That was irony, by the way. The above recently released stills are, of course, from Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (US-2012; dir. Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor), which I’m rather looking forward to. Why? Well, not because the first one was great — though most critics hated it, I thought it was okay, but only about a 6/10 — and not because Cage successfully nailed the role of Johnny Blaze in it — he didn’t, going from looking somewhere between bewildered and emotionally disconnected. But because I really like the comicbook character of the Ghost Rider, which, in its best incarnations, is a powerfully iconic figure, visually and thematically potent. I really hope Cage and friends get their act together this time in order to up the ante on the first. Sure, Cage makes a lot of dud films, but occasionally something sparks in his performance and he manages to flame on, metaphorically and not just via CGI. Maybe this will be one of those occasions.

Todd commented on the event depicted [warning: the following contains spoilers]:

Gigante and King Komodo finally have their long-anticipated battle, though it is short-lived. KK was supposed to be transported back into his Cryo-tank (located deep beneath the earth), but the transversable wormhole’s vortex accidentally opened up in the sky just above Area 50 instead.

When KK drops to the ground he is confronted by the “Area 50 Defense Force” (or AFDF), and by GIGANTE, who will flip KK into another TW vortex created on the ground at the conclusion of their kaiju battle. This will escort KK back to his Cryo-tank where he will be gassed back into suspended animation and preserved for the big, conclusive battle in NYC later on.

Todd added: “Here’s a mild spoiler for ya; with 8 giant monsters, my story will obviously be mostly about the kaiju-battles, but it will not be ‘politically correct’, and the climactic end-game battle in NYC may shock some readers. It won’t be pretty…”

I’m guessing that rather depends on how you define “pretty”…

Below are Todd’s pencil sketches of the eight monsters. In regards to them, Todd remarked: “I’m no Crash McCreery, but tried my best to emulate his style in my own way. These are the giant monsters who will be battling it out in my story.”

Please note that you can buy these monster pics as signed, limited edition (50) pencil prints, available from the American Kaiju website. For $20 each, these are an absolute bargain and will undoubtedly be major collecter’s items one day very soon.

The American Kaiju:

ALIGON:

ANGKAH:

GIGANTE:

KING KOMODO:

KING YETI:

KWAI-LONG:

PETT:

POSEIDON:

Source: Todd Tennant. All images are copyright © Todd Tennant 2011 and should not be reproduced in any way without permission. Article written by Robert Hood.

Check out Paszkiewicz’s darkly subversion website, Arsenic Lullaby.

But it doesn’t end there. As announced at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con in July, the company plans on expanding the franchise into the area of prose fiction — even as a film of ZvR goes into development through Sony Pictures, with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes as producer. Yes, there’s not only a major cinema release on the horizon but a massive anthology of stories set in the ZvR universe, edited by Jeff Conner and featuring a huge cohort of notable writers from around the world — including myself, the writer of this blog, and a bunch of other Aussies.

“It’s gratifying to see that ZvR has taken on an unlife of its own,” said Ryall, series co-creator and Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief for IDW. “Expanding from comics into prose is a logical progression, though as the heretofore sole writer of the series I must admit that letting other writers into our subversive little world was at first troubling. But now I’m fine with it. Really. Mostly. Especially since editor Jeff Conner has corralled such a talented array of writers to tackle some really bizarre and creative prose stories. As long as no one expects me to let them write ZvR comics, too…”

The list of undead authors is impressive. Apart from Ryall himself, it includes headliners John Shirley, Nancy A. Collins, Rio Youers, Brea Grant, Steve Rasnic Tem, Amber Benson, James A. Moore, Rachel Swirsky, Norman Prentiss, Mark Morris, Simon Clark and John Skipp & Cody Goodfellow — along with Dale Bailey, Amelia Beamer, Jesse Bullington, Lincoln Crisler, Stephen Dedman, Rain Graves, Rhodi Hawk, Robert Hood, Stephen Graham Jones, Nicholas Kaufmann, Steven Lockley, Nick Mamatas, Jonathan McGoran, Joe McKinney, Gary McMahon, Bobby Nash, Yvonne Navarro, Hank Schwaeble, Ekaterina Sedia, Sean Taylor, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kaaron Warren, and Don Webb.

