Back Story: Godzilla: The Monster Fight Record Series
By Patrick Kelley
At the start of 2020, I was in a good place. My Cybersecurity team started a new job, I was comfortably moved into my new home, and I had fun spending the holidays with my family. Everything pointed to 2020 being a good year.
Then COVID happened.
I was one of the fortunate ones as my job allowed me to telework, so I wasn’t impacted financially. However, emotional and mental impacts were a different story. I am an introverted and reserved person in general, so spending time away from people didn’t worry me at first. If anything, it probably felt good for the first couple of weeks. However, as those weeks and eventually months carried on, the isolation started to wear on me. I felt like I was living in my own version of the film Groundhog Day, only instead of going outside and interacting with the same people and situations every day, I was stuck in the same repetitive daily cycle in complete isolation. It is true that I was able to interact with my family and friends via phone or video calls, but it wasn’t the same.
My routine was wake up, eat, log in to work, eat, work some more, log off, and then bury my evenings into whatever streaming service I felt like watching that night. That whole routine became very stale, very fast. I did anything I could to keep busy. I have to get training credits to maintain my cybersecurity certifications. I became so desperate for mental stimulation that I jumped right into a pile of trainings and wound up going significantly over what was required. I also got an additional certification in the process.
Those training courses could only keep me busy for so long. I couldn’t go to the gym, I couldn’t date, I couldn’t even go to the bar and drown my sorrows in a nice Old Fashioned. It was especially hard spending time away from my family. For three months, the only times I left the house were trips to the grocery store once every two weeks. I hate going to the grocery store, and relying on that as my only source of real “get up and go” activity for three months only served to make me more anxious.
I felt like I had all this pent-up energy and I had to use it towards something.
Well, I found my outlet when I started rewatching a lot of the old Godzilla movies. I’ve been a fan of the big guy since I was a kid, and those movies were always a source of comfort and enjoyment. However, this time around, I was looking for any excuse to keep myself busy and I thought about finding a way use Godzilla constructively. One idea that came to mind was documenting a win-loss record for Godzilla. A “true” and accurate Godzilla win-loss fight record is something I’ve thought about for years, but now with all this extra time on my hands, I thought I’d take those thoughts in my head and turn it into something tangible. That eventually led to me deciding to document Godzilla’s fight history, create a methodology for the analysis, and then publish it for fans to enjoy.
Thus, Godzilla: The Monster Fight Record was born. My intent was to develop a way record the monsters’ win-loss statistics, rewatch all of the Godzilla films, analyze each fight scene, and plug the results into my methodology.
Little did I know just how much work it would take to get the book published. What started out as a project to keep myself from going insane from cabin fever became a three year project that coincided with major life events. I didn’t stay in isolation for very long after starting the writing process. I met the love of my life, got married, became a father, and spent time with my family once again. Despite that, I knew I had to finish the fight record. I don’t like to leave things unfinished.
Little by little, I would rewatch the old movies, analyze the fights, document the results, and format everything into a manuscript. What made it even more difficult was how naive I was to the publishing process. Everything down to the simple use of “mirror margins” for the formatting were completely unknown to me. The book’s formatting and content changed a lot over the three years, but I got it finalized in 2023.
It was a wild ride, but a worthwhile experience all the same.
Patrick Kelley was born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a lifelong monster movie fan. He spent his childhood becoming familiar with the classics like Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein, King Kong, the works of Ray Harryhausen, and of course his favorite, Godzilla. His many other hobbies include sports (particularly Football), movies, and television, but when he’s not indulging in those activities, he enjoys spending time with his lovely wife and newborn daughter.
Visit Patrick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/patrickgbook.
Godzilla: The Monster Fight Record is a two-volume series that provides a history of all the monster battles throughout the Godzilla film series. After seven decades and almost forty films, Godzilla has earned the title of King of the Monsters. The Godzilla films have showcased the King’s legendary battles with larger-than-life opponents like the three-headed King Ghidorah, the winged guardian Mothra, his robotic doppelganger Mechagodzilla, and the original giant monster star King Kong. The Monster Fight Record analyzes these titanic battles to determine an informed and accurate win-loss record for Godzilla and all of his monster co-stars. Fans of kaiju and classic science fiction films will enjoy a trip down memory lane while also getting a sports-style analysis of the monster battles, complete with statistics and win percentages for each beast.
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