It’s a crossover that feels almost too big to be real, and now it’s almost here.
This month’s Super Sonic Monthly #5 spotlights Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1 (out July 15), where the Blue Blur meets the King of the Monsters in a collision of speed and scale. When kaiju invade Sonic’s world, cities are thrown into chaos, and Dr. Eggman is quick to seize the opportunity, looking to weaponize their power for his own ends.
I caught up with the creative team, including Nick Marino, Jack Lawrence, and Reggie Graham, to break down how the crossover came together. From balancing Sonic’s agility with Godzilla’s massive presence to making the worlds feel seamless, the team dives into the challenges and excitement behind the project.
Plus, don’t miss exclusive preview pages from issue #1, plus the cover to Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #2 by Kevin Anthony Catalan.
Courtesy IDW
So what’s Sonic the Hedgehog x Godzilla #1 about?
It’s a crossover of massive proportions!
The Blue Blur’s battle with Dr. Eggman is upended by the arrival of two enormous monsters emerging from a humongous fissure in reality. The magnificent Mothra and the menacing Mechagodzilla carry their vicious battle into Sonic’s world, and its fate now hangs in the balance! Is Sonic, with the help of his loyal friends Amy and Tails, fast enough to halt the city’s frantic destruction? And why is Eggman so happy about this whole big mess?
Wait, is that Eggman now? How can he take over a solici—
From the files of me, Dr. Eggman! That petulant blue pipsqueak is making my existence absolute torture again—interrupting my crucial research on the beasts from the dimensional fissure! I simply MUST unlock the secrets of these giant monsters and use them to create something…eggtastic.
Dive into the interview below, and be sure to bookmark Super Sonic Monthly so you don’t miss the next edition!
AIPT: This crossover feels like something fans have been dreaming about for years. When the project was first proposed, what was your immediate reaction, and what was the biggest creative challenge in making it feel organic?
Nick Marino: In the summer of 2022, I was working on a different Godzilla project that was included in an editorial slide show about the future of IDW’s Godzilla line. One of the last slides said “Sonic X Godzilla?” and I remember audibly gasping as my mind began racing with the possibilities! I eagerly asked to pitch on it, and within a week, we were on a call with the Sonic office. To make it feel organic, I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: trying anything under the sun until everyone involved said yes.
Jack Lawrence: My immediate reaction was an emphatic YES when editor Thea Cheuk asked me if I wanted to do it! I have more than enough Sonic under my belt, but being a Godzilla fan, I always wanted to work on a Godzilla book. It was the big guy who got me so excited for the project. In terms of making it come together organically in the art, I tend not to worry too much about that sort of thing when bringing two very different IPs together because I think you can overthink it. In fact, Thea and associate editor Bixie Mathieu asked me to sketch out if I had anything in mind for the “Sonic-y” versions of the Godzilla monsters. I really didn’t want to compromise on those characters and I don’t think you need to. If you just go for it and treat them as if they exist in the same space, draw them with the same rules (technically speaking) they end up just sort of fitting.
AIPT: Nick, you mentioned being fascinated by scale, from micro to macro. How did you approach writing scenes that balance Sonic’s speed and agility with Godzilla’s sheer mass and destructive presence?
NICK: Godzilla and the other kaiju are so powerful that pretty much any movement leads to multiple points of danger simultaneously. On top of that, the monsters have been displaced from their home, and they’re not too happy about it! That keeps Team Sonic awfully busy as they scramble to save the residents of Station Square from rubble, debris, giant footsteps, awesome aerial assaults, and all manner of energy blasts. Just because Sonic can run from the tip of Godzilla’s tail to the end of its nose doesn’t mean that he has the means to stop the beast on his own. But that doesn’t mean Godzilla can stop Sonic either! Imagine trying to smoosh an ant that can move at the speed of sound. As a writer, SxG is an awfully fun exercise in perceiving time and space in a wide range of ways.
Courtesy IDW
AIPT: Jack, visually, how do you choreograph action between characters who operate on completely different physical scales without losing clarity or momentum on the page?
JACK: The environment has to become one of the major characters in the book. Having a dense city to really show the cuts between scales, to draw the eye down to ground level or up into the sky, makes the transitions between those scales much easier to deal with. I like dense backgrounds and using the lines of buildings to help convey speed or direction, and every trick has to be pulled out of the bag for this book!
AIPT: A follow-up, Nick/Jack, did you ever find it hard to visualize Sonic and Godzilla at the same time, given the huge size difference? Any quick-thinking solutions?
NICK: I have to admit that I’m guilty of leaving a lot of this problem-solving up to Jack. My excuse is that these decisions are better left to him because he’s so incredibly talented! I trust Jack’s gorgeous lines and colorist Reggie Graham’s brilliant colors to solve our trickiest visual conundrums and communicate everything effectively. That said, there’s always a film playing in my head when I write a scene, and I do my darndest to communicate the narrative in a way that moves the characters from beat to beat in a reasonable way. It takes a lot of close-ups and wide shots to get the job done!
