Dan Goldman on Red Light Properties, Monkeybrain and the Changing Face of Digital

Dan Goldman, the Eisner Award-nominated co-creator of Shooting War, recently brought Red Light Properties--a series of short graphic novels about a family who deal in previously-haunted real estate--to Monkeybrain Comics. His was a unique situation; while other creators have headed to Monkeybrain to find a home for their cool, new concept, Red Light Properties was an established property that had been in circulation for years, first at Tor.com and later available through the digital marketplaces on the Nook, Kobo and Kindle Fire. Now, having brought the old content to Monkeybrain, Goldman is both awaiting the release of the first print edition in October and working on new Red Light Properties content--both for Monkeybrain to release digitally and in other media. Goldman joined ComicBook.com to talk about the book that he says has become the first thing he's ever done that he feels he could work on for years to come. ComicBook.com: How did you end up at Monkeybrain? You've been around for a while, and you're the first person who really brought something that already existed in the world to Monkeybrain. Dan Goldman: Red Light Properties was on ComiXology in the creator-owned books ghetto for almost a year before I moved over to Monkeybrain and nobody found it. It just sat there. Not only was it on ComiXology, it was on the Kindle, on the Nook and on the Kobo as well. I had tried hand-coding that stuff and that was a disaster and then I used Graphicly's services and I felt like the conversions were okay but they weren't really solid. The best experience was with ComiXology, where I already was, but nobody could find me there. With Monkeybrain, aside from the fact that you've got this new, shiny seal of quality, I really like the other people who were publishing with them and I really like Chris and Allison very much. Once we really started talking, it was like, "This is going to be really good," so that's where the decision came from. My fans tend to be outside of the comics world and I want to fix that because I'm working in comics and it's hard to get people who dont read comics to pick up comics and get it without having to explain it to them whereas the comics audience is just, "Oh, cool. That sounds awesome, I'm goign to buy that." There's a lot less singing and dancing you have to do get them to read it--but that audience has never been mine.

ComicBook.com: But this is also a lot more "comic-booky" than many of your other projects, in terms of the stuff that the traditional comics audience would find. Goldman: I wrote it that way. I grew up as a comic reader--a serial comic reader before trade paperbacks and graphic novels, and I always anted to have one and these were the first characters that I created or worked with where I felt like there was a reservoir underground of stories I could tell with them. They're really alive to me. I've been working with them if not drawing them then writing them and planning to start the series for over I'd say nine years before I launched it on Tor. I know their whole lives, birth to death, every one of them and this was the project that I wanted to say, "This is going to be my series." At least my first one. And that's been fun and as the market changes and I'm trying to adapt--being out of the country and out of the mix as these digital sea changes were hitting the world of comics, it was like I'm in a room in Brazil and I'm watching this stuff from a distance but because I felt so removed I felt free to jump forms and experiment with distribution and experiment with the way the stories would be told. So it started out with a series of graphic novels feel when it was on Tor--that's like 196-page story that I'm breaking up into slices with Monkeybrain. Telling one large story was very much the intent but as the market's changed and there's these digital-single ideas I find the work it really suits that format. ComicBook.com: Now, of course, you're not independently wealthy, and there aren't many guys who are in comics. So is it tough to find time, especially now that you're back in New York, to sit down and work on Red Light Properties? Goldman: My cost of living was lower in Brazil; it's been sort of like I got on a bullet train through capitalism the minute I arrived in New York City. I'm doing a lot of work with--like AMC is probably my biggest client right now that I'm doing a lot of writing for.

ComicBook.com: Is that exasperating? As a writer artist, to have like 180 pages in your head and know where you want to go but to just be resigned to the fact that it will be a year before most of it is ever on paper? Goldman: Ah, it's the worst thing in the world. If I was independently wealthy, I would like to go the Mike Mignola route and write my ass off and have a group of awesome artists that I could pay very well and keep very happy to draw the work and I could get everything done faster. If I somehow made a sh--load of money, that's exactly what I would do with Red Light Properties is tell the story faster. I like my art--I can't say that I love it but what I can tell you is that it's very taxing and I'd love to put all that energy into just getting all of these scripts produced in comic form and just get it out there. That would be a dream for me but as you know it's expensive to hire artists and keep everybody paid the way that I would want to be paid if the tables were turned--and that's the only way I would work. ComicBook.com: Is this something where you've got an endpoint in mind for the series already? Goldman: I don't know if there's a conclusion for the series. I like that it's open-ended. It's like having a conclusion for Popeye. I feel like these guys--I know where their lives go, but as far as an endpoint for the series, no. I kind of don't want to. I feel like I'll know when I get there. ComicBook.com: We've talked a lot about the work part--let's shift to the actual book. Going through again, one of the first things that struck me was that the lettering is so unique, and it really serves the tone of the book.

