A couple of the biggest supporters of Kill All Monsters are James Biggie and Frankie B. Washington, creators of the amazing, kaiju-themed webcomic Robot God Akamatsu. You may remember the awesome print James created for us (which is one of the Kickstarter reward levels, just sayin’) and be forgiven for thinking that he’s the artist on RGA. As talented a visual artist as he is though, James actually writes the webcomic and Frankie draws it. And now Frankie’s done his own, stunning version of what an RGA/KAM crossover (A-KAM-atsu!) would look like. Check out RGA and also be sure to like their Facebook page, a one-stop shop for keeping up with giant monsters and robots news.
A few more people have been nice enough to mention the Kickstarter, including Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter, the folks behind the Outré anthology, and Crimson Engine, so thanks to all of those people.
There’ve also been some more reviews, starting with my Robot 6 compadre Corey Blake talking about KAM in our What Are You Reading? feature. “After the novelty buzz of the concept wears off,” he writes, “you’re actually left with a world and people that you want to spend time with and learn more about. There’s some mystery, some intrigue, some questioned motives, some social commentary, all lightly peppered throughout to keep the story chugging along even while the oversized slugfest takes a break.”
My pal Siskoid at the indispensable Siskoid’s Blog of Geekery also had an advance look at KAM and praises the team’s diversity (something very important to me) as well as Jason’s loose style. “The material (robots) might have called for very technical drawings, but Copland’s work has a sketchiness to it that trades technical accuracy for energy, which I think is really the way to go.” Jason had been wanting to loosen up his style for a while and debated about whether or not Kill All Monsters was the time to do that, but I totally agree with him and Siskoid about its being perfect for this series. It gives everything a grittiness that makes the world real.
The last review was from David Goodman at Geekadelphia. He wasn’t familiar with KAM until he heard about it on Twitter, so it’s fun to hear from someone who’s coming at it totally new. “Yes, a few pages in I had distinct visions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and wasn’t sure what I had gotten into. But once I really got into the tale May and Copland were telling, you realize that Kill All Monsters is science fiction storytelling at it’s best. You have robots the size of buildings beating the snot out of giant monsters in what’s left of Paris, while at the same time you get to experience a very human story of survival. Add in a conspiracy theory or two, some tensions among the pilots and dynamic art that is just a joy to look at and you have a prime example of why webcomics are so great.”
Thanks to Corey, Siskoid, and David for the very nice comments!
Finally, a couple of interviews: Russ Burlingame from ComicBook.Com interviewed Jason about the comic, Kickstarter, Jason’s influences…lots of stuff. It’s a great, comprehensive interview and I even learned some new things about Jason myself.
And I got to talk to my friend and colleague Tim O’Shea for his “Talking Comics with Tim” column at Robot 6. Everyone at Robot 6 feels weird when we talk about Kill All Monsters – and no one more than me – so it’s especially nice of Tim to go for it anyway. Check it out; Tim always asks fun and interesting questions.
