Hello. This is Justin here with a very special interview episode with Dave Baker. He is a comic book artist, writer, Renaissance man, who has made tons of books, whether it be Halloween boy, Mary Tyler Moorhawk, or the probably released by the time of this podcast, Pumpkinheads. And I just want to welcome him and just talk about this is a movie podcast.

We're going to talk about movies.

Dave, your comics, they're pulpy.

They're filled with monsters.

They're also about Henri and like trying to struggle with a creative spirit.

Out of everyone that I've probably ever met, you have the career I wish I had

if I could do comics. Every time I read one of your comics, I'm like, oh, this is something that I

would have made. That's very flattering. Thank you. And I'll just start with a really hard question

right from the get-go, because the goal of this interview is that the people listening, when it ends, they go, well, I guess I have to buy one of Dave Baker's books. There's no two ways about it. So it may get you in a lot of trouble, but what is your favorite Godzilla movie?

Dude, man, talking about starting off strong with the impossible. You're going to get people on your side, people against you. It's going to be against me because, look, I am fully aware this is not the best Godzilla movie. In fact, I don't even think it's a particularly good Godzilla movie. I asked what your favorite was, so you got a lot of leeway there. Space Godzilla. Godzilla versus Space Godzilla. Oh, that is a controversial choice. It's one that people either really connect with or really don't, but the fact that the design of Space Godzilla is so cool, the fight at the end is really cool. The fact that the middle of the movie is just like people on a beach for like 40 minutes is so fucking funny to me. Space Godzilla was a movie that was made by someone who had been in

like the Godzilla trenches forever. And he was actually pretty old when he directed that movie.

And I think the whole vibe of the film feels that way. 100%. Is that something that you kind of react to?

It feels beleaguered and sad and like desperately attempting to reconnect with a previous version of yourself, which I really like. And also, I just love the design of Space Godzilla. Like, that's the, when I was a kid, like, that's what lured me in. And then what you're describing is what I look at as an adult. And like, it's just so fucking funny that they're like, I don't know, they're on a beach for 40 minutes. And wait, now that I think about it, you wrote a Godzilla versus space Godzilla comic, didn't you? I wrote an issue of Godzilla rivals, which is King Goddora versus Space Godzilla versus Godzilla. And I wrote it because I was like, this might be the only time I get to write a Godzilla thing. You bet your ass space Godzilla is going to be in that shit. Now, how is the larger Godzilla entity at this point in time?

Because it feels they're like, yeah, just do whatever you want after decades of being shut down and very controlling.

I would say the coolest part, because I've worked in like animation and I've worked in live action film.

I've worked on TV shows and in comics.

And the thing that's always really interesting to me about all of those disparate areas is

the kind of like the rubric that you're handed to do the work.

You know, sometimes there are very strict rules, sometimes they're very lax.

The thing that was so interesting about the Godzilla project was they were very lax in terms of what I wanted to do, but how I did it, they were very specific about it.

They gave me like a beat sheet of like 10 specific things I could not do.

You can't have Godzilla make any human gestures.

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