On May 18, Things From Another World Universal held a signing featuring Rosie Knight, Oliver Ono, David M. Booher, and Daniel J, Park, all creators behind the comic MonsterVerse Declassified. At the time of this recording, the book had made its grand general release, and ceased being exclusive to Kickstarter backers. Kaiju United had a chance to sit down with these amazing creators in the comic book industry to gain their insight into how the comic was made, some fun behind-the-scenes tidbits, and maybe, if we were lucky enough, unlock a few secrets behind the MonsterVerse…
JR: Hello, KU! We’re back here again at Things From Another World Universal! I’m here with some of the crew behind MonsterVerse Declassified! The paperback is now available for folks to read, and we’re really excited to sit down with these incredible comic veterans to talk about the book!
Rosie Knight
Yeah, but I do want to prewarn people, all of Doug’s file is redacted, and I cannot tell you what is behind the redacted part.
David M. Booher
Doug has figured out how to merchandise his likeness, so we got little dougies; yellow Dougie plushies. They got the branding down.
JR: As of recording this roundtable, MonsterVerse Declassified just came out this week, so let’s start this off with the basics. How do you guys feel about this book?
David M. Booher
It looks great! The stories turned out amazing. This team is top notch. It looks so good.
Oliver Ono
Yeah, all around, just a fun time. We over here at the Rosie and Oliver team, love to love to mess around with a funny little guy and we hope that continues.
Rosie Knight
There’s a little guy agenda.
JR: There’s also not so funny, bigger guys.
Rosie Knight
The thing that’s really special about this book is there is an eclectic collection of tones and monsters, like Dan’s Abbadon story with Marco Robin. His art is so scary. It’s very Junji Ito-esque; very nightmare-like. I think it’s just so cool. And then ours, when you read it, it looks much way more cozy, but you still kind of get that adventure.
David M. Booher
With Tiamat, it’s like a mythical deep dive. We got to dive deep into Tiamat’s history, and it turns out she’s been around for a very long time. So the artist on Tiamat is Drew Zucker, and previously we were the team behind Canto, so we had a good reunion for Tiamat. She’s the Queen, but she didn’t get a lot of screen time, and she got done a little dirty in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.
Rosie Knight
She didn’t get a lot of screen time, and they couldn’t fit it in, so now, Tiamat fans can explore her world in this book. I think that’s the cool thing about this book – it’s all fan favorite characters who haven’t really been in the movies as much. So you get to learn a little bit more about the characters & monsters; see their day to day existence. There are some connections to the MonsterVerse, including a very familiar podcast that you guys might know if you watch the movies.
JR: How did each of you get assigned a creature? Did you get to choose? Was someone like, okay, you get Doug, and you get Tiamat? How did that work?
Rosie Knight
So, Nikita [Kannekanti] said, “Doug?” And we said, “Yes!”
Oliver Ono
No, no. We said to Nikita, “Doug?” And she initially said, “No.” Nikita was like, “Do you want to do Tiamat?”
Rosie Knight
(laughs) Yeah, and then they (gestures) were assigned. Legendary is very rare in the space of comics and movies, because they actually have somebody whose whole job is being in charge of the lore. So, they came to the project with a design in mind and an idea in mind. And then from that, we got to tell these stories.
Daniel J. Park
Yeah, I remember when Nikita emailed me about the project. He was like, “Do you want to write Abbadon, the giant spider?” I was like, “Do I have to?” (laughs)
JR: How did you build on and explore the characters in the book with so little to go off of?
David M. Booher
So, so we actually did this before New Empire came out, right? So we had to work within parameters that we didn’t know exactly. So it was really fun to do Tiamat, because when we when I saw the clips of Tiamat from the movie, I started thinking, “Well, how do we give him more time?” And so we drove back basically 1000s of years and sort of reimagined what Tiamat would be like over different eras of human civilization. It turns out that old saying, “Here there be serpents,” on the maps during pirate times, cave drawings, and legends of dragons, were in fact Tiamat. Perhaps this creature has been around for a long, long time, and humans have looked at her differently over the centuries.
Daniel J. Park
The nice thing for our story was that Abbadon did not really have a presence in the movies, as they debuted in Kong: Survivor Instinct. I had a little bit more leeway that way, I think, in terms of what I could do with them. I did want to find ways to connect Abbadon to the greater monster mythos, such as, maybe Abbadon being a predecessor to the Mother Longlegs you see on Skull Island. What’s the connectivity there? That’s something I really wanted to explore and Legendary was very open to that.
Rosie Knight
I will say in the same way, this is one of the joys of working with licensed stuff. We were working on this before the movie [Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire] came out, so I had to do a lot of different outlines to kind of get to know our direction. Maybe we use this monster, or maybe we use this guy, and then, kind of like getting the notes until we end up with the one that we use, which is how we got the Wart Dog in there. And then, of course, getting to see, when the movie came out, that the Wart Dog is, like a big part of that opening with Doug and everything… that was really cool! It was just fun. The challenges are more like; it’s got to be canon to the movies. So it was fun to introduce a new location, which was Doug’s lair, and then to get to see how Doug, just through his goofiness, ends up saving the day, or really, murdering another Titan, depending on which way you look at it.
JR: Did Legendary tell you what was gonna happen with that Wart Dog?
Rosie Knight:
No, it’s not like that. But you can get notes. Like, for example, with the Wart Dog, I was like, oh, I need to send Oliver, like, some reference art. Because of that, we got to see some really cool renders of that character, because the only thing that had been released at the time was a toy, but it was like a 360 pixel image of the toy. So I was like, “Oliver, I think we need more to look at here.”
David M. Booher
I actually remember specifically asking our editor if I could get an early cut of the whole movie.
Rosie Knight
Did you really?
David M. Booher
I did. She was like “No, of course, not.” That was at least my segue into asking if I could at least see clips of Tiamat.
Oliver Ono
On the art side though, you do get to mess around with the 3D models a little bit. You get to see the light manipulated around all of them, and you get the 360 degree view. It’s a very fighting game, choose your character, type of thing.
David M. Booher
(to Rosie and Oliver) You guys did, like, a day in the life of Doug story, right?
Rosie Knight
Yes.
David M. Booher
With Tiamat, it actually launches off of the aftermath of New Empire. So I had to figure out, like, what happened? (laughs)
JR: You all previously mentioned getting notes back. What kind of notes did Legendary provide you?
Oliver Ono
At the time, I was coming off of drawing a lot of Godzilla; I kept drawing him a bit too similar to the Big G, and they were like, no, they’re different. But, if you look at the two, they are kind of a similar body style sort of thing.
Rosie Knight
We have a visual gag where Doug, like, goes up to the top of the volcano, and he’s gonna do the big Godzilla roar and he just ends up going “Squeak!” We definitely playing with that. But yeah, Oliver did get a really funny note. It was like, make his eyes more goofier, like, his eyes have to be more googly. He looks too scary. Oliver went very hard on Doug initially.
JR: So you had a terrifying Doug that had to get googly eyes. Interesting!
Rosie Knight
Look, I’m gonna say he’s still kind of scary, you know. So, like, obviously he looks cute.
David M. Booher
You strike a good balance.
Rosie Knight
It was a specific moment where he looked too scary, so they were like, give him cross eyes. Give him googly eyes.
JR: What do you think is the appeal of these original and unique creations to the MonsterVerse?
Rosie Knight
I think the appeal of these stories is a few things. One, there’s a nostalgia element to them, because everyone grew up with a version of Godzilla. I think that it’s easy to keep the two things different, because Legendary is much more in the space of this being like mythical creatures that have been around for a long time, whereas the Godzilla canon is like much more sprawling, and Toho has specific eras to which you’re often working within when it comes to designs, so it’s not hard to keep it apart. I just think everyone loves monsters. And I think like nowadays, what we’ve learned from doing these signings and doing these books and stuff is like kids love to learn facts about stuff. Like, you know how we love dinosaurs? Nowadays, a kid wants to watch a YouTube video of, like, the evolution of Godzilla’s atomic breath, as they call it.
David M. Booher
Now, this is totally off topic, but I just saw a post saying there’s going to be a touring natural history exhibit that puts Pokémon skeletons on display. That notion of discovery and intaking facts probably that may have inspired them to do that touring event. I love that it’s definitely kids dialing into the science. Tiamat may be a water dragon, but she definitely has analogs in the natural world.
Daniel J. Park
It’s like how a ton of people grew up with Star Trek and inspired them to go NASA,
Rosie Knight
Kids love monsters and kids love facts, so they love to come out to these events. And we had a great signing one time–
Oliver Ono
–I’m still that kid loving monsters!
Rosie Knight
We had a signing at Barnes & Noble in the Grove for some of the Rivals books, and a ton of kids came. Instead of moderating the conversation, I just told the kids, “You can ask whatever you want.” There was one kid there, and he was like, “Guys, if you were gonna crystallize one monster, who would it be?” And then, he was like, “If you had to pick a monster from like 1967 to 78 who would it be?” He loved that stuff. Most of it comes from watching YouTube videos where they dive into all of these facts and lore. I think something like this book, MonsterVerse, is very much in that space of like, you’re in the universe, you’re learning about the creatures, and you’re kind of getting an inside look at this historical trend of monsters. And I think that’s very appealing to kids. So with this, it’s like you’re getting the secrets of the MonsterVerse… not about Doug! Sorry. As many people have DM’d me after reading the PDF, there is no new Doug information. He is an enigma to us.
JR: We’ll wrap it up with this final question. What can readers expect out of this book?
David M. Booher
What can they expect? Well, I expect you to be just massive fans of all of us. (Rosie laughs) I know you can expect more from Tiamat. She didn’t get a lot of time in the movie, so I think we got an opportunity to really do some fun new things with Tiamat. You’re gonna know a lot more about her. I hope we get to see a lot more of Tiamat as I make eye contact with our Legendary rep standing over there. (laughs) You’ll get a lot more backstory for Tiamat, for sure.
Daniel J. Park
So speaking as an arachnophobe, having to write a story about a giant ass spider, I hope readers who are arachnophobes develop an even worse phobia. If you don’t have arachnophobia. I want this book to give you arachnophobia.
Oliver Ono
Looking at this front cover art, arachnophobia may not be too far away. (laughs) I would say, with Doug, all the goofiness that you would expect, but also, like, hopefully, like a new found respect, like we were trying to put some respect on Doug’s name.
Rosie Knight
I agree. The ending of our story does show a different side of Doug. And I think, even if you love goofy Doug, this is a story that like the opening of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, really showcases that he is still a Titan at the end of the day. He will still tear delicious food away like he did to Kong at the beginning of the movie. He is still a monster, even if he is a little guy. You definitely get both sides. I would also say, if you love Oliver’s art, we have brought that Studio Ghibli vibe to it. You’re going to be really happy because the opening is just incredibly lush, and the colors that Oliver did come out so great on the page. Lastly, there are three other brilliant stories about Behemoth, Tiamat, and Abbadon, so if you’ve always wanted to know more about the monsters that aren’t those major players like Godzilla, Kong, or Muto Prime, then this is a great book to expand your monster knowledge!
JR: Thanks for sitting down with Kaiju United!
