The Monster Kid chatting with a kaiju at G-Fest’s Dojo Studios

This past weekend we went to G-Fest, a Godzilla fan convention in Chicago. The Monster Kid comes by his love of monsters honestly– he inherited it from his dad. The Monster Librarian has been a kaiju lover since before I met him, and in our first apartment I couldn’t walk through our shared study without some crazy looking critter falling on me. Boxes more of them in boxes were stacked in the closet until we moved out and my mom, over his intense objections, took all of them out of their original packaging to make them fit better in the packing boxes (all collectors wince now). The monsters were packed away in boxes again when we transformed the study in our first house into a bedroom in preparation for the arrival of the Monster Kid, and when we moved to a bigger house, they were packed into a closet. But not forgotten.

When the Monster Kid was about four, Dylan pulled out a giant tub of action figures and said, “I don’t think I can count on these being collectibles anymore. I want to take them out and play with them with the kids.” I was a little wary of this as toddlers and preschoolers aren’t generally known to be gentle with their toys. But his enthusiasm was contagious. Suddenly the Lego table became a battleground for King Ghidorah, Godzilla, Mothra, and friends (if you can call them friends). It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between father and son, although, unsurprisingly to me, many of the action figures were battered or broken (Dylan always seemed taken aback). They watched all the movies, then American 1950s science fiction monster movies. The Monster Kid discovered Ultraman, and a new obsession was born. We all discovered (or rediscovered) the coolness of Ray Harryhausen and stop-motion animation. Kaiju and giant robots appeared in the Monster Kid’s drawings and stories. I still have the piece of paper on which he wrote, for the first time, “Godzilla” (the letter z is backwards). Other creatures and characters have come and gone (although Harry Potter has had some considerable staying power), but the kaiju are always there. With the release of Pacific Rim, the collecting kicked up a notch, and interest in creating stop-motion videos caught on (it’s possible that our family is the only one in town to consider Pacific Rim a family film). Before he died, Dylan was building paper-mache mountains, painting models, and going through spray paint at an alarming rate. And for the first time he decided it would be fun to go to a fan convention. He and the Monster Kid were very excited about the movie they were making (the story was never actually written down) and going to the convention. We planned to go as a family. And even though Dylan couldn’t be there with us, we went to G-Fest.

I have to say that going to G-Fest really put fandom in perspective. We went to “Dojo Studios”, where fans were filming an original kaiju movie that they had been working on for something like five years. There was a life-size spaceship cockpit made, basically, out of cardboard, styrofoam, and spray paint. I saw the prices on some of the kaiju the Monster Kid has been playing with (and breaking) which bring a whole new meaning to what it meant for Dylan to bring out his collection for the kids to play with. I saw other kids who were as obsessed as the Monster Kid. I saw a lot of fathers and sons getting excited– in fact, there were several pairs in the costume contest (there were also mothers and sons, and brothers and sisters). It’s possible that this is the only time they get to be around other kids who love kaiju so much. And I saw the incredible font of information that my son possesses on the movies and monsters that populate the world of Japanese fantasy film.

I want to thank the organizers of G-Fest for making it possible for us to come this year, the fans I encountered who were pleasant, generous, and compassionate, and my non-fan friends who gave up vacation time so we could go. Kaiju lovers, and their friends and families, really are the best.