JACK: I’ve always had a fascination with massive and small characters interacting. As a kid, I would imagine myself as a giant robot or monster or as a tiny little person running around the house, and, being a creative kid, that imaginative play always went beyond just “RAAARGH SMASH!” Even then, I was interested in how people, characters, and animals interact with one another and their environment, so I’ve been tapping into those memories a lot. I knew, going in, that I REALLY wanted to run with the visual language of these two drastically different scales; how Godzilla looks from street level, for example, is endlessly interesting to me, and in fact, in the past, has been how I’ve tended to draw him. When we’re on the ground, looking up at this towering creature, what do we ACTUALLY see? It fascinates me.
Courtesy IDW
AIPT: Dr. Eggman trying to weaponize kaiju feels like a perfect escalation of his usual schemes. How did you ensure his plan felt true to his character while still worthy of something as massive as Godzilla?
NICK: Dr. Eggman has been one of the smoothest parts of dreaming up this adventure because I have a special insight into how he thinks. From the jump, I’ve had to weaponize the jaw-dropping power of kaiju to cause destruction and mayhem to tell this story. That’s exactly what he wants to do! The trick was to figure out how he’s going to do it in the most Eggman way possible. Throughout my outlines, Eggman hatched a lot of kooky plans and utilized a lot of mysterious macguffins, some original and some pre-existing. Dedicated refinement led me to 2 (two) kooky plans and 1 (one) original macguffin. There’s a kaiju who makes all of this possible for Eggman and a hero who’s especially dedicated to thwarting his schemes.
AIPT: With Amy, Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow all involved, how did you decide which characters would interact most directly with the kaiju, and were there any surprising character pairings that emerged during scripting?
NICK: All of them have their fair share of interactions, and we’re still working on ways to squeeze in more. I just added a new one to our fourth script last week! One of our heroes has become my favorite member of Team Sonic during the writing process and I will say that she *ahem* they put in a lot of work to comprehend the kaiju. OKAY, FINE, NO MORE HIDING, IT’S AMY! Her Piko Piko Hammer sees a whole lot of action, but she’s equally invested in finding insightful ways to solve the problems that the kaiju present. This causes her to connect with one of the monsters more than the others, and I adore their interactions. There’s also a Sonic and Shadow kaiju interaction we all liked so much that it moved from the second issue to the climax of our final battle.
I can’t wait to see Jack and Reggie depict it!
Issue #2 cover by Kevin Anthony Catalan.
Courtesy IDW
AIPT: This story involves a mysterious portal bringing worlds together. How did you and your partners at SEGA and Toho collaborate to make sure both universes felt respected and authentically represented?
IDW SONIC Editorial: We’ve been very lucky in getting to work with two licensors that have been supportive and encouraging as we have iterated on this crossover. We’ve put a lot of wild ideas in front of them over the course of pre-production (for a while, we had Sonic going to Godzilla’s world!), and I’ve lost track of the number of drafts we’ve shown them.
Possibly the most pivotal moment in figuring out how the universes should be brought together came from feedback from SEGA in 2024: overall they asked to amp up the destruction so we could lean in hard into the “kaiju wrecking a city” tropes that the Godzilla franchise is known for, and they suggested Station Square as a possible location. With that guidance, a lot clicked into place. We had a Sonic city – one that fans have literally grown up hearing about and visiting over the years through the games – and could unleash iconic Godzilla monsters to do what they do best: stomping, blasting, and wreaking havoc.
Nick jumped into doing his research on Station Square (we have the gameplay screenshots to prove it!) to make sure he understood the setting and could write it accurately, but we had the kaiju to consider as well. Toho has been very open-minded about the direction of the story, and once we took SEGA’s notes in account, we wanted to make sure the kaiju’s behaviors and depictions were correct. With more help from SEGA, we were also able to work out a way to establish a connection between the Sonic characters and the kaiju to open up even more possibilities with their interactions, so it’s been a very collaborative effort the whole time!
AIPT: Reggie, how did you approach the color palette when blending Sonic’s bright, kinetic world with the often darker, more catastrophic tone associated with Godzilla stories?
Reggie Graham: It’s funny, Sonic is actually no stranger to giant kaiju wreaking havoc on his planet, and the backgrounds are generally gritty to juxtapose the heroic feats of Sonic’s colorful cast! I decided that the portal to Godzilla’s world would create a sort of desaturated purple haze around the whole environment to make all the characters stand out! It makes it more lively than just being like grey fog or something too.
AIPT: For longtime fans of both franchises, what moment in issue one do you think will generate the loudest reaction in comic shops this summer?
NICK: Hold on, let me consult my proof of SxG #1, beautifully lettered by Ed Dukeshire. (Yes, I have one and, no, you can’t have it!) Honestly, I’m just not sure. It’s packed with gobs of action and character moments. I’ll let my collaborators single out the panels that they think will resonate the most. Personally, I really like the Dr. Eggman moments in this one. He’s sciencing hard here, and I love to see it!
JACK: Yeah, Nick’s right; it’s tough to pick just one moment. There’s action all the way through. My personal hope is that people will look at it and just say, “Yeah, this guy can draw monsters!”
And that’s a wrap on Super Sonic Monthly #5! We’ll be back next month for another edition!
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