Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

For the discussion of Toho comics, books, posters, trading cards and any other merchandise that doesn't fall under the other categories.
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Angilasman
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by Angilasman »

Yeah, I stumbled on The Compendium at the bookstore as a kid. All those other, more in-depth books I had to seek out years later.

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canofhumdingers
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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Man, you guys who found ANY of those books were incredibly lucky back then. The only things I ever stumbled across in the ‘90’s were the awful Godzilla King of the Movie Monsters book, which I thought was amazing at the time (I couldn’t believe there were more films after G1985!!) and an issue of Monsterscene magazine that had an article about Godzilla vs Destroyer and an article about Gamera Guardian of the Universe each with a few black and white photos that I poured over.

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I’m looking forward to see what this book has to offer.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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canofhumdingers wrote: Mon Oct 11, 2021 10:47 am Man, you guys who found ANY of those books were incredibly lucky back then. The only things I ever stumbled across in the ‘90’s were the awful Godzilla King of the Movie Monsters book, which I thought was amazing at the time (I couldn’t believe there were more films after G1985!!)
I had that, too. I'm pretty sure it was my first Godzilla book. Pretty terrible, yeah, but the loads of great still shots and a fairly comprehensive list of non-Godzilla films at the back made it a somewhat valuable resource for me at the time. Most of the pages have long since fallen out of my copy though, lol.
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by Legion1979 »

I'm old enough that my first Godzilla books were the Crestwood House children's book and Jim Harmon's terrible "The Godzilla Book".

I never got the Compendium because even then I had enough Japanese books , G-Fan issues and a handful of better American books (like Galbraith's "Japanese Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Films" and Ed Godziszewski's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Godzilla"). JD's book seemed redundant. I think its a frustrating reflection on American fandom that his book is still most people's bar when it comes to quality Godzilla books.

This new one isn't going to be all that great, just because Toho is involved.
Last edited by Legion1979 on Tue Oct 12, 2021 10:40 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Angilasman
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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I just want a handsome hardcover with lots of neat images. Every other nerd property is awash with 'em and I want them, too!

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by FlawedCoil82 »

I loved the Compendium when it came out! I want a book that has like an encyclopedic breakdown of all of the monsters (including showing the differences between the same kaiju in different eras) with plenty of correct, accompanying illustrations and/or photos for each monster. Also, I enjoy summaries and photos of each movie, along with hoping the major posters are included for each. Those are my main desires, apart from being in the English language (I am sure books like this exist but they are very likely all in Japanese). I am nervous that they took "Illustrated" out of the title, as I really want lots and lots of color photos and illustrations.
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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Considering how stingy Toho is with photos, I'm not shocked thr word "illustrated" is gone.

Either way, I'm at the point where for me it's too easy to find monster stats and photos online. I want a book that goes into how these movies are made. But we'd never get anything like that with Toho's involvement.
Last edited by Legion1979 on Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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Legion1979 wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 2:48 am Considering how stingy Toho is with photos, I'm not shocked thr word "illustrated" is gone.
But we're getting 2 Godzilla art books in NA in the next two months.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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I'm aware of the Yuji Kaida book. What's the other one?

I've heard from people that Toho has thousands of amazing photos in their archives that they're very stingy with. They seem happier reusing the same stuff for American publications than letting anyone have anything truly decent.

Regardless, I'm not expecting much from this book. Toho has a very bad habit of crippling American products like these in the interests of keeping things as sanitized and complimentary as possible. I'd rather see unauthorized tell-all books by American researchers, but considering how this thread has already proved that fans would rather have photos and stats I can totally understand why they choose not to waste their time.

I mean, Norman England has a book coming out in the next few weeks about his visits to kaiju films sets such as Gamera 3 and GMK and I haven't seen anyone here talk about it.
Last edited by Legion1979 on Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Angilasman
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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^ The other is the NA release of the 'History of Formative Arts' book already published in Japan.

I feel Toho is becoming much looser than before. It used to be excruciating to license monsters other than Godzilla, and then they'd want you to use a particular version - now it seems every licencee is doing products with every version of every monster. Quite the shift!
Last edited by Angilasman on Tue Oct 26, 2021 5:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by John Pannozzi »

Legion1979 wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 4:48 pm I'm aware of the Yuji Kaida book. What's the other one?

I've heard from people that Toho has thousands of amazing photos in their archives that they're very stingy with. They seem happier reusing the same stuff for American publications than letting anyone have anything truly decent.

Regardless, I'm not expecting much from this book. Toho has a very bad habit of crippling American products like these in the interests of keeping things as sanitized and complimentary as possible. I'd rather see unauthorized tell-all books by American researchers, but considering how this thread has already proved that fans would rather have photos and stats I can totally understand why they choose not to waste their time.

I mean, Norman England has a book coming out in the next few weeks about his visits to kaiju films sets such as Gamera 3 and GMK and I haven't seen anyone here talk about it.
I mean, why not start a thread on that book here yourself?
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canofhumdingers
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by canofhumdingers »

^Agreed! I hadn’t heard about EITHER of these two other books until they were mentioned in this thread. Will they be available via Amazon or another online merchant?

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by Legion1979 »

Norman's book is available for preorder on Amazon.

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UltramanGoji
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by UltramanGoji »

Legion1979 wrote: Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:43 pm Norman's book is available for preorder on Amazon.
Start a thread on it, don’t post about it in here.
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by Legion1979 »

UltramanGoji wrote: Fri Nov 05, 2021 7:38 am
Legion1979 wrote: Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:43 pm Norman's book is available for preorder on Amazon.
Start a thread on it, don’t post about it in here.
I was just answering canofhumdingers' question right above my post.
Last edited by Legion1979 on Fri Nov 05, 2021 9:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by UltramanGoji »

Whoops, apologies. I didn’t see that part of his post.
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Angilasman
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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Amazon now has preview pages - but they're just layout samples, with the paragraphs from the first page of the Gojira synopsis being repeated on the second! Looks to be formatted like the Compendium: brief synopsis and a bit on the production of each movie. The real highlight looks to be the large reproductions of various stills. I've seen these ones from the first movie a million times, but seeing ones from further movies should be neat.

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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

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Angilasman wrote: Sun Nov 07, 2021 3:33 pm Amazon now has preview pages - but they're just layout samples, with the paragraphs from the first page of the Gojira synopsis being repeated on the second! Looks to be formatted like the Compendium: brief synopsis and a bit on the production of each movie. The real highlight looks to be the large reproductions of various stills. I've seen these ones from the first movie a million times, but seeing ones from further movies should be neat.
Link? For the life of me I can't find this on Amazon.


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Angilasman
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Re: Godzilla: The Ultimate Illustrated Guide

Post by Angilasman »

[YouTube]https://youtu.be/GH95eKfn25s[/YouTube]

Early look at the book. Pretty much what we expected; short descriptions of the individual films and their productions. Everything is covered, including the American films which are in the back after the Toho films (and rights issues seem to have prevented them from receiving the more expansive treatment of the Japanese films), and after that some short descriptions of Godzilla cartoons, video games, and comics.

... but, as I suspected, the best thing about this looks to be the enormous reproductions of publicity and promotional stills and the original posters! It looks almost like an art book.

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