Goldman: Are you looking at the version that's on the Nook or are you looking at the version on ComiXology? The font that I used, I liked the creepiness of it but I got a lot of feedback from people who said it made it trickier to read, especially on a small screen or an ereader. So for the Monkeybrain editions, I re-lettered everything using more traditional comics fonts. But the balloons, I call "spermy" word balloons, and those I draw by hand and I just think it's interesting. It's a little more fun. I think that really basic, mainstream, traditional word balloons are just boring. You can have a little fun with it, so I do. There's a balance, I think, between stylization and having it be in the way between the comic and the reader. I think I find the middle distance with the Monkeybrain versions with the cleaner fonts but retaining the spermy balloons. ComicBook.com: There are a lot of things about the look of the book that are kind of unique to you. You do everythign in the book but it's a mixed-media approach with hand-drawn alongside computer art alongside photos. Goldman: It took me a long time to find a balance that I liked. I think I'm still figuring that out; I've moved a lot further with it over the course of working on Red Light Properties but I also think that initially where me working in this style comes from is that I've been drawing my whole life, but probably not very well. And when I first started with this style--which is primarily drawing foreground characters and finding other ways to construct the world around them--I discovered that I could tell a much wider range of stories and sometimes just stuff that I could pull out of my own imagination. Pretty much anything I could write, I could draw in a way that I wasn't able to do otherwise to any degree that I was happy with. For me, it's just become my style. I don't sit and sketch--there are probably a lot of things I could do and I should do to be a better artist but I don't really have the time or the discipline for it. If I can do this, I think I'm satisfied in the sense that I don't want to sit and look at artist's models and stuff. I think there's more value in taking this style that I've invented and pushing forward with it and seeing where I can take it instead of taking a left turn and going more traditional. ComicBook.com: Jude is one of those characters who takes a lot of abuse from a lot of people, and it's sometimes hard to argue with it. How did you go about writing a series lead who's sometimes unsympathetic in a lot of ways? Goldman: Do you find him unsympathetic or unlikable?

ComicBook.com: Well, that's perhaps too harsh. What I mean is that in a lot of fiction, when you get people who are always harping on your main character, most of the time they'd be depicted as somewhat less right or less sympathetic than what we see out of Cecilia or Jude's dad. Goldman: Yeah, but that's really one-dimensional, isn't it? ComicBook.com: Yeah, but in the case of a lot of mass fiction I think readers could look at Red Light Properties and say Jude is the source of a lot of his own problems. Goldman: I think that that is true from one perspective but nobody's right. I think Jude is very sympathetic as a character. In his own, schmucky way he's trying to provide for his family and Cecilia is being very unfair to him. Yes, she needs a certain amount of dollars to keep the business running and to buy school clothes and books and whatever but that comes at a cost that is destroying her marriage and pulling her family apart and on either side of the Jude/Cecilia divide they're both destroying everything that's important to them while trying to provide for it, and I find that really interesting. I find that there's probably some DNA from my parents' relationship in there and some DNA from a relationship that I had years ago just in the sense that I was living with a girl and we split up and we were both really poor and we had to live together. I would sleep on the couch but mots of the time we were sleeping in the bed together and we were broken up. And that went on for way too long and it was horrible and that was around the time that I was writing the genesis of this is that there's this idea of these people who are jsut stuck together. And they're stuck together in ways that--like home, marriage, business, kids, it's just all tangled up. And they're trying to untangle themselves from each other but once that unraveling starts it uncovers feelings that they thought had already passed, which I also think is very true to life. I mean, we work that way, right? ComicBook.com: And it's a lot easier to pull really hard and break the thing that's tangled if you're so angry that the higher priority is getting it done instead of getting it done right. That's not really there in these characters, though; nobody hates anybody. Goldman: What I've had a lot of response to from readers is that the drama of the Tobin family and their business always seems to sit in the front seat while the supernatural stuff somehow always seems less dramatic than what's going on between the characters. I don't even know how deliberate that was at first but when I hit that mix in the narrative, I thought it was unique. ComicBook.com: Well, and in serialized storytelling, the most important thing is the character because the story will pass. Goldman: And it's funny--as I've been thinking about this story across multiple media, I like the short, kind of done-in-one stories especially in a digital format. I think they're great and I want to do more of them. I feel like not every case is a graphic novel or really deserves it but to me, the done-in-one aspect is the engine that makes it a satisfying read and the long character arcs which is the real story of the series drives the whole thing. ComicBook.com: And the most recent chapter--A Series of Tubes--didn't even involve Red Light Properties itself--it was all family drama. But you don't really notice that until you stop to think of it later because it's the character carrying the day. Goldman: It's not robots or heat vision or whatever. Everybody has gone for a glass of water in the middle of the night and felt like somebody was watching them. Everybody has family problems. If you're from Central or South America or you're Latino, this sort of religious aspect to it that becomes more and more present as the series goes on--that across multiple nationalities is really strong in a culture, too, and then of course there's this real estate aspect. I think there's a lot of different entry points to get into the series. I think there's a lot of ways that different kinds of people can get into the book. ComicBook.com: I can look at any of the books and say that any one of them could be a point where you pick up for your TV pilot, too; I think that speaks to the accessibility of the property as something that could pick up new eyes just by being in front of them. Goldman: I want to do a Kindle serial of Red Light Properties in prose--that I could write faster and produce faster, to do little novellas or little one-off short stories and sell them for Kindle with no graphics, just a cool cover, to see how these guys could exist without the benefit of pictures.