Editor Connor tells me that these good folk have had a gut-smashing marvelous time chronicling the wartime atrocities of the gun-toting machines and their cannibalistic enemies. For myself the experience has been the most fun I’ve had this side of the actual zombie apocalypse … hmmm, maybe I should rephrase that… Na! My story — “A Colder War” — grew into an epic tale of exploitation, betrayal and violence, set at an unexpected time in an unexpected place. No, I don’t intend to elaborate — you’ll have to grab a copy of the book when it appears to find out how domovoi get into the act.

And why on Earth wouldn’t you?

More about the film version when we hear about it.

• Source: Press release (and personal involvement). To learn more about IDW Publishing, check out their website.

As you may remember Kong, King of Skull Island is a book, a comic series and a proposed movie, based on characters created by Merian C. Cooper for the 1933 giant ape classic, King Kong (US-1933; dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack). For the latest on the DeVito-inspired film see the Undead Backbrain article, Intimations of Kong.

Anyway 5Finity produce sketch card packs, and their Kong, King of Skull Island set looks as epic as the film itself. The series run consists of 650 packs, featuring at least one sketch card per pack drawn by some of the most popular sketch card artists. Among the 650 sketch card packs, there are random Special Packs dispersed as follows:

• 120 Rare Artist Sketch Cards (1:6 packs)
• 40 Hot Packs with 2-3 Sketch Cards (1:22 packs)
• 40 Joe DeVito Autographed Cards (1:22 packs)
• 10 Gold Signed Joe DeVito Autographed Cards (1:65)
• Plus, buybacks and surprises!

The odds of receiving a Special Pack is 1 in 3 packs!

The bad news is the set was released on August 15, 2011 and sold out before it hit the stores! However, a 5Finity representative commented that singles should be appearing on eBay and the sketch card forums.

Meanwhile, here are three of the “sketches”, by Anthony Hochrein, Mark McHaley and John Johnston respectively:

For those who are interested, here is the artist line-up:

Adam Cleveland
Alfred Lopez Jr
Amber Stone
Andy Black
Anthony Hochrein
Arley Tucker
Bill McKay
Brandon Kenney
Brent Schoonover
Buddy Prince
EJ Su
Frankie B Washington
George Calloway
George Webber
Hugh Vogt
Jason Hughes
Jason Metcalf
Jeffrey Witty
Jessica Hickman
John Johnston
Kelly Everaert
Manny Mederos
Mark Bloodworth
Mark McHaley
Mel Uran
Norval Hernawan
Puggdogg
Richard Stahnke
Robin Thompson
Roger Andrews
Ryan Wilton
Sam Agro
Samantha Johnson
Scott Simmons
Steve Jasper
Tim Baron
Tony Parker
Victor “Victoman” Rodriguez

• Source: Steven L. Frank for 5Finity, via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood; 5Finity website.

Clearly something’s arrived in the Big Apple!

And here’s Aligon, whose genetic background is made clear by the name.

If you’re not looking forward to this series of Todd’s, then you must have come to this site by accident.

Source: Todd Tennant. See this previous Backbrain article for more, and don’t forget to check out Todd Tennant’s graphic novelisation of the rejected Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio 1994 Godzilla screenplay.

“I have agreed to produce four American Kaiju comic books for Bluewater Productions,” he reported. “These will also be released as a graphic novel upon completion.”

For those of us who have followed Tennant’s free online comics on his American Kaiju website, this news will certainly provoke howls of joy. Bluewater Productions is well-known as a producer of biopic comics, but also horror-fantasy epics, such as Tennant’s upcoming It Came From Beneath the Sea … Again graphic novel.

Want a sneak peak? Say hello to one of Tennant’s more imposing monster characters, Poseidon:

Tennant’s Bluewater American Kaiju comics will involve story ideas and characters developed by both writing collaborator Mike Bogue and Tennant himself. “The plots and characters have been updated,” he said.

“It will feature eight … that’s right, eight Kaiju characters battling it out in various and sundry parts of the Globe. I’ve already introduced you to Poseidon [pictured above], and some of my website readers may remember Gigante, Aligon … and oh yeah, a large Megalanian-mutation named King Komodo will be there in the mix as well. KK’s former sparring partner Snow (to be renamed by the news media as King Yeti) will also be making a return visit. There will be three new kaiju rounding out the action, along with some other surprises.”

Tennant gave Undead Backbrain this exclusive teaser:

Check out the American Kaiju site to expose yourself to some great Kaiju action. You can even read the 78 pages of Tennant’s unofficial graphic-novel rendition of the rejected Ted Elliott/Terry Rossio 1994 Godzilla screenplay — the one they dumped in favour of Roland Emmerich’s less-than-Godzilla-ish 1998 blockbuster. It’s wonderful stuff!

