A year later, in 1992 (34 years ago yesterday)...

     [This is a follow-up to the previous post, and also posted on my Facebook page, but more up-to-date here.]

    So 34 years ago yesterday (January 5, 1992), I once again went with Mom to NYC Creation Con (for the last time, sadly; I moved out of NY late that year). I got:

 

-Markalite #2 (pictured here), which focused mainly on the Ultra Series (which I learned so much more about from this issue!), including the then-new Ultraman: Towards the Future (which premiered on WNYW Fox Channel 5 the morning before)! We also got everyone’s reviews of Godzilla Vs. Biollante (covered extensively in the previous issue), and as expected, they were mixed. August Ragone, Bob Johnson and others thought it was fine, despite its issues, but the late Guy Mariner Tucker offered the most *brutal* review of them all! Super Man-chine Metalder (Toei; 1987) was covered, as was Kamen Rider Black RX (Toei; 1988). And also Fred Patten’s in-depth article about Ironman #28/Gigantor! Another great issue! But it would be my last issue. (Issue #3 is extremely rare, and because of the difficulty with the shady distributor Jeffrey Tibbets, Issue #4 was never released.) It’s a shame, because this really is one of the absolute best magazines on the subject of Japanese sci-fi/fantasy, focusing on all of it, and treats it with so much reverence and respect. It was the perfect complement to the myriad anime fanzines put out by geeks and hipsters who often diminished tokusatsu. It was a godsend.

 

-The original Japanese version of King Kong Vs. Godzilla (Toho; 1962), which I saw for the first time (including the beautiful “TohoScope” logo), and loved more than the US version! Breathtaking Ifukube score, great character performances & development, and yes, Kong wins in the end, contrary to all the misinformation we were plagued with in the decades before. :)

 

-From the same video dealer; Devil Hunter Yoko (before it made it to the US!)

 

(I even got to see a bit of Daimajin for the first time, after first reading about him in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film a few years back. And also the climax of Episode #4 of Zone Fighter, which I was *really* taken aback with, after seeing a few pics of him and Godzilla, thinking he was another Ultraman!)

 

-And from Paul Haberman (who I just met that time at his table, and since became friends with), Episodes 33, 39, and 41 (final) of the Toei Spider-Man! I was aware of it from the “Superhero Rollcall” in Markalite #1, but had no idea that it featured the *actual* Spider-Man! Riding a giant robot! While far from the best adaptation of the character (I would’ve *loved* producer Toru Hirayama’s original idea, far more), it’s nonetheless a great novelty. :)

 

    Oh, I miss NYC Creation Con. Before DragonCon, it was the biggest (and first) convention I’ve ever attended! Even the recent local GalaxyCon here in Richmond reminds me so much of Creation Con.

35 years ago today (January 6, 1991), my life changed forever...

    [I originally posted this on my Facebook page, but it's a little more up-to-date.]

    So it was 35 years ago today, when my life changed forever. 35 years ago today, I officially became a "tokusatsu fan."

 

    (Well, I already was to begin with, but I'll get into it more...)

 

    I was 15 going on 16. I was still in junior high at the time, about to graduate in a few months, and high school was 9 months away (around which time The Ren & Stimpy Show, one of my favorite cartoons of all time, would premiere on Nickelodeon).

 

    On Sunday, after New Year's Day 1991 (which would make it January 6), Mom and I went downtown to Manhattan to go to NYC Creation-Con. It was always exciting to spend a day at Creation-Con. This was my fourth time at the convention. (The first, my first-ever con, was on Thanksgiving Saturday 1989, the second was in early June 1990, and the third, I think, was in July or August of that year.)

    We spent the whole afternoon going to the Dealer's Hall, and I made 3 purchases. First, I stopped off at a dealer's table where I bought both Ultraman (Tsuburaya; 1966) Vol. 1, with the first 5 episodes dubbed in English, and Voyage Into Space (AIP-TV; 1970), the compilation film of Giant Robo (Toei; 1967), AKA: Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot. I even got to watch the first five minutes of an episode of Ambassador Magma (P-Productions; 1966), AKA: The Space Giants! It was absolutely wild! As I mentioned in the past, I'd seen Voyage Into Space before, on ABC Channel 7's The 4:30 Movie back in about 1978, but I always wanted to see Ultraman, and with this, I finally did, for the very first time! (My third purchase made that experience all the more special, but I'll get back to that in a bit...)

    Near the end of our day at the con, I watched something else on another dealer's table: It was an awesome superhero similar to Inframan! A shiny, black insectoid superhero riding on a motorcycle. It was the first Toei Manga Festival theatrical episode (Hurry to the Island of Demons!) of Kamen Rider Black (Toei; 1987)! I watched Kamen Rider in action for the first time! (I saw toys of this guy at Forbidden Planet in 1988.) I would soon find out that this guy is the other famous superhero in Japan besides Ultraman, and is basically the Japanese equivalent of Spider-Man! (Though I would soon become aware of the actual localized Spidey, which I saw exactly a year later.)

    My third purchase was this very magazine, which I read about a few months earlier in Filmfax Magazine. This is the first issue of Markalite Magazine, from Summer 1990. Markalite (named after the Markalite FAHP/Flying Atomic Heat Projectors from Toho's 1957 sci-fi epic, The Mysterians) was devoted to Japanese sci-fi, both live-action and anime, and the first one I ever read of its kind. Ever since reading it on the train trip back home with Mom, it opened a whole new world for me, and I finally found the name of the medium of Japanese live-action special effects I loved so much: Tokusatsu (short for "tokubetsu/tokushuu satsuei," or "special photography" in Japanese).

    It had a "Superhero Rollcall," which had me on the lookout for almost every Japanese superhero TV show up to 1990 (just a few of them I'd already seen, and this magazine had more info on them!). From the Rollcall, I was gobsmacked to learn that Ultraman and its follow-up series Ultraseven (Tsuburaya; 1967), who I saw pictures and toys of, were created by Eiji Tsuburaya! EIJI FUCKING TSUBURAYA!!! Godzilla and Ultraman (and even Ultraseven) are BROTHERS!!! It had an in-depth look at its main feature, Godzilla Vs. Biollante (Toho; 1989), which I saw months earlier. It had an article on Japanese giant robot anime and their effects in America, where I learned about Go Nagai's Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and others. It had an article on the aforementioned Kamen Rider Black, and an interview with its star, Tetsuo Kurata. There was an article about Spectreman (P-Productions; 1971), which I learned about for the first time! Tributes to deceased veterans like actors Akihiko Hirata, Jun Tazaki, and screenwriter Takeshi Kimura (AKA: Kaoru Mabuchi)! And many others! Reviews, commentary, etc. And I learned about the experts in fandom, who were behind this magazine: August Ragone, Bob Johnson, Ed Godziszewski, and even the late Guy Mariner Tucker. This magazine was PACKED!!!

I was one crazy obsessed guy, looking around for this stuff. Long before we had the Internet, file-sharing platforms, and even YouTube and streaming! Even when that unfortunate phenomenon called Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Americanized from Zyuranger, which I saw almost a year earlier) premiered in 1993 and caused a meteoric market for tokusatsu (which kind of hampered things for me, because I loved this stuff being so obscure so only I could find it; Godzilla was much more in vogue at the time)! And thanks to this magazine (of which I bought Issue # 2 a year later at NYC Creation-Con), I've become a tokusatsu master in my own right, even though, true to my childhood dream, I was already more inspired to want to *create* my own version of this stuff! And you're already seeing that with my life's work in progress, Rekira the Super-Monster, which I started work on (originally as a Godzilla fan-fiction) just a few months later. But that's another story.

 

    If you stumble upon this magazine with limited knowledge of tokusatsu and even anime, I guarantee, your life will change forever as mine did. But don't say I didn't warn you that it was an addiction! Seeking out all the stuff I read in Markalite (and being informed about stuff I've already seen) was one hell of a journey. ;)

 

A Little Tribute to One of the Greatest Days of My Life.

