PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Pophorror had the pleasure of interviewing Mac McClintock of Titanic Creations, who are committed to bringing an affordable range of original and licensed Kaiju collectible figures. The figures, lead by the star Kaiju, Titanicus are supported by graphic novels that tell their stories and build their world.
PopHorror: Obviously you’re a Kaiju fan…
Mac: I think that’s a fair assessment.
PopHorror: So, moving past the obvious, what inspired you to create the universe of Titanicus and actually going through with making your own product versus just being a fan of the genre?
Mac: Titanicus is based off the monster that sunk the Titanic. There was this old model of Godzilla doing that, I think that was the beginning of the inspiration of building the universe. And I think the next part was that, around 2016, we were at G-Fest and most, if not all of the collectibles were 60-plus dollars. I felt that, even if it’s not licensed, it would be nice to have a very high-end, well-done collectible at a 40-dollar price point. That’s a large part of what drove us to do this, to offer some that are both high quality and affordable to most people.
PopHorror: They are definitely high quality, I can vouch for that. How much of the universe was planned before any of the figures were designed?
Mac: So, I think we probably actually did this backward from most people. We did all four of the figure designs, basically back to back to back. Then we took these characters and said, what kind of story do we want to build around them.
So, Titanicus is a giant iceberg that sunk the Titanic. That one was fairly easy. And then Nosferadon, we got this vampire-type thing. Then we were like, where does Nosferadon come from? That’s a German thing, so then we kind of explored the idea of what if he was friends with a young Jewish boy during the Holocaust? That would create kind of a new layer. And then Skureaus has kind of Egyptian vibes just in general, so following off our World War 2 thing already going on, part of the Nazi campaign was in Egypt. Then finally for Griffixis, a lot of that took inspiration from the canceled 1994 Godzilla movie, we looked at the character in that movie, a griffin, that was never used. We took elements from that, and then put our own spin on it.
PopHorror: Okay, well, you’ve kind of answered my next question, but is there anything else you want to add about the creature design or the naming process?
Mac: I think with the first two, Titanicus and Nosferadon, we were very straightforward with the names. Then with Skureaus, what we did was we started combining words from different languages of snake and scorpion. Then Griffixis was originally just called the Griffin, but then we had to adapt it to Griffixis so that we could actually trademark and copyright the name.
PopHorror: What can you tell us about the upcoming graphic novel, Soul War?
Mac: Soul War was always kind of our endgame. We wanted to do comics that came with the toys, but then we slowly started realizing that if we wanted this to be as popular and as loved as we felt about it, we had to tell this complete story. We also have the idea of doing a serialized, twenty-page comic book, but we felt if we did a really big book, that told the entire story, that would connect people with our monsters a lot better. So that book is done by Patrick McEvoy , He did World War Kaiju, which was a Kickstarter project. I was really a fan of that and it can kind of be mixed in with our historical fiction, so I thought he was the perfect person to bring in.
We sat down for about six months to work the script out, and how we wanted to do it. He did all the artwork, really I think it’s a great story that talks about a lot of different things that you really wouldn’t expect to see in a Kaiju comic book selling toys. We have a lot of discussions about the importance of not marginalizing people, and also the importance of life and connecting with your family as well.
PopHorror: It really sounds like you are touching on some important themes rather than just pushing everything aside for monster brawls.
Mac: Yeah, I think really the other part that we took very seriously was that everything in the book has to be human-focused. Meaning that, the monsters are important, but when the human characters don’t matter, like in a lot of media, then it’s not going to connect with people the same way as it would if those characters were well developed.
PopHorror: So you said that Soul War was your endgame, will that be the final comic, or are you going to expand the comics and figures further?
Mac: As far as our original lines go, we plan on growing out from here, and releasing new figures with a 60 page short graphic novel going forward in 2024. The plan there, is that with the 60 page comic books, over the course of the year will be released with 3 figures. The comic will cover the entire scope of what Soul War does.
PopHorror: I noticed on your shop, a lot of the figures say low stock. Are these going to be limited run or will they be restocked?
Mac: All of our figures are made on runs of a thousand. They’re in stock now, we don’t, on our site, list how many are in stock because we sell also in person and on eBay. So trying to keep that updated is a slight problem.
PopHorror: Titanic Creations has been posting a lot about a Gorgo return, can you tell us about your involvement in that, and will he have a crossover in the Titanicus universe or will he be his own thing?
Mac: So first off, on March 14th, we were able to launch our first Gorgo figure, which is already our most popular figure. What happened there was we were just discussing ways that we could grow our potential brand in general. We thought about bringing in some obscure Kaiju that really hadn’t had figures made. Gorgo was the most obvious because there’s not any figures of Gorgo that have been made.
We were actually able to hunt down the owner of the license and we were able to get the license to make this figure, along with 2 other figures. We also got the rights to make a potential graphic novel prequel to the movie, which we plan will be in the universe of Soul War but as of now it won’t be a heavy crossover MCU style. It’ll have similar themes. A great example is in Soul War, there’s this secret government agency called Project Serenity. In the Gorgo prequel graphic novel, it will talk about how Project Serenity was involved and knew of Gorgo’s appearance even before the movie takes place.
PopHorror: Are there any plans for further licensing after Gorgo?
Mac: There are a few that we have cooking right now. It just depends on whether we can secure those properties and a lot of that is going to depend on if Gorgo is going to sell as well as we hope. If we’re not making money on these licensed figures, then we’ll just continue to stay with our own creations because then we keep everything instead of having to pay for a license.
PopHorror: Right, and you did say on Facebook that you needed to make so many preorders of Gorgo for it to work out, correct?
Mac: Correct. We need to get 350 just to produce them. Currently, as of day one, we sold 230 of them so I feel fairly confident that we’ll reach our goal.
PopHorror: I see that you’re going to be at Monsters Attack in Chicago, what can anyone that wants to go check out your booth expect to see?
Mac: I think the biggest thing is we will have prototypes of both our stuffed Gorgo and our articulated Gorgo there. And the biggest thing I think that’s always our best draw is our 10-foot-tall Titanicus costume that you can take pictures with.
PopHorror: So to wrap things up, what are some of your favorite Kaiju movies?
Mac: So I think my personal favorite of the Godzilla movies is Godzilla VS King Ghidorah, which I think is not anyone’s favorite. It was the first one I ever saw and it got me infatuated with the genre. That’s the 1991 version with all the time travel and messed-up timelines and everything. And then I think another one that really influenced me is the movie Super 8, which I don’t think many people have seen.
PopHorror: I love that movie!
Mac: Right? It’s a great movie and it’s so underappreciated for what it does, it had that fun, whimsical aspect to it, like most Spielberg movies in the 80s.
PopHorror: Well, thank you so much for your time, I appreciate you talking with us about this.
Mac: Yea, for sure.
If you would like to pre-order a copy of Soul War follow this link: https://titaniccreations.com/soulwar
If you would like to pre-order a Gorgo figure, follow this link: https://titaniccreations.com/gorgo
