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Interview
by Ted Thornhill for Bizarre issue 51, July
2001
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What
was the inspiration for Destroy All Monsters? |
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The media coverage of the Gulf War at the beginning of the
1990s. It quickly became apparent that what we were witnessing
was the beginning, in effect, of the 21st century.
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You
mean with all the missile technology? |
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Absolutely, but missile technology that’s coming directly
into people’s homes. At the time, no one was aware that
things like cruise missiles and infrared guidance systems had
been developed as a response to the extremely embarrassing position
America found itself in during the Vietnam War, when people
sitting at home watched American soldiers dropping weapons that
killed anything in sight. So a lot of technology was being developed
that was sensitive to the people witnessing it. During the Gulf
War it was the first time we actually had rolling coverage of
events, and it’s amazing how little hard, factual information
you can distil from it. |
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So
how does Destroy All Monsters come into this? |
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I
needed something that was going to bring these issues to a
readership in a fresh way, so there was no point in talking
about cruise missiles or infrared tracking systems, because
that’s already old hat. I wanted to create bigger, badder,
more extreme versions of weapons. The premise of Destroy All
Monsters is that Operation Desert Storm doesn’t end
neatly after a couple of weeks, it drags on in a bloody, painful
war of attrition, much as the Vietnam War did. That’s
the background. In the foreground is a kind of exotic amalgam
of Japanese monster-move conventions, and the kind of epic
labyrinthine plot lines that you get in some of Japan’s
better comic strips.
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Where
did the idea for those monsters come from? |
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They’re all my own creation. There aren’t many
physical descriptions of the monsters, because I wanted the
readers to imagine them just on the basis of their name.
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Which
one if your favourite monster? |
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Micronosaur.
I love the idea of a creature so small its density bends light.
It’s known as the ‘molecule monster’. It’s
so dense it has to create its own gravitational field, otherwise
it would suck the whole world in around it. I’ve also
got a soft spot for Mechadon, the giant combat robot that
went berserk.
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Do
you think it would make a good film? And if so, who would you
like to direct it? |
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It
would make a wonderful film, and it would have to be Tim Burton
because I adored Ed Wood and I’m a huge fan of Mars
Attacks! I would love the book to be directed by someone who
has the guts to destroy Washington. To make the Washington
monument fall on a group of boy scouts, I salute this man.
And I’m just waiting to hear from him.
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