Kill All Monsters review in Publishers Weekly

I missed this at the time, but the Kill All Monsters Omnibus got a very nice review in Publishers Weekly:

May’s tales of betrayal and determination bring freshness to well-worn subject matter, aided by Copland’s emotive grayscale illustration and some terrifically nuanced lettering from Ed Brisson. This collection also includes the new story “Island of Giants,” an intriguing and mysterious coda that skillfully expands an already impressive series.

If you haven't already, you can get your copy at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Comixology, or wherever fine comics are sold.

Kill All Monsters reviews at Bag and Bored, Oh My! Omaha, and Geeks with Wives

There's a small backlog of Kill All Monsters reviews that I've been meaning to post, starting with a beautiful one from last July. Kim is a mom in Ohama, Nebraska who writes the Oh My! Omaha blog, a parent's guide to happenings in and around her hometown. She also runs a Little Free Library and when someone took all the books out of it, my friend Jay - who runs the Library of Justice here in Minnesota - helped her restock with a bunch of stuff, including a copy of Kill All Monsters.

Kim tells the whole story on her blog, but the short version is that her son claimed the comic as his own and "[devoured] this book every chance he got." Jason and I both have sons and one of the things we wanted to do with Kill All Monsters was to be sure it was accessible to kids. So month's later, Kim's story still makes my day whenever I think about it. Thanks to Jay for sharing the book with her and to her for sharing her story and the photos.

Going back even farther to June, I don't think I ever shared this fantastic review from Bag and Bored. Brad Gischia calls Kill All Monsters "the greatest Monster vs. Robot story since Godzilla vs. Megalon" and praises the human elements of the story while noticing the enormous task Jason has of "not getting lost in the fight scenes," something that he says Jason does "with rocket boots on." Thanks so much, Brad!

Most recently, Cory Anderson from Geeks with Wives included KAM in his "Introducing Indies" series. He writes about being drawn in by Jason's style and then hooked by some of the plot revelations. So, thanks to you too, Cory! We're very glad you enjoyed it and we're hard at work on broadening the Kill All Monsters world and continuing the story.

Fortress of Solitude reviews Kill All Monsters

Another great review of Kill All Monsters, this time by Jarrod Saunders of the Fortress of Solitude. Jarrod writes, "While the idea seems straightforward, Michael May manages to surprise the reader with a great scrip that takes this concept in a whole new direction."

He has even nicer things to say about the art, starting with, "This is a black and white comic that leaves little room for errors in art. The line work in Copland’s illustrations is impressive and makes the most frantic of battles easy to follow and pleasing on the eye."

Thanks so much, Jarrod!

SKJAM! reviews Kill All Monsters

Kill All Monsters got a nice review from the man known as SKJAM! I met him at SpringCon last month where he picked up a copy of the book and I'm thrilled that he liked it. He offers a nice recap that doesn't spoil anything and finishes by recommending the book for kids who enjoyed Pacific Rim or this year's Godzilla.

He also mentions having some difficulty getting into the opening scene, which I think is totally fair. Starting in the middle of a fight and then letting it play out for a while with zero exposition was a gamble. We answer a bunch of world-building questions by the end of Volume 1 and folks all seem able to put it together as the volume progresses, but I do get that we're asking readers to play catch up during the opening pages.

Thanks so much, SKJAM!

Kill All Monsters art and reviews

Three things: starting with this awesome pin-up by my good friend Gavin Spence. I love how he even worked in the zipatone effect. Thanks, Gav!

Then there's this picture that Robot God Akamatsu's writer James Biggie posted with evidence of his son's very discerning taste in literature.



And finally, I don't know I forgot to link to this earlier, but fellow Robot 6er JK Parkin very nicely talked about Kill All Monsters in our Report Card column after the graphic novel hit stores last month. I've known JK a long time and we have really similar tastes in comics, so it makes me especially happy that he digs KAM.

He writes, "May and Copland have engaged in some pretty cool world-building, taking the basic idea and running with it until they have something special that goes way beyond what you might expect from 'another giant monster title.'" Thanks so much, JK!

New Kill All Monsters art and other updates

Got a fragrant potpourri of Kill All Monsters news for you this morning, starting with a look at some of the cards Jason made for Kickstarter levels that include sketches. Rather than try to sketch directly in books, Jason went all out and had special cards printed so that he could do something a little nicer.

Speaking of Kickstarter, now that it's open to Canadian projects, Jason's got the itch to run one on his own, which means you'll be seeing another Kill All Monsters comic sooner than expected. Before we release Volume 2, we're going to put together a one-shot single issue (probably around 40 story pages) that expands on the world a little while also tying into the story we're telling in the graphic novels. I don't want to give too much away except that it's inspired by this:



That's a piece that Jason drew for the Monstrosity anthology and it's not the only giant robot pinup he's done lately. He also did this one for this year's Baltimore Comic-Con yearbook, which has a Usagi Yojimbo theme. Mike Spicer did the colors. Really wish I was going to Baltimore this year.



Finally, Jeff Bouchard from Comic Spectrum wrote a very nice review of Kill All Monsters, Volume 1, giving it 4 out of 5 stars, saying that he got a Kamandi feel from it (very cool), and writing that it "provides a visceral experience from the over-the-top battles between monster and mech at the same time weaving deeper plot points that leave you thinking and wondering where the story will go." Thanks, Jeff!

Review All Monsters | Pop Culture Hound and Comics Bulletin

There were a couple of reviews last week that I want to point out, but first let me thank Joseph Mallozzi and my pal Jay Mac, who gave shout outs to the Kickstarter from their blogs as we wrapped up.

Chris Thompson and Taylor Lilley of the Pop Culture Hound podcast talked about the book and made me cheer, especially when Taylor said that he's not a kaiju fan, but was won over by the story anyway. Both gentlemen talk about the cast's diversity and how they felt like that worked organically as part of the story without our calling extra attention to it, which was exactly how we hoped it would be. The Kill All Monsters discussion begins around the 25:00 mark, but be sure to stay tuned for Chris' fantastic interview with Gabriel Hardman about his new comic, Kinski at Monkeybrain. It's a wonderful podcast and I'll be tuning in for future episodes.

Nick Hanover at Comics Bulletin wrote a great review too. He says that starting the story in the middle of a long fight is "a bold move, sure, but May's got fight scripting down pat and with a partner like Copland, he knows he can trust the action." He also notices that "May wants you to feel for the humans who have to deal with these creatures, since this is a story not about a first attack, but about a world after monster defeat."

Thanks to Chris, Taylor, and Nick for reading and sharing thoughts on the book!

More reviews and fan art of Kill All Monsters

Well, the Kickstarter is all done. Or, the pledging part is anyway. Now's the part where Jason and I go to work fulfilling rewards, which we're thrilled to do. People chipped in $11,910, which is 476% of our goal. Absolutely amazing, so one last massive THANK YOU to everyone who pledged and helped spread the word.

Got a couple of more Kill All Monsters-related bits this week, starting with the awesome Skullbot drawing above by Vincent Kukua. Vincent is a talented production artist at Image Comics and you can check out more of his stuff on his DeviantArt page. Thanks, Vincent!

Next, a couple of cool sites mentioned us last week. Lonnie Nadler from Bloody Disgusting gave the Kickstarter a nice push and Greg Burgas at the Comics Should Be Good! blog wrote an amazing, really insightful review. He picks up on a lot of stuff I wasn't sure if people would get (the significance of the date when the giant monsters first appeared, for instance). Here's a taste of what he thought, but check out the whole review:

Kill All Monsters is an interesting comic, because it starts out as one thing and slowly changes into something better, and that’s always nice to see. It’s as if May thought “What if I made a comic with giant monsters fighting giant robots?” and once the “That’s AWESOME!” factor wore off, he realized he had to come up with something else. I’m sure he had it plotted out further than just the robots fighting the monsters, but for the first several pages, he just has Copland drawing that, and while it’s quite keen, you always need something more than that. So May settles into an interesting story that borrows liberally from plenty of sources, but still manages to be a compelling read.

Finally, I thought I'd point out that if you like art featuring giant monsters and robots, we've got a Pinterest gallery dedicated to that. I need to link to it from KillAllMonsters.com, so this is as much a reminder for me to do that as it is for you to go look at it. There's some really cool stuff on there.

More love for Kill All Monsters

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.

Since I mentioned the Kickstarter, the quick update is that as I'm writing this we just passed $6,000.  That's so far beyond my initial hopes for the campaign that I can't even remember them. A few 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.

Review (and Interview and Mention) All Monsters

Hartley Holmberg from Vancouver's The Hartley Show attended Vancouver Comicon and spent a lot of time with Jason talking about Kill All Monsters. It's a fun interview and Hartley seems to have liked the book.

A bunch of other reviews have been coming in too. My pal Ken hadn't read the entire first volume yet when he wrote this post for That F'ing Monkey about KAM's being in Previews, but he's one of our biggest supporters and says about the part that's appeared online: "The story is full of that fun team dynamic. For some reason it reminds me of the adventure groups in a good table top RPG. [...] Jason Copland’s art is beyond words. The organic design of the beasts is offset by the mechanical battle suits. His line work is so clean and precise that you’ll spend time just taking in all the details."

Kris at Deeply Dapper also likes the book and calls it "only the bestest comic book ever."

CT at Nerd Lunch has a super-nice review and writes, "While May has done a great job at setting that scope, fleshing out the characters, and delivering the dialog, Copland balances that with dynamic, two-tone art. It's got a grittiness to it that is needed, but still clean enough to be able to tell what's going on. The action scenes come across well and Copland is able to display the weight needed to show these are behemoths battling over the city." He also draws a comparison to Thundarr the Barbarian, an influence I hadn't consciously been thinking about, but absolutely affects the world. I loved that show so much as a kid and recently revisited it with my son, so there's no doubt that that's in there from a world-building perspective.