Source: Todd Tennant. Written by Robert Hood.

Gorgo (UK-1961; dir. Eugène Lourié) was Britain ‘s answer to Godzilla, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and other giant-monster national icons. The film is certainly a worthy addition to the giant monster canon and did good box-office in both the US and Europe back in its day. Gorgo may not have retained as iconic a position as Godzilla over the years, but those who know it generally hold it in high esteem. The suitmation and miniature sets were excellent and the script rather more literate than audiences are currently used to from SyFy Channel monster movies, with a good director in Eugène Lourié (whose films include the classic and influential 1953 giant monster film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and the lesser but effective 1959 Behemoth the Sea Monster) and an ending that may have been suggested to Lourié by his daughter’s tears when she watched the title monster of Behemoth die, but nevertheless seems so right that it’s a surprise that no-one had done it before. There is considerable sympathy afforded to the monsters — both Gorgo and his rather bigger mum once she turns up to rescue her baby from the nasty humans. The pair may be destructive, but it’s all in the name of motherhood and good parenting, so that’s okay.

Gorgo franchising started with its first release — or even earlier. A novelisation written by Carson Bingham — blurbed on its cover as  “the classic thriller” upon which the film was based, thus suggesting an existence that predates the film (though this is barely the case) — was released in 1960 by Monarch Books.

Gorgo was popular and a successful film, but it never spawned a sequel (unless you count the Gorgo-less Waiting for Gorgo, a short film from 2009 by Benjamin Craig and M.J. Simpson). Almost simultaneously with Gorgo‘s release, however, Charlton Comics began a series of comic books based on the film.

There were 23 issues of Gorgo between 1960 and 1965, with a 24th in a 1966 anthology special called Fantastic Giants, which also featured a Konga story and two others. Original Spiderman artist Steve Ditko was the main artist on these Gorgo comics.

Gorgo’s Revenge — a Special Edition “based on the King Brothers film” — was also released by MGM in 1962 through Charlton Comics:

And two issues — numbered #2 and #3 — of The Return of Gorgo appeared in 1963 and 1964. [Note: The numbering has been said to continue from Gorgo's Revenge; but "more likely this title is continued from Reptisaurus Special Edition #1. Indicia reads The Return of Gorgo, Special Edition No. 2, Summer, 1963". (Source)]

I haven’t read the Gorgo series of comics — though if someone decided to reprint it in a trade format, they’d have at least one definite sale — but the “domestication” of Gorgo seems  clear enough from the covers.

Gorgo begins as a terrible threat (#2):

Very quickly takes on aspects of victimisation, as a mad scientist seeks to gain control of the monster for his own nefarious purposes (#3):

Faces up against alien invaders (#4):

Takes on a series of less loveable, though delightfully weird giant monsters (#5, #6 and #10):

Becomes a Hollywood star (#11):

Gains reader sympathy by being captured (#13):

Becomes mankind’s only hope of survival (#14):

Saves the damsel in distress (#15):

Fights an assortment of apocalyptic menaces (#19 — just one of several):

And finally becomes the Champion of Democracy against the Communist menace (#22):

These days he’s no doubt living in homely retirement somewhere in the suburbs.

Check out the complete run of covers in the Gallery below.

Source: CGD Grand Comics Database. Written by Robert Hood.

Gallery:

Given that violation of physical norms (being giant-sized, three-headed, lizard-scaled, part-snake/bat/bear/lion/dragon/Bobo-the-Clown, you name it) is one of the defining attributes of a monster, it’s not surprising that some of the most memorable of the clan are, in fact, of indeterminate shape. Amorphous horrors and all that. Things that go “Splat!” in the night.

The Blob? Everyone knows of the big strawberry-jelly mass of space gunk that reacts badly when poked with a stick, likes to scare cinema patrons by oozing through the screen in the middle of the movie and has a penchant for eating out at the local diner.

The Blob (US-1958; dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.) mightn’t be a great film artistically, but many of its moments have achieved cult status and it is certainly charming in its own clean-cut ‘50s way. In the opinion of many, Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake is a much better film, with good SFX, effective characters, a decent script and dramaturgically competent storytelling, while retaining (plus updating and broadening) the themes of youth rebellion and generational trust. Changing the origin of the Blob from outer-space-entity-on-the-loose to product-of-a-Government-scientific-miscalculation-and-attendant-conspiracy is very 1990s, reflecting a general cynicism that what we really have to fear might originate right here on our doorstep rather than out in the universe somewhere. Needless to say, The Blob (1988) hasn’t garnered the same level of affection as Steve McQueen’s star vehicle with its rather innocent air of ‘50s kitsch.

