UP & COMING: DAN GOLDMAN

[MattBrady]

by Chris Arrant

While some of us may be delighted by the biggest and the most popular in the world of comics, we all realize that for every popular book, writer or artist there has to be a beginning. While there are many ways to success with each story finding its own route, there is one attribute that can be found in each one: talent. Up & Coming is a bi-monthly feature at Newsarama.com that seeks out the next generation of high-profile comic creators and profiles them today.

Who is Dan Goldman? Depending on who you ask, you're bound to get a variety of answers. A beloved son, a talented brother, a fledgling filmmaker, a digital cartoonist, a poignant writer. They'd all be right, but we can't leave it at that.

In the world of comics, Dan Goldman is primarily known for the political webcomic Shooting War with writer A Anthony Lappé and the webstrip Kelly at Act-i-vate. Both are online, but he's not stopping there.

Newsarama: What are you working on now?

Dan Goldman: In terms of online comix, Shooting War's hectic eight week run is just about finished, so I'll be able to focus more energy to my Kelly [strip] over on ACT-I-VATE again. The story's reaching the end of Act One soon, and no one has any idea what I'm planning for our uncomfortable little roomies.

I'm also co-creating a new comic called 718 with Chris Radtke. 718 is a guy who's burned his Social Security card and reinvented himself as the superhero 718, the "Soul of the Outer Boroughs." Taking on the dark forces of greed and despair billowing out from the center of Manhattan, 718 lives cash-free by his wits and reputation alone on the psychedelic ghetto outskirts of the greatest city on earth. An internet star and conspiracy-battling psychic-soldier for the universal enlightment, 718 fights for our collective freedom from the invisible yokes of our fattened lives of credit-slavery and media-manipulation in the Modern World. With the ghosts of the Ancient World getting dimmer and dimmer by someone else's long-term grand design, 718 and his costumed posse of supernatural superheroes remember how to tap into it, chant the names, gain their wisdom. 718 is going to be both urban grit and ghetto-voodoo-supernatural, looking at New York City through the blood in the streets and the pigeons overhead.

NRAMA: You are a co-founder of the Act-i-vate group which launched in February. How's that going for you, and how does it measure up with what you envisioned?

DG: ACT-I-VATE is greater and more powerful than I'd ever imagined. I am so proud of every one of us, and honored to be in their superbly-talented company. Watching us grow and learning from each other's innovations is going to make all of us ten times the artist we were when we started. Especially Chip Zdarsky; he's got the most room for improvement.

We've got a design in the works to create ACT-I-VATE.com off-LiveJournal (though we'll keep our LJ mirror of course, we loooves us some LJ) so that the rest of the internet as a whole can see and interact with us easier. There's also some new innovations to the coming site that will give ACT-I-VATE more of a "group studio with different rooms" interface... and RSS feeds for each comic. Lots of new tech, lots of new ideas. Remember, childrens, we launched our vessel only five months ago.

NRAMA: Your comic serialized on Act-i-vate is called Kelly. One part roommate thriller, with one-part angst over the girl that got away. If I'm not mistaken, it's based on some personal events in your own life. What was it like giving the world a peek at it, and serializing it online with such immediate feedback?

DG: First off, "Kelly" isn't autobiographical. Like any good story, there's a nugget of truth in there somewhere and this is mine: in the very beginning, sleeping on the air mattress in my brother's closet, returning to New York heartbroken and broke, and moving in with the sketchy Craiglist roommate... but very quickly Kelly became his own man separate from his inspiration, and I am most definitely not Max, as you will shortly see.

There's alot more to the "girl that got away" story than you've seen to date, but Theresa's definitely not based on anyone who got away from me. There was a girl I walked away from in Miami that led me to Steve's closet, but our story isn't for the public and frankly isn't that interesting of a tale. Besides, ex-girlfriend venting comix aren't solid reads; "Kelly" is more of a drama-character-study-thriller dosed with my copyrighted senses of humor and color. Remember, we're just now nearing the end of the first third of the book. I'm really looking forward to it coming out complete in a square-shaped graphic novel; it's gonna be such a smooth read in that format.

That said, the instant feedback of working online has been amazing. My regular "Kelly" readers are intelligent and funny and just as twisted as I am, and I found within a week or two of starting my work on ACT-I-VATE just how much energy I'm drawing from them to keep it moving. Remember, all the ACT-I-VATORS are busy, working jobs or cartoonist careers, giving this stuff up for free, for love. We've even got our little weekend "Comix-4-Love" campaign of thank-you's and kisses to prove it.

NRAMA: Your other current project is the webcomic Shooting War. It's nearing the end of it's run, so how do you such a politically charged comic fared?

DG: I think Shooting War's fared really well; people in and out of comix are hungry for stories that make them think, made them angry and make them laugh. That's why the Daily Show or the Colbert Report are such powerful institutions; satire simultaneously creates and releases tension, it informs while inciting to action.

And we've gotten a ton of feedback in the mainstream press. As of this writing, Shooting War's gotten reviews or nods in the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Alternet and others. It's been amazing working with Anthony and the rest of the crew, and being the first original comix for Smith Magazine as well. It also proves something I've been saying loudly since I worked for DC Comics or wrote for Savant magazine: take non-genre satirical intelligent comix and put them in front of mainstream readers and watching their jaws drop and hearts gush. It was confirmed for me when we did Everyman: just because people don't know these kinds of things exist doesn't mean they won't poop their pants when they it for the first time.

