Monsters Conquer the World started out as a blog (and a podcast!) dedicated to the radioactive dinosaurs, mutated insects, gigantic aliens, huge robots, and other colossal creatures that stomped through major cities and into the center of my brain, heart, and soul.

But 2023 is coming to an end–Monsters Conquer the World is almost ten years old! A lot has changed since I reviewed the original King Kong back in 2014–most excitingly, the biggest kaiju boom in decades!

I was lucky enough to catch Godzilla Minus One in the theater. It is an absolute masterpiece, weaving together moving (but not maudlin!) post-war drama and the ultimate in creature feature film-making. Godzilla is the scariest, realest, and baddest-ass he’s ever been, blowing away audiences in a movie about how we all dance the line between horror and hope. Minus One isn’t just an instant classic, it’s quite possibly the best monster film ever made. I’m not exaggerating for effect or playing to my kaiju hyperfixation, it’s a friggin’ cinematic achievement.

And that’s just the most recent banger to drop! Monarch: Legacy of Monsters brings Legendary’s MonsterVerse to the small screen spectacularly. Gamera finally came back, he got his own Netflix anime–and it was good! Godzilla and Kong have a bonkers-looking buddy cop fantasy-adventure blockbuster coming next year:

Pink spines?! Power Glove?! To paraphrase Depeche Mode: “all I ever wanted, all I ever needed…”

It is an incredible time to be a kaiju-krazed monster maniac. But even with all this dope newness, at the end of 2021 I realized that my creative juices had mutated and evolved into a strange new brew. Under some full moon, my inspiration to write kaiju movie reviews transformed into inspiration to write my own stuff. To create my own characters and stories instead of only analyzing somebody else’s. To play around with somebody else’s characters and stories instead of just commenting on what already exists. To broaden the scope and direction of my media analysis, to share anything weird and wonderful out in the world, to write whatever comes naturally and just ooze along with the neon green bio-slime. 🤘👹