The original Blob even spawned an official offspring. In 1972, Larry Hagman (of I Dream of Jeanie and Dallas fame) directed a sequel/reboot of The Blob called Beware! The Blob (aka Son of the Blob). It’s more comedy than horror and isn’t considered a classic, as cheekily eccentric as it may be. What it does best is reflect the sort of sardonic humour that Hagman was good at.

Godfrey Cambridge gets consumed while watching the 1959 film on TV
… and never gets to see the ending.

The ’50s was the Age of Blobs. Coincidentally, June 1958 (a few months before The Blob premiered in the US) saw the release in Japan of another “Blob”-like movie – this one by Gojira director Ishirô Honda. Its real title is the poetically evocative Bijo to Ekitainingen (lit. Beauty and the Liquid People), but is best known as The H-Man. Nuclear tests in the Pacific create mutations that ooze about like radioactive slime and dissolve human flesh and bone. The movie is a crime flick as well as a monster picture – a particular cross-genre hybrid that appealed to the Japanese film-going public in this period and worked oddly well in practice. At any rate, though not well-known, The H-Man is an interesting take that is definitely worth your time, featuring some excellent and atmospheric horror sequences, in particular one set on a ghostly ship adrift at sea during a fog-bound night.

A more famous muck monster — one made out of a mass of animated pollution — is Hedorah, better known as the Smog Monster. In the history of Godzilla films, Gojira tai Hedora (1971; dir. Yoshimitsu Banno) [aka Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster] is the really weird one and it tends to be very divisive. The spectacle of seeing Godzilla fly through the air, tail tucked under his body and using his fire breath as a means of rocket propulsion, sends some fans into paroxysms of scorn. Yet I’ve always thought it fits into this particular movie quite well, given its theme of pollution and its hallucinatory imagery. In this particular G world, where smog can come alive and turn into a giant monster — and where Godzilla movies can have weird cartoon inserts and hippies hang about on Mt Fuji singing and dancing and generally getting stoned while the world burns — it seems entirely appropriate that Godzie could use his fire breath to propel himself through the air. This is Godzilla seen through a chemical haze — drugs being another form of pollution, after all. What with the nightclub scene where patrons turn into fish-headed monsters under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs (as in Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas) — or the scene where Hedorah sucks ecstatically on a smoking chimney as though it’s a bong — interpreting the blatant surrealism of Smog Monster as some sort of drug-induced supra-reality seems entirely appropriate!

Blob monsters were rather popular in the creature-feature comics of this period, whether or not they were “inspired” by The Blob. One that comes to mind is “The Glop” [or "Glob" in some reprints], in a story from Journey into Mystery Vol. 1 #72 (September 1961). “The Glop” features a dripping humanoid mass that “lives!” after an artist is hired to go to Transylvania to paint a monstrous statue using mystic, life-giving paint — something he hadn’t known when he started.

Another is “Taboo! The Thing from Murky Swamp” from Strange Tales #75 (June 1960). Taboo is an alien muck monster, which, though destroyed at the end of the story, returned bigger and ever more adjectivally inexorable a few months later (in Strange Tales #77, October 1960).

Amorphous monsters like these soon became part of the pantheon of monstrous villains that superheroes had to contend with, once the superhero genre took over in comics. For example, in 1969 Bruce Banner/the Hulk was forced to battle a murky sludge creature known as the Glob in The Incredible Hulk #121. The Glob makes several subsequent appearances in the Marvel universe. Coincidentally (or not), when The Blob film began production in 1958, it was being called “The Glob [That Girdled the World]”.

A shapeshifting creature made of sand called The Sandman first appeared in Journey to Mystery Vol. 1, #70 (July 1961). Though an alien here, he proved to be a prototype of William Baker (aka The Sandman) from The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (Sept 1963), who accidentally acquires the ability to shapeshift via his sandy nature and uses this ability to harass our friendly neighbourhood webslinger. The Sandman appeared in Sam Raimi’s live-action movie Spider-Man 3 in 2007, rendered via spectacular CGI.

