The Kai-Sei Godzilla world has completely taken over the kaiju comics medium, with this new push by IDW Publishing taking the King of the Monsters into new territory that we’ve never seen before. One of the main players of this new era of kaiju comics is Tim Seeley, writer of the current ongoing Godzilla title (and the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Godzilla) after having done a short story in the anthology book Godzilla vs. Chicago.
During this year’s New York Comic Con, Kaiju United had the chance to catch up with Tim Seeley, asking him about the influences of anime and manga on the book, whether or not we could expect some familiar Toho faces in the ongoing series, and just exactly how the entire thing came to be.
Nick Crispino
Hello, Kaiju United! Nick Crispino reporting from New York Comic Con. We are here with Tim Seeley, writer of the new Godzilla ongoing series, part of the greater Kai-Sei Universe that IDW Publishing has going on. Tim, how are you doing today?
Tim Seeley
Good, man. Good to meet you too.
Nick Crispino
This series gives off a lot of Shōnen Jump vibes. What were some inspirations? How do you incorporate Godzilla into that kind of storytelling?
Tim Seeley
I think that knowing that we were going to use the entirety of the universe that existed, we were able to pull anything we wanted to kind of pick from. Each of the books have their own genre and vibe: Godzilla: Escape the Deadzone is sort of the survival horror Godzilla story and Starship Godzilla is a science fiction story. And then this one had to be the bombastic action story. We wanted to kind of play with the [Super] Sentai genre a little bit and we wanted to reference American superhero comics, obviously, while playing a little bit towards the actual G-FORCE, which is an existing idea in Godzilla lore. We wanted to try to use all of the toys that are available to create something new, but familiar. That was our approach to it.
Nick Crispino
So, speaking of Shōnen, this series also takes a lot from manga. How do you balance the manga influences with American comics?
Tim Seeley
A lot of that is with our artist, Nikola [Čižmešija], who has a kind of manga-influenced art style blended with some Western influence as well. I tend to not think of things too much, like the idea that comics and manga are different. I just kind of think it’s all sequential storytelling. It’s all superhero in the storytelling; it’s about the good guys and the bad guys and the monsters and everything. But I did try to pull in some of the bigger themes, I think, which is the stuff that really works in manga, like the influence of things such as Attack on Titan, or there’s a lot of One Punch Man and those kinds of ideas in there. But also, those are ideas that were influenced by superhero comics as well.
It’s just taking all the parts that are good from all kinds of comics and trying to make something that feels like Godzilla. It feels like a manga, feels like an American comic, but it is also something kind of new. That was the job, I think, and that was our approach to it: use all the best parts, keep the stuff that really works, play with the themes that have always been part of Godzilla, and then just really expand upon those into a whole world.
TM & ©Toho Co., Ltd.
Nick Crispino
Talk to me about the creative process with the other Kai-Sei creators. How did you guys keep in line with the greater worldbuilding while being able to tell your own individual stories?
Tim Seeley
I mean, a big part of that is our editor, Jake Williams. Jake’s job is to run the entire show, and he’s the one that kind of came up with this shared creative universe, and he’s the one that picked the people to work on it. He gave us an overall idea of the universe, and we all traded the first pitches that we’d all done, so we could see what other people were doing and knew the threads that were going to be put into this story now, so that we can tie off together later.
So right now, the big effort is to tell an original story in your particular pocket of this new world with the idea that someday, obviously, they’re going to bump into each other. So we’re kind of keeping all the toys in place. They’re all available, everything that’s ever happened in-universe. The only thing we’ve had to get sort of instruction on is, “Oh, I’m already using that guy. You can’t use them.” That’s kind of the only thing so far that we’ve really needed to check in with each other on, because we’re doing different enough stories and different enough genres in Godzilla that we’re not stepping on each other’s toes too much.
Nick Crispino
Can you tell me about the pitch process of this ongoing series?
Tim Seeley
Basically, Jake and I previously worked together on Godzilla vs. Chicago. I wrote and drew a story in that anthology book called Blue Line Sign. He liked the way I was doing Godzilla, but also just that I’m pretty flexible as far as working with people. And so he had said, “Hey, I have another possible Godzilla thing for you,” and he gave me the nugget, which was that it’s three titles, and they’re sort of related, and then was like, “We want you to do the G-FORCE book,” essentially.
Then, we built a world around the idea that, if Godzilla had really been around for 70-80 years, what would have happened to the world? Like, how would society and technology be different? How would America or Japan be different? We created this place that was something we hadn’t really seen before, which is Godzilla as an altered history kind of take. I pitched that basic idea, and we went back and forth with editorial, and we then went through Toho. Toho America is really cool. They’re really easy to work with. They basically said, “That works really well.” That was it. We didn’t have any real big conflicts or notes or anything. We were just kind of able to hit the ground running and make this comic!
TM & ©Toho Co., Ltd.
Nick Crispino
Isn’t it great when there’s no notes?
Tim Seeley
It’s so nice when there’s no notes. Actually, it’s rare when there’s no notes. But this was a case in which it was something they were looking to do anyway, which is to expand upon the characters in Godzilla and the idea that it could be different genres. Godzilla has been a kid’s story, science fiction, a horror story, it has been everything. We really wanted this book to celebrate that idea.
Nick Crispino
So the Kai-Sei Godzilla, he’s one of the most unique iterations we’ve ever seen, and he’s made specifically for the comics. What goes into characterizing a Godzilla that’s meant for a specific medium?
Tim Seeley
For this book and medium, we knew it had to be visual. And so we came up with this idea, that if Kai-Sei energy exists and runs through Godzilla and all the kaiju, and also our protagonist Jacen being imbued with this force that kind of goes through their bodies, we had to see it on the outside. So our Godzilla is cracked! It’s literally seething from the inside, and all of the rage is coming out in these rivers across the body and stuff. We really wanted this Godzilla to look like it’s been through some stuff, like, this is a beat-up, lived-in Godzilla. This Godzilla has been stomping across the world for a long time and has interacted with all kinds of monsters and all kinds of people trying to defeat it. And it’s still there, still trucking, and still wrecking. We want to see that on the outside.
And then obviously, the key color of this Kai-Sei energy being that green color was a way for us to kind of show very distinctly that this is not the blue energy Godzilla of the movies; this is not the pink one of the Legendary films. This is our own take on it. But it also represents the Earth, right? Godzilla is a sort of vengeance of the Earth made physical. So we wanted to be able to see all of that inner stuff on the outside.
Art by Nikola Čižmešija
TM & ©Toho Co., Ltd.
Nick Crispino
We’ve seen Jet Jaguar, we’ve seen Anguirus, and we’ve had references to Rodan. Can we expect more familiar faces, or are we focusing more on original characters going forward?
Tim Seeley
For this series, you’ll definitely see some of the olds. I love the movies, and one of my big pitches was that I want to be able to roll out new takes on some of these characters, but also keep the ones that are so perfect and don’t really need any sort of reinvention. I want to make sure we get to some of those in here, too. So, you’ll definitely see them in the next arc. Right off the bat, you’ll see quite a few.
Nick Crispino
Tim, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.
Tim Seeley
Thanks, Nick!
