
Erstwhile Bloglin mainstay Justin Jewett has been on his grind. His grizzly, as it were. Not here. That dude Hateball tho. HVTXBVLL, as he is probably now known in the biz. Somewhere. You may remember his zetaphysical forays into toyworld, showing you around kaiju blacklands; and by the looks of the picture above, it should be clear by now that he has physically far outmetaed these forays.
Perhaps most innocuously, there was this little interview for Tumbling sensation SoHowWasYourDay, where Hateball showed us his sensitive side. A portrait of the artist at his dreamiest yet busiest.
Seems like a tough day being a dork during the Dorklympics. I wouldn’t know. What he doesn’t tell you is that he did all this wearing flip-flops. I don’t even understand how that’s possible. What he does tell you though, is the name of his latest creature: Shub Zeroth. A Brian Ewing co-production. And I know where to start telling you just what it is, with the words of the man himself:
I conjured him up out of a sweaty pile of Lovecraft, [Hunter S Thompson], and Vonnegut…what a pedigree, right? It’s a healthy dose of Brian’s amazing art paired with my dryrot sarcasm. The toy has been sculpted by Miyazawa-san, owner/operator of a tiny toy company in Japan called Shikaruna Koubo.
Lookit below and make sure you clickit to see all angles of what is JUST THE FREAKING PROTO, OGODICANTWAITTOSEEITINCOLOR.

The general release is slated for fall. Til then, you can sign up for a mailing list to stay posted (it takes a few seconds) and then check out a montage of nearly everything else he has done during Comicon (it takes 2 minutes). That’s a bout the distance between now and the Fall, 3 minutes.
But wait! Would you like to know more? I had the pleasure to shoot some questions at Hateball for a side pocket of soul-searching that ultimately lead us to the middle of a soft vinyl wasteland, kicking model carcasses around and generally just jibber-jabbering. The following is a short extract of something that may or may not end in full on this here Bloglin eventually.
I pondered: With all the cultural background involved in these toys (whether manga or mythological or whatever) don’t think that the kaiju trend might be cultural or (gasp) generational? The animals will cross-over, sure… The Velocitron tentacled monsters, probably… But the Tokojis and Hedorahs? Where does the spur of the moment start, and where does the meta culture end?
It’s certainly one of the core shits, innit? How many toys ABOUT something can there really be? Before you know it, large corporations will start cultivating movie franchises that are designed solely to spawn an ever-expanding line of merchandise. How funny would it be—how absolutely ironic and blatantly HATEFUL toward us, the consumers—if there was somehow a critically acclaimed and widely praised movie that was actually ABOUT toys that then went on to permeate huge heaping swaths of the worldwide entertainment fingerprint and came heavy with pale imitations of the very ‘actors’ that starred in it.
Oh wait.
I think that toys will always tend to be about something. Something that already exists. Or existed. The ‘licensed’ items will always (probably, right?) outshine the stuff that’s created ‘from scratch’. I certainly think that what you and I call ‘kaiju’ (as in reference to ‘monsters that appear in movies and the toys that are made to represent them’) might not be generational in the way you mean. But I don’t have any better theories.
Oh, the fun to be had. Here’s my thoughts: great ideas are few and far between, and we’re not that great to begin with, so we needed our parents and grand-parents to try and err, and reduce the amount of erring we need to do. So we rely on the past, because honestly, a lot of great ideas have already been had, and a lot of great people have been here before us, and it would be a shame to not pay attention. But there’s an (at least) equal amount of inspiration in the world around us that these people of the past did not have the chance to exploit, and it’s our job to pull those strings together to create little bundles of joy for our generation to enjoy, and for the next generations to have documents of how shitty we are, and how there’s always room for improvement. Give them something to think about. Give us something to no longer think about, because it’s right there. We made it. #Meta. #Crypt. Holler.