NRAMA: And what future plans do you have with the project?

DG: We're planning to take Shooting War into a printed full-color OGN; there's been interest from a few publishers but nothing I can announce right now. The 8 week serialized story for SMITH served as the "origin" of Jimmy Burns, and with that established, we've got him shaggy and haggard and holed up at the W Hotel Baghdad waiting for orders. Anthony and I have a lot more story to tell and alot more 2011 to reveal and it'll be a blessing and an honor to do it.

NRAMA: Ultimately, what kind of work would you like to do in comics?

DG: At the risk of sounding like every waiter in New York or Los Angeles, I want to write/draw/design my own work, using comix to tell my own stories or other people's stories that matter to me personally. I've been writing since I was about 10, long before the idea of making comics ever crossed my mind; I actually consider myself more of a writer than an artist.

To date, I've been working somewhat "outside the system" of the traditional comix industry; sitting at MoCCA last month, I was joking about how I've already done a ton of comix this year, but I can't get a table to sell them because they're all living online. That suits me just fine, because it allows a purity of vision that you don't (always) get working-for-hire on pre-existing properties; there's so much inspiration in real life, in human drama, and the worlds both exterior and interior that re-treading someone else's dreams gives very little fire to my own. Plus, it's a great place to flex in public where anyone bored at work can be a potential fan of yours.

NRAMA: Going into your point that you consider yourself more a writer than an artist, do you have any plans to write a project and let someone else draw it?

DG: Actually, funny you mention that... There is a project called Iron Shirt in the pipeline that Dean Haspiel and I plan to pitch to major comic publishers soon to create in 2008, but it's a heavier collaboration than just writer/artist. We're going to plot the story together, I'll script it, he'll draw the art, and I'll attack his chunky inks with blasts of dubbed-out color and design the final publication as well.

NRAMA: What are your artistic influences for comics?

DG: Depends which artistic muscles you're talking; art and writing couldn't be more different experiences for me. I draw visual inspiration both in/out of comix from Bill Sienkiewicz, Paul Pope, Michael Mann, Brendan McCarthy, Orson Welles, David Cronenberg, Junji Ito and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. For dramatic inspiration, I tend to dive-bomb straight for the good stuff: Alan Moore, Charles Willeford, Walter Moseley, Paul Schrader, Henry Miller, Aaron Sorkin, William Shakespeare and lately, lots of autobiographies. There's something really pure about getting people's stories in their own voices.

NRAMA: Most every creator making their way into comics has a "dream project" they wish to work on, be it their own characters or someone else's. Can you tell us what you're aiming for?

DG: My dream project is my secret creator-owned written/drawn/designed-by-me baby, Red Light Properties, a tropical-horror OGN set in Miami... but I don't want to drop that bomb until the time is right. I feel like everything I've done in the last few years, developing my skills and reputation as a writer and an artist (including Kelly and Shooting War) is all building towards getting my shot at doing Red Light Properties.

That said, I've been really fortunate to have already collaborated with some talented people on really wonderful projects in a relatively short span of time. Creating Everyman with my brother Steven and Joe Bucco is an experience I'll remember forever; we were upset enough about the world unravelling around us that we got off our asses and DID something about it, making something mature and smart and uncompromising. That's certainly another dream project: revisiting that well to tell the rest of that story...

Shooting War has been another dream project; Anthony and I are making some hardcore slipstream comix together and I'm really proud of everything we've done to date. And my upcoming collaboration with Chris Radtke, 718, is going to knock people out of their Underoos, I promise.

NRAMA: What kind of formal training have you had in art?

DG: I've been drawing since my very first spanking for taking a marker to my bedroom wall at age 3 (I think deep down I'm still trying for that next spanking) but I'm self-taught. Sure, I took a few art classes in high school, drawing eggs with charcoal and ____, but I went to film school instead as I've always been turned on by the "art of the story."

It's funny too, sitting in darkened screening rooms and cinematography classes, my fingertips tickling the corners of new issues of The Invisibles or Deadline magazine or Shade The Changing Man sticking out of my backpack... I think deep down I knew it would be comics.

Film school (and actually shooting and editing films) has taught me more than anything about how to tell a story. As I said, the writing's something that's been there since I read Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket in fifth grade... but I always felt my art sucked. It wasn't until I moved from brushes to vectors/pixels that I was able to get the look and feel I always failed to achieve with just my crummy mortal fingers and capture the kind of visuals that I would see in my mind when I wrote.

NRAMA: Tell us more about film school's influence on your cartooning. Film has been used a lot as of late for metaphors to new techniques in comics; how does your experience play into comics?

DG: It's a great technical foundation for visual storytelling for me... but so was sitting on the floor of my closet at 3am as a kid with a flashlight reading through supermarket bags of yellowed comix from the swap meet. What's called "widescreen cinematic" in comix storytelling, or that Mamet-worshipping dialogue that's being hailed as genius in mainstream comix, are examples of the influence overtaking the benefits of our medium. Comix shouldn't try to be TV shows on paper; by that point you're already imposing stylistic boundaries on what they can do. The fact that you can do/create/show anything without worry of special effects money.... and (if you're poor enough and lucky enough) have no one to justify your choices to but yourself, means that we are working on possibly the purest form of storytelling on the planet right now.

I'm often having discussions and debates with Rami Efal, my dