Nick Marino joined his fellow comic writers in San Diego at Comic-Con, a short trip from his comic book store in Los Angeles, to promote the new highly anticipated crossover <a href="https://idwpublishing.com/blogs/news/sonic-the-hedgehog-x-godzilla-brings-the-pop-culture-franchises-together-for-the-first-time-ever-in-comics” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla. The first issue, which came out this July, features a fight between the Sonic gang, Doctor Eggman, and Mechagodzilla. Marino’s humor, creativity, and sense of collaboration is vibrant in the first issue, leaving promising potential for the upcoming saga. We had the opportunity at SDCC to catch up with him and chat about his creative process and what it took to get this comic to the world.
Marino explained that his ideas often come to him in the early morning, “What’ll happen is when I’m trying to fall asleep again, I’ll say to myself, ‘Oh, I’m gonna think about this next script I have to finish,’ and I’ll start letting my mind wander.” He adds that Transformers tale The Morphlingsspecifically came to him when he went back to sleep and had a lucid dream.
When asked to reminisce back to the very first comic he ever wrote, it didn’t take much digging for him to think back to his “golden book” for school.
“When I was eight, I wrote my own book called Toxic Killer, and it was very similar to what I write now,” he says. Toxic Killerfeatures the main character getting kidnapped and having to find out where he is and escape. “There’s a car chase. There’s all kinds of weird stuff.” But Marino revealed that he “didn’t think of himself as a writer after that” until further into his adult life.
For Sonic the Hedgehog x Gozilla, Marino was inspired and excited to experiment with the “scale of life” between the drastically different sized characters.
“Power is not based on size. Power is based on what you’re capable of doing at your size,” he muses.The first issue of the comic displays Sonic’s advantage through his control and agency by making his first instinct in an attack to save the citizens on the ground that could be stepped on by Mechagodzilla. Marino adds that teamwork is another core part of why Sonic and his team are strong and capable for their size, “I find with that core four of Team Sonic [Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy], I really enjoy them for the ways that they complement each other.”
Marino has his own team that helped bring this comic to life. Jack Lawrence and Reggie Graham were behind the art and colors and helped Marino visualize this “scale of life” theme. He says he “was so lucky” to work with Lawrence and Graham and emphasized that they have “to be together because that’s their magic, it’s their alchemy.” The collaborative discussion among them did not need to be expansive because he makes an effort to entertain them through his writing and, “make them fully immersed in the illusion to the point where they are drawing from a place of feeling.”
Getting published is a notoriously challenging feat, and Marino says that this comic, “took a lot of force of will to stick with this project because there’s a lot of people that you need to be patient with.” The people in question are the number of editors and brand executives that have to get on board when they already have busy schedules with projects in the works.
“You’ve got to empower your editors to empower their superiors to all work together to empower the approvals people at the American or international branches to inspire their bosses at the Japanese branches to say yes,” Marino says of a long process that he nevertheless had patience for, and a team of “kind and open” editors that aided him in the publication process.
Marino’s excitement to explore the themes of size and dynamic between Sonic and Godzilla are what ultimately got him to stick with the project, “I get so much motivation from playing with themes that fascinate me. So I was so excited to play with the scale dynamics and try to imagine ‘How does this small creature with great speed perceive a creature with great scale?’”
The prospect of future readers also keep Marino motivated and inspired in the writing process, “That’s great to have your story, your narrative inspiration, but the other thing you have to do is hold on to the self belief in your story, It’s one thing to feel like I will be entertained, it’s important to hope they [the audience] will be entertained.”
Marino’s debut to this epic crossover in the first issue of Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzillais an exciting display of his and his collaborators creativity and inspiration behind the iconic characters, and how Sonic and Godzilla’s different sizes and mentalities play out on the page.
Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1 is available in comic book stores and
