GODZILLA: MONSTER ISLAND SUMMER CAMP Interview: Rosie Knight & Nick Marino Further Their Minilla Agenda and Champion the Little Guys

As the weather gets colder and the Halloween season creeps in like an eerie fog, the warmth and carefree vibes of summer become more and more of a memory with each passing day. However, if you’re looking to relive the freedom and adventure of the summers of your youth while still maintaining the spookiness of the current season, then Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp may be the perfect comic for you. 

In this original graphic novel from IDW Comics, aspiring cartoonist Zelda is excited to spend her summer at the art camp of her dreams. However, she and the other campers learn that the camp is now under some new and suspicious management. In an effort to avoid the new sports-focused curriculum, Zelda ventures off to find a secluded place to draw in peace. Although, rather than an artistic escape, she finds herself face to face with Minilla, the baby Kaiju, also known as the Son of Godzilla. With Minilla by their side, the campers work together to uncover the mysterious connection between the camp and Monster Island. 

This story comes from the incredible team of writer Rosie Knight and artist Oliver Ono, who previously contributed to the world of the King of the Monsters with Godzilla Rivals II: Vs. Battra. They’re joined by color assistant Nick Marino and letterer Jodie Troutman, who each have their own history with the iconic kaiju. But to learn more about this middle-grade book starring Minilla, Daily Dead spoke to Knight and Marino about all things Monster Island Summer Camp.

Though the married couple didn’t have traditional American summer camp experiences in their youth (since Rosie is from England and Nick didn’t like it), they both love summer camp movies like Sleepaway Camp and Heavyweights. During our conversation, we learned how they combined that love with their love of Godzilla and especially Minilla, who is immortalized on Knight as a tattoo. They also discussed the other beloved pop culture properties and creators that inspired Monster Island Summer Camp, the challenges of working with established IP, and the inspiring youth that read their work. You can check out what they had to say about all this and more in the conversation below.

Thanks to the MonsterVerse, Godzilla and Kaiju have been more popular than ever. But who would have predicted that Minilla would make a resurgence? So how did this project come about? Did you bring it to IDW?

Rosie Knight: Oh yeah. I pitched before I'd even written [Godzilla Rivals II: Vs. Battra]. I was just coming up with ideas for kids' Godzilla stories. And Minilla is my favorite character. I have a tattoo of Minilla, so I was like, “How can we do a cute, fun story for kids that brings back Minilla as the friend of children in this world?” So I pitched it, then a year later, Toho and IDW said,”Yeah, we want to do it.” It was after me and Oliver had already released our Battra book, so they'd gotten to see what an incredible artist Oliver was, and they'd gotten a taste of our cozy Studio Ghibli/kind of sci-fi space. This Minilla agenda was mine.

Nick Marino: She’s got a very pure, very fastidious Minilla agenda at all times.

Rosie Knight: Oliver did a really cool redesign to make Minilla a little bit more appealing. But we still wanted to keep him as that silly, bumbling, cutesy character that was introduced in the Showa era stuff. And we have actually been surprised by how many people have come up and been like, “I love Minilla! I can't believe Minilla is finally getting his own story.” So definitely we too were surprised by the love for Minilla.

Nick Marino: It's either “I love Minilla,” “I can't believe you're using Minilla," or “Wow, I don't hate this Minilla.”

Rosie Knight: All great responses.

This book stands alone pretty well, so you don’t need to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Godzilla to appreciate it. When it comes to canon, does Monster Island Summer Camp fall in line with any specific iteration of Godzilla and friends?

Rosie Knight: The first Godzilla book that Nick and I did was very "Heisei era," but they also had to be completely standalone. It can't use anything from the movies except for the monsters. This book exists more in its own space. It's an official Toho book, so in my mind it exists in the world of Godzilla, right? Me and Oliver both see it that way, and especially with the way Oliver drew Godzilla in this. I think it's very in line with the main canon of Monster Island. But when it came to the monsters I picked and the setting of Monster Island, I was really influenced by the movies Minilla had been in.

But canon-wise, these IDW books are always out of any canon, so this is its own thing. Would we like to tell more stories in this canon? Yes. And is there a world where they could just say, “Hey, this is all actually in the same canon”? Definitely. I think a lot of these stories leave space for that. But I was very influenced by Son of Godzilla and All Monsters Attack. That was where I picked who would show up to pay homage to those movies.

Nick Marino: It’s a very tricky thing because only the monsters are allowed to be reused from the movies. That’s Toho's rule. Only the monsters are allowed to be reused when we tell these stories, so you have to find ways to evoke the feeling of the films without ever directly referencing anything. That all makes it feel like every time you're getting your own little different pocket world.

Rosie Knight: You couldn't have something like, say, Rumiko, who's already named after Rumiko Takahashi, who made Inuyasha. We couldn't have called her Rumiko Serizawa. If we'd have done something like that, that would have been too akin to the movies and too connected. So I think it's a little pocket universe, but the fact that all the Godzilla monsters are in it and this is like an approved book, to me, it’s in the Godzilla universe.

Nick Marino: Your world is set in the MiniVerse.

Rosie Knight: The MiniVerse! Where Minilla is like the anchor being. Minilla is the nexus being of that universe.

I love the idea of a MiniVerse and that actually goes perfectly into my next question: If Monster Island Summer Camp was hypothetically in the same universe as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, could we maybe see a sequel with Minilla and Suko hanging out? 

Rosie Knight: Those are the kinds of things I would love to do. I think that is so far above my pay grade, but I will say that all the Legendary stuff is licensed through Toho until they start making their own monsters, so you can never say never. I mean, I love the Adam Wingard Godzilla movies. I think they're really fantastic, and I think that they hark back to an era that we are definitely trying to hark back to. And I would always love to see Minilla with more little guys. Me and Oliver have come up with some really funny concepts for what we would do for a sequel, and we're always trying to work out which little guys could we have in there. But could we put Suko in there if it was just like a monster? No, they'd say get that out of there. But is that a story we'd love to tell? I mean, of course!

Also, I loved that people just started calling [Suko] Baby Kong. This is the tradition that we follow in Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp with Minilla. A lot of people who come up to us at the table at a con or something ask, “Is this baby Godzilla or is this Godzilla Junior?” Because there's been so many different names for Minilla, and obviously there are different baby Godzillas. People did it with Grogu and they called him Baby Yoda. I love that Suko just became a Baby Kong. It's just inherent. Like, we just want to see a little baby something.

Baby Groot. Baby Rocket.

Rosie Knight: Oh, yeah. We love a baby. Very pro little guy.

Aside from the beloved Godzilla franchise, Nick has also played in the Transformers toy box thanks to the Transformers: Beast Wars Annual he wrote. What are some of the challenges for the both of you when dealing with characters that have been around for such a long time and have a distinct voice that decades of fans adore?

Nick Marino: I don't find it challenging to take on a character's voice. I find it challenging to untangle the red tape that comes with having multi-tiered approvals. Depending on what they're promoting [or] depending on what they want to connect their fans with at that moment in time, they might have a specific vision for what needs to be in that story.

When I was doing my issue of Godzilla Rivals, it had to be Heisei era characters. When I was doing my Transformers stuff, Beast Machines was my favorite. I connect with those late 90s Saturday morning cartoons. They were like, “Yeah, you're never going to be allowed to really use Beast Machines.” And I was like, “Well, what if I just change the name of the characters? It's Botanicus instead of Botanica." And they were like, “Yeah, that'll be fine.”

Rosie Knight: I will also say that I actually think a lot of times the licenses, the ones that we've worked with anyway, especially Toho, are way more chill than you would expect with doing out-of-the-box stuff. If you want to do stuff that's really in line with something that's branded, where there's a Botanica toy or whatever, then they might be feeling some way about it and you find a getaround. But with this book, we really only got like three notes from Toho on the script that we sent over. One of them was that Godzilla can't do a thumbs up. I did not send the meme and say, "Well, I've seen him do a thumbs up” because they meant in this case he couldn't do a thumbs up. A lot of times people ask how did we get them to approve this story? And actually, I think a lot of times they're looking for different kinds of stories and they want stuff that can expand the lore and the world.

And obviously when you have an artist attached like Oliver, who's so fantastic, [it helps]. The moment he drew that cover, which he drew before I'd even finished writing the script, we all knew that we had something really special. I think it was easier to get people on board when they could see what Oliver's vision was for it.

Nick Marino: I also think part of the gift of this scenario is you are making an original graphic novel, and for some reason, these companies view that as different. Doing a comic book where it's the single issues going into the comic shop market, they see that as having a very rigid set of expectations. I think with an original graphic novel, they really don't worry about all that stuff. They just want to do something different.

Rosie Knight: But we were really lucky because they actually bought in our letterer, Jodie Troutman, who's so fantastic, from the comic book side. Even though Oliver's art style is a little bit different and we were telling a story that could be perceived as for a younger audience, we actually got to bring over the aesthetic of a classic comic book [because] Jodie did a lot of really cool tricks. [This is] one of the coolest things in the book. I remember when she sent it to me and I was freaking out when Ororo and Rumiko say, “We need Godzilla” and she put his logo [in the word bubble]. It was like Superman. When someone [in the book] says Superman, they put the logo [of the book] and I really love that. We got to bring a bit of that culture and aesthetic from single-issue weekly comics to the middle-grade book market, which is definitely a different space.

I love the dedications at the end of the book to the legendary Jackie Ormes, Louise Simonson, and Rumiko Takahashi, who were also the namesakes for your book’s main characters. As writers, we are inspired by the many stories that we’ve consumed over our lifetimes. They become a part of us. Rosie, what does it mean to you to pay homage to these icons and pioneers?

Rosie Knight: Thank you for asking that because that was very special to me. I felt very lucky because those are people that I've written about. In the case of Weezy, I've actually gotten to interview her a couple of times. Jackie Ormes, now people are talking about her a bit more. Rumiko, they're remaking all of her anime right now, but like I personally just feel like that's something I've always done in my work. I've written articles about people like that, so to be able to name the characters after them and then make a book that's about somebody who wants to be a cartoonist [means a lot]. And then thanks to our fantastic editor Jake, who made sure he helped me work out the page maps and the page count and stuff so I could actually put like biographies that I wrote for each of them in the back. We've gotten some really cool feedback from people who have said, “Oh, I didn't know that there were women who were making comics this long.” That was really meaningful to me.

I love to make a work that's about making a comic. I think it's really interesting. Throughout history we've kind of had these weird niche versions of it that have been weirdly mainstream. There's an old Bob Newhart sitcom that's just called Bob. He is a Jack Kirby-esque cartoonist who’s back to the Marvel-style publisher to reimagine it for a 90s extreme era… Caroline In The City. The Ambulance is a really great genre movie that has Stan Lee in it. And I love the idea of making a comic like that, where somebody who ends up making comics will read it and be like, “This is so funny that they made a story about making comics, and it's a Godzilla book.” It's just a space that I'm really interested in. And it meant a lot to be able to to shout out those creators and then actually write something about them in the back and champion their work and how they influenced the book.

Despite being a middle-grade book, Monster Island Summer Camp addresses some legitimately concerning practices that threaten the environment. Unfortunately, the real world doesn’t have Godzilla and Mothra to stop fracking. But in the same vein as Superman Smashes The Klan, do you hope that the younger audience that picks up your book fights against the wrongs of the past?

Rosie Knight: Oh yeah! I mean, I'm honored that you would compare it to that because it’s obviously an iconic radio play that then became an iconic comic by some of the best people in the business. So very honored that you would think of that. Definitely with Godzilla, you are given a lot of leeway to have quite radical thoughts and ideas in it because Godzilla is an environmental story at its heart. Or a story about war or destruction or whatever themes you want to put in. Fracking seemed like the obvious one. Actually, I did have an old friend of mine from London whose daughter read the book and was just totally engrossed because she'd recently done a project on fracking at school. So to see it in the book and feel like this is something that other people care about, he said that was like a pretty rad feeling for her. And now she's making her own comics! That's like the best thing ever.

Nick Marino: We're also really inspired by these young people who are taking on these big issues and trying to find solutions that maybe our generation and generations ahead of us didn't really take seriously or saw as insurmountable. We were on a beach a few months ago and they were putting on a big concert on the beach the next day. We live across the street from there and we saw this group of four teens come in. We’re [thinking] they're definitely going to be curious about what's going on with this concert. But no, the kids came up and they were doing a school project about microplastics and how they're in the ocean affecting all of us. These kids are so smart. They’re so cool and they're really following their heart to do really beneficial things, and that's very inspirational to us. We feel like we can't let them down. If that's the kind of person reading this book, then we gotta at least match their level.

Rosie Knight: That's what 14-year-olds are into. They care about this stuff and we do care about it too, and even if you're just having a fun, cozy Godzilla story, at the heart of it is that he is a protector and he does care about the Earth. The more studio-friendly answer is that he is a force of nature. That's generally how they like to perceive him, but I still go for that old-school version where, if he shows up, it's probably because you're doing something messed up and Godzilla's here to fix it.

Godzilla: Monster Island Summer Camp is available right now at local comic shops and bookstores.