That Guy Tommy sat down with prolific Kaiju artist Matt Frank during the “Retro City” King of the Monsters-Fest. Since 2011, Matt Frank has been known in both Japan and America as the “Kaiju King,” becoming the fan-favorite artist for all things giant and monstrous!

Although he had been drawing since he was very young, Matt became a true professional artist somewhere between 2005 and 2008. His first official foray into the Godzilla franchise was as a cover artist for Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters for IDW Publishing, and he continued to make covers for Godzilla: History’s Greatest Monster in 2012. By 2013, he headlined the 25-issue series, Godzilla: Rulers of Earth, the longest running Godzilla comic ever published, as a story co-developer, cover artist, and lead interior artist, and the series became an instant classic among fans.

Though Godzilla will always be his first love, Matt is also an accomplished Transformers artist, beginning with The Beast Wars Sourcebook as a character illustrator, and also providing interiors for Transformers Animated: The Rise of Safeguard, Transformers Spotlight: Trailcutter, Mars Attacks the Transformers, and numerous titles for both IDW and Fun Publications. Matt even created 4 new Transformers characters, the Raptoricons, for the Official Transformers Collector’s Club in 2016.

Chris talked about how he and his brother would read Charles Schulz comics strips growing up. He went to art school and then later he got a job at Marvel comics. He worked in the bullpen where he learned the ins and outs of the comic world. He later got an opportunity to work on a little series called Mini Marvels. Chris Giarrusso’s art helped create the mini Marvel world. After that ended, he got an opportunity to work at Image comics on a comic called Savage Dragon, with one of his favorite artist Eric Larson. Here he created, G-Man a young superhero who gains the powers of super strength, super endurance and flight when he wears a magic cape.  His first appearance was in “Comic Bits”, published in Image’s Savage Dragon series. 

After that Image published volume one Learning to Fly in 2009. Then volume 2 Cape Crisis, was published in 2010. 

Chris said he still reads comics. He’s a big fan of Transformers, TMNT, and He-Man. He said that he likes the current run of Transformers that Skybound is writing. I asked him with Dynamite writing ThunderCats and Silverhawks if you would ever consider doing coverage for that run. He stated he would love to do a variant cover for either SilverHawks or ThunderCats. He said he if Dynamite would reach out he would say yes. (So Dynamite if you are reading this article reach out to Chris Giarrusso and make this happen!)

He said earlier this year, Marvel reached out to him about doing a series of variant covers on ongoing comics from X-Men to Venom to Spider-Man and Moon Knight. The list goes on. At the time of the interview, Marvel had just dropped the news that Godzila would be coming to the Marvel universe. I asked him if he would like to do a Mini Marvel Godzilla variant and he said yes. I also asked him if he would ever think about going back to Mini Marvels and doing a Multiverse version.  He said a multiverse Mini-Marvels would be great. (So Marvel if you are reading this article, give us a Mini Marvel Multiverse)

He also talked about working on Officer Clawsome with his buddy Brian “Smitty” Smith, a New York best seller. You can get it from Walmart, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Target, Bookshop and Powell’s. 

Check out the link for the full interview. We talked about so much other stuff.

Special thanks to our sponsor: Dragon’s Lair Alamo Ranch

Jimmy Palmiotti is a writer and inker of comic books. He has also written for video games as well as television and film. In 2013, DC Comics tapped Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti to relaunch the Harley Quinn series. The 30-issue series would consistently be a top seller at DC. 

I got to sit down and talked about how Todd McFarlane reached out to him about working on new Spawn series The Deadly Tales of the Gunslinger.  Jimmy talks about how with fans who haven’t read the Spawn comics can jump in on this series. It will show how he became the Gunslinger. The interior art is by Patric Reynolds, and cover A is also by Patric. 

We also talked about his Kickstarter for The Deadly Trio: Doomsayer #1. It’s an all new sci-fi action-adventure series by Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Brian Pulido & Billy Tucci! Its goal is $15,000. There are 25 different tiers you could pledge. Each tier includes an exclusive. It starts at $5 and goes all the way up to $699. There are 6 days left, and they have just unlocked 65K. You can go to their Kickstarter page and check out all the cool stuff.

There are a lot of great artists contributing covers. Giuliano Peratelli, Amanda Conner, Hedwin Zaldivar, Ben Caldwel, Joel Gomez, Billy Tucci, Jose Varese, Chad Hardin, Joseph Michael Linsner, Dan Lawlis, Leandro Oliveira, Diego Bernard, Rain Beredo, Eve Sousa, Wes Hartman, Ezequiel Dominguez, and Fred Marinho.

Later in the interview Jimmy blew my mind when he said at one point, we could have had a Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez team up on a Marvel movie. Go check out the full interview.