 This coming Tuesday (January 6) will be 35 years since one of the greatest days in my life (the details of which I'll post about one day)! Long story short, I went to NYC Creation Con for the 4th time, with my mother, and bought a couple of videos (including the first five episodes of Ultraman, in English; finally seeing an Ultra Series for the first time, after hearing/reading about it for so many years), watching samples of other videos (including The Space Giants and Kamen Rider Black), and to top it all off, bought the first issue of the short-lived Markalite (Summer 1990), one of my favorite magazines of all time! (And yes, named for the Markalite FAHP/Flying Atomic Heat Projector mecha from The Mysterians.) It's like much of my questions were answered, including learning the word "tokusatsu" (special effects) for the first time! And it was my gateway to tokusatsu fandom, after trying to find out more about my favorite Japanese sci-fi stuff for many years!

 Here are the two main human characters from Rekira the Super-Monster reenacting Markalite's influence on my life. Raitaro Hayama reflecting my teenage self from the time, and Verena Freston looking on with curiosity (because tokusatsu, at the time, was considered so weird and not worthy of mainstream attention). Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca (in a pencil style).

Happy New Year 2026!

 Tomorrow (January 2nd), Tsuburaya's Ultra Series franchise turns 60 (when Ultra Q premiered in 1966)! (And Spectreman turns 55; five years apart!) So my original kaiju, Rekira, gets his own silhouette in the style of the original 1966 Ultraman show! Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca.

 I picked a fine time to get into both the Ultra Series and tokusatsu fandom; January 6, 1991 (on the franchise's 25th Anniversary), 35 years ago this month, when I went to NYC Creation-Con and bought some stuff that changed my life... but that's another story. ;)

 Happy New Year!

Final Art of 2025!

 Here's my final work of 2025!

 Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca, here's the Olympus Key Staff (secretly the Dynamic Heralds), the main characters of my kaiju project, Rekira the Super-Monster, wishing everyone a very Happy New Year!

Self-portrait for my 50th year.

 So I finally turned 50 several months ago, and before the year is up, I decided to celebrate it with a quick cartoon self-portrait. I don't do self-portraits often, being fairly modest, but I finally decided to give it another try, only more up-to-date. :)

My final art of the year is coming up shortly!

Last CG work of 2025!

 I think I really nailed it this time. :)

 You may have seen them in some test footage I posted recently, but I recently completed updated versions of the main heroes of my original kaiju project, Rekira the Super-Monster! And with them, I did a second version of the reenactment of my last art of 2022 on Blender, and this time, I finally nailed it, for my last CG work of 2025.

 Once again, depicted are the main characters, the Olympus Key Staff (who secretly transform into the superhero team, the Dynamic Heralds), hanging out in a huge studio similar to the Rainbow Room from The Monkees! (It's the same exact one used in the previous version.)

Here's the original 2002 drawing for comparison:

And the first 3D version from 2023, which is not bad, but it's great to see how far I've come in my modeling skills.

 Either way, these deeply touch me. :) 

 I'll still be doing some drawn art by the end of the year, so stay tuned!

Rekira 2025

 I'm about to unveil my latest 3D models of my original kaiju, Rekira! Two variants made with the same model; a dragon variant and a bipedal variant. This is the first time since 2008 that I decided to make a fully bipedal version. These are the best models yet! I'm impressed with both versions. Made in Blender.

 

REKIRA THE SUPER-MONSTER - Teaser Posters (for 2025)!

 Today is the 34th Anniversary of when I started the project that ultimately became Rekira the Super-Monster, my own original kaiju project! Production is still underway, and to mark the occasion, I did two versions of the teaser poster, in Japanese and English! This has my current V3 Beta model of Rekira, done in Blender (with which I'm animating the project), and the posters were done in FireAlpaca.

Japanese:

English:

BONUS: Japanese with fixed text (thanks to Instagram user "masked_elone"):

2025: The Year of the Snake (Happy New Year!)

 My first art of 2025 has Rekira, my original kaiju, celebrating the Year of the Snake (in a snakelike physique)!

Drawn on tablet in FireAlpaca.