Michael May is a fiction author, blogger, and podcaster. He’s the writer of Kill All Monsters, a graphic novel co-created with artist Jason Copland and published by Dark Horse Comics in 2017. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with his wife Diane, their son David, and Luke the Wonder-Hound.
DWQ: Your comic Kill All Monsters is set in a Kaiju-infested world that fans of Pacific Rim or Cloverfield and the old stand-bys like Godzilla will enjoy. Obviously you are a fan, but what specific movies and characters inspired your comic?
MICHAEL MAY: Not too many kaiju movies, surprisingly. I love kaiju movies, but one of the things that often frustrates me about them is the struggle to balance out the giant monster action with the human drama. The original Gojira and a few others do that really well, but so many don’t.
I really wanted Kill All Monsters to be driven by the characters, so I pulled inspiration from other places. One of the biggest that I usually cite is the original Star Wars trilogy. The relationships and banter between Luke, Leia, and Han was something I wanted for the core group of characters in KAM.
I’m also a big fan of post-apocalyptic stories like Planet of the Apes and Kamandi. The quasi-barbarian, underground people that the heroes meet in Paris at the beginning of the book are absolutely inspired by those kinds of movies and comics.
DWQ: What kinds of stories can writers of Kaiju monsters tell besides big monsters knocking down buildings?
MM: There’s no limit as long as the focus stays on the characters. You could have kaiju stories in any genre, really. Horror, obviously, but you could also do comedy or a heist story or a mystery. You’re gonna have to have some big monsters knocking down buildings, but my opinion is that that’s the spice, not the meal. The important thing is that readers care about the characters.
They don’t have to necessarily be the human characters, either. Cartoonist Zander Cannon has a series called Kaijumax, which is a prison drama set on what’s essentially Monster Island from the Godzilla movies. It’s brilliant and unique with intelligent kaiju that form gangs based on various kinds of giant monsters. So cryptids are one group and Toho-style monsters are another, etc. And the prison guards have Ultraman-like uniforms that allow them to grow giant-sized and interact with their prisoners on even footing. Lots of dramatic potential there and that’s what makes a good story.
DWQ: Dark Horse Comics released the entire run in hardcover last summer. What kind of a thrill was that?
MM: Oh, wow, SO big a thrill. I’ve been collecting comics since the ‘80s, but I didn’t get really serious about it until the ‘90s and Dark Horse was a huge part of that. From Hellboy and Next Men to Concrete and Sin City. And so many of those amazing, classic comics started in the pages of Dark Horse Presents. So when Dark Horse offered to not only publish the hardcover, but also to serialize an all-new Kill All Monsters story over three issues of DHP and give us the cover on one of them!? Dream come true doesn’t even describe it. It took me days to learn how to breathe again.
DWQ: Anyone who follows your blog knows you are a huge movie fan. I am sure you’d love to see Kill All Monsters as a film. How would you see such a project fulfilled?
MM: Absolutely! The first collection is a complete story, so it’s all ready for a big screen adaptation. Jason and I would love that. Gareth Edwards directing.
Surprisingly, I haven’t given a lot of thought to casting, but top of my head I’d say Jason Statham for Dressen and… I’m really trying not to say Rinko Kikuchi as Akemi, because she’s already played a mech pilot in Pacific Rim, but hey, this is dream casting and she’s amazing. I’m also crazy about Rila Fukushima from The Wolverine and that’s probably the more interesting choice.
For Spencer, I’m totally influenced by recently seeing Black Panther, but Chadwick Boseman would be perfect. He pretty much already looks exactly the way Jason draws him.
DWQ: You have written other comics besides Kill All Monsters. Your work in Savage Beauty and Athena Voltaire harken back to the Pulp era. What attracts you to old stuff? Which writers inspire your work or is it more of an era kind-of-thing?
MM: I’m not nearly as well-versed in the Pulps as you are, which is one of the reasons that I love having your voice on my blog. I always learn a lot from your articles.
But there are definitely writers from that era that I’m inspired by. Edgar Rice Burroughs is at the top of that list. And going a little later in the century, Ian Fleming is right there with him. Theirs is the stuff I grew up reading, but even today there’s no matching Burroughs’ imagination. And both he and Fleming were masters at keeping the story moving and pulling me along from chapter to chapter.
I think what really attracts me to those kinds of stories though is just the wildness of the world at the time. I’m a big fan of Westerns for the same reason. It was just a time when almost anything could literally happen. I’m not as satisfied by adventure stories set in modern day, because so much of the hard work is settled with computers and phones. It’s a smaller world.
Which isn’t at all to glamorize the past. I’m very happy living when I am and am optimistic about the future. But when I’m reading or writing an adventure story, I like for the world to be unexplored and lawless. It needs to have some chaos for the hero to bring order to.
DWQ: What projects are on your wish list? I know you broke down all of the James Bond films. Would you ever want to write a Bond comic for instance? A Hellboy/Kill All Monsters crossover?
I love Bond, but that’s precisely why I wouldn’t want to write him. My voice is very different from Fleming’s and I’d muck it up. A Felix Leiter story though? That would be interesting.
I grew up thinking that I wanted to take over the X-Men comics, but Marvel was a very different place back then. A writer could go for years just telling the stories they wanted to tell without having to pause to tie in company-wide crossovers, much less rebooting the series every six to twelve months.
But a Hellboy/Kill All Monsters crossover? Bring that on! Or I’d love to have a year on a Tarzan series. Better yet: Thundarr the Barbarian. That’s a world and characters that are begging to be revitalized in comics. Well, I’m begging anyway.
What’s next for Michael May? More Kill All Monsters or something new?
Definitely more Kill All Monsters. The first volume completed the story we set out to tell, but it also ended with a lot of unanswered questions about the world. And it included a couple of short stories (like the Dark Horse Presents one) that expand the world even further. So we have plans to explore that, which is what I’m working on right now. Jason’s currently writing and drawing a graphic novel all by himself, so when he’s done with that, it’ll be time to hop in our mechs again and get to punching monsters.
Other than that, I’m on a bunch of different podcasts, either as co-host or recurring guest. That’s where I do most of my talking about movies these days. Folks can find links and updates about those on http://www.michaelmay.online/.
Thanks!