Swamps are a fertile breeding ground for amorphous monsters, as witness Taboo’s tagline: “The Thing from Murky Swamp”. The most famous comicbook swamp monster — either a man integrated with a mass of swamp debris following his “murder” or an elemental spirit, depending on which incarnation you’re reading — is  probably DC Comics’ Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing featured in several comic series, two live-action films, a live-action TV series (directed by Tom Blomquist and Chuck Bowman) and an animated TV series. He also crops up briefly in the superlative animated series Justice League Unlimited. The first live-action Swamp Thing film was directed by Wes Craven in 1982 and though uncharacteristic of Craven’s most famous work, proved reasonably successful. The Return of Swamp Thing (US-1989; dir. Jim Wynorski) followed, but wasn’t so well received — with good reason. Swamp Thing is very much a “monster-as-hero” story, as the title character rises from the swamp to seek revenge on those who murdered him, but ends up pursuing a life of sometimes conflicted do-goodery.

Marvel’s Man-Thing series was very similar (at first), with a similar back-story involving swampy death and murky revenge, though the monster-hero is generally less sentient. The character originated in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) — several months before DC’s Swamp Thing appeared (in House of Secrets #92, July 1971). There were murmurings of legal action (especially as the two creators were room-mates at the time), but it all came to nothing — and the two Things diverged considerably in tone and storyline as time went by. There has only been one film version of Man-Thing, a made-for-TV movie directed by Brett Leonard (2005). Much to the chagrin of fans of Marvel comic writer Steve Gerber’s surreal and rather tongue-in-cheek rendition of Man-Thing (which teams the tangle of swamp debris with Howard the Duck at one point), Leonard’s film is more a standard B-film creature feature, though it actually runs fairly close to the monster’s original appearances in comic format. If you can live with that, Man-Thing is an okay monster film, lurking somewhere midstream in the swampland hierarchy of Hollywood genre filmmaking.

The low-budget Swamp Devil (Canada-2008; dir. David Winning), on the other hand, is somewhat mired in a stagnant backwater of that particular tributary. It works a very similar scenario to those of Marvel and DC’s monster-heroes, though the titular beast is pure monster here. At any rate, there’s murder and backwoods secrets and swamp-monster violence involved. Some things never change: murder and swamps don’t mix. They end up spawning vengeful and amorphous masses of swamp debris. I must remember that — for next time.

Other types of amorphous monsters abound in the film world, often offering little more that a hive mentality in place of a single focus. The interesting monster of The Bone Snatcher (UK/Canada/South Africa-2003; dir. Jason Wulfsohn) consists of weird alien ants that swarm around random collections of bones to form into a larger, more coherent creature. In this they are rather like Grey Goo, the nano-machines that we’re often warned about by the scientifically pessimistic and monster-loving writers — tiny out-of-control robots that eat matter and sometimes form into whatever shape takes their fancy, usually monstrous (see the Justice League Unlimited story “Dark Heart” and the Gort-spawned nano-machine swarm that erupts across America in the climax of the unfortunate 2008 The Day the Earth Stood Still remake).

Above: The continually morphing nanotech “Dark Heart”
from Justice League Unlimited

Above: Gort’s nanobots sweep across America
in The Day the Earth Stood Still remake

But such collective monsters needn’t be so hi-tech. The Ruins (US/Germany/Aust-2008; dir. Carter Smith) does it rather effectively with virulent, psychic plants. From the psychotic avian menace of Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) through to the mass African bee entity of The Swarm (US-1978; dir. Irwin Allen), nature in films has willingly formed itself into an amorphous object of mass terror, inflicting clouds of death and mayhem on humanity for its sins. In The Naked Jungle (US-1954; dir. Byron Haskin, based on the story “Leiningen Versus the Ants“ by Carl Stephenson), Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker battle a 20-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants (see below) — millions of individual ants subsumed into a mass consciousness. That’s the point here. In these cases the characters are not dealing with lots of individual creatures but a single amorphous monster made up of millions of individual units acting together.

And that’s not to forget the totally shapeless monster of the Aussie film Long Weekend (Aust-1978; dir. Colin Eggleston) and its 2008 remake, which is simply nature turning en masse against the careless vacationers. Talk about The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955). You can’t get much more formally indeterminate than that.

• Note: In my speculations here about Godzilla vs Hedorah I’m more-or-less quoting my review of the film on Undead Backbrain.
• This essay was written for Monster Awareness Month, February 2011.

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Could this be the new Lord of the Rings? There’s certainly plenty of rings involved — and Campbell and his designers seem to have got the look just right. Fingers crossed in regards to the script.

Synopsis:

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax … he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.