Comic Bastards has a nice, thoughtful review that's complimentary while not completely so (which is perfectly fair). Some of the fights ran a little long for their taste and I get the feeling they would have liked some added emphasis on the monsters, but they seem to like the human characters and the robots and the way that the Kill Team's machinery isn't perfect. And of course the art. Overall, it's a very positive review and I'm thrilled to get it. I do want to respond to the criticisms - not to defend against them, but just because acknowledging them in more detail will help solidify some of the lessons I learned from writing KAM - but this post is already long enough, so I'll do that later.

And finally (for now), the Great and Powerful Cal at the Canadian Cave of Cool wrote a fantastic review that proves he and I were separated at birth by praising the things I'm most proud of about the story. He loves the art too of course, but it thrills my heart to read his appreciation of the world-building, the mystery, and how the story doesn't explain every single thing.

While it's not technically a review, SF Signal was nice enough to mention the Kill All Monsters Kickstarter in their Crowd Funding Roundup and call KAM a "kickass webcomic." Ken also wrote another wonderful post about the Kickstarter for That F'ing Monkey.

As I'm writing this, the current Kickstarter total is a little over $5500, due to folks helping to spread the word like that. I'm in shock, to be perfectly honest. Thank you again so much to all of you who've shown support either through pledges or just by telling people. Jason and I are amazed and humbled.

And thank you to all the folks above who reviewed the book. I know of at least a couple of more reviews that will be going up this week, so I'll keep doing these roundup posts as long as people are willing to write about the book.

One last bit of KAM-related information: I noticed that the UK comics retailer Forbidden Planet has Kill All Monsters available for online order. I have no idea what that means exactly for our order numbers, but it's a great sign.

Kill All Monsters! review at Augie De Blieck Jr's Pipeline

Artist Alley Comics got a nice write-up by Augie De Blieck Jr. on his Pipeline column at Comic Book Resources. Before I go any further in talking about it, I should mention that Augie and I are technically colleagues because we both write for CBR, but - though I admire his writing - he and I don't actually know each other. CBR is a big place.

He points out some potential improvements to AAC's business model (like notifications when new issues hit), and he's right in guessing that those are things AAC is working on. He also reviewed three of the comics: Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl, Danny Clyde, and Kill All Monsters.

He calls KAM "strikingly drawn" and notes that the first issue is mostly "Kaiju versus Robots! Fight!" and that "the oversized fights are what sell the book." He's totally right of course, as is his prediction that it's "probably a little deeper than that." We wanted to start the series with a bang, but as future issues come out, I hope we prove that we're telling an actual story with characters and themes and everything.

Thanks so much to Augie for the nice review. If you haven't checked out Kill All Monsters! yet, the first issue is totally free, so please go give it a look.

Kill All Monsters reviews at The Lottery Party

Comics blogger Richard Caldwell wrote a couple of super nice reviews of Kill All Monsters this week at his site, The Lottery Party. The first was part of a review of the entire Artist Alley Comics Sampler, in which Caldwell called KAM, "Kirby by way of manga commonalities, with a fun cast of characters to boot."

He dove deeper into Kill All Monsters later with a review dedicated just to our comic. About the writing, he says, "May nails an action-packed slugfesting of megaliths well, while inserting enough character points to really put all of this in perspective with some human level." In reference to Jason, "the artwork well portrays the intensity of both action and drama, and is as fine a statement as any that Copland is one of the most under-utilized talents working today." Caldwell also acknowledges the talent and hard work that Ed Brisson puts into the lettering, which was really cool to read.

Thanks so much, Richard!

Lancelot reviews

The Lancelot book that I contributed to has gotten a couple of nice, five-star reviews on Amazon (no negative reviews yet, either). They rightfully focus on the poetry, but one reviewer also mentions my part. JL Orluck attributes that section to "the authors," but it's actually mine.

Orluck talks about how the book establishes "the historicity of this fabulous story, tracing the roots and variations of the legend from its very beginning in the middle of the 9th century to its current form in literature today. But more than that, they follow the development of the magnificent themes of the Lancelot legend, from his mystical heritage, to his ferocity in battle, to his weakness in love and the betrayal that not only destroyed a kingdom, but his own life, and the lives of the women who loved him." [Edited to add: Thinking more about it, the poems do a lot of that too, which is probably what Orluck is referring to. I may have just been looking for a reference to my essay when there wasn't one.]

But back to the poetry, Orluck calls that "earthy, poignant, raw and true to the full range of human emotion that a man is capable of ... eloquent, passionate, sensual and, at times, brutal." The other reviewer calls it "beautifully written" and says that though she's never read the classic Arthur-legends, she found the poems easy to follow.