empire was a hoot. So much fun to see King Kong get a robotic hand for some reason. So again, I like that we can get so many different tones of Godzilla.
JR: Why do you think Godzilla has endured for the past 70 years?
Jordan Morris
I mean, I think that there’s a powerful core concept that resonates with people, the fact that you can personify tragedy through a big giant monster.
Nicole Goux
It’s a little hard to say anything else, but Godzilla as disaster works for nuclear warfare or natural disaster, or just so many different types of tragedy that it’s just a thing that’s always going to resonate with people. Also. just seeing monsters run around these tiny little cities that are so convincing in some cases, and you can feel the amount of effort and care that people have put into these designs and these structures and models, it’s just really, really fun.
Gabriel Hardman
Part of what works, though, is that a combination of a guy in a floppy suit, little models, and deep tragedy and putting all those tones together in the same place… I think that there’s a lot of power in that. There’s a lot of power in making people accept multiple different kinds of tones and accept things that they don’t feel 100% confident feeling all at the same time. I think that’s important in art and literature, and of course special effects giant rubber suit scale model movie magic, like Godzilla.
Jordan Morris
Of course, everything Nicole and Gabriel said is true, but I want to add that great Godzilla stories are human stories or stories about people. I think even when it gets silly, even when it gets crazy, there’s always great human characters. There’s always relatable human characters. I think that’s why the movies keep going, because they keep that in mind when they’re making each new installment.
JR: Thank you all for sitting down with Kaiju United.
Godzilla vs. America: Los Angeles is now available anywhere you pick up comics. All proceeds from the sales of the book go towards BINC (The Book Industry Charitable Foundation) to give local comic book industry shops and professionals aid in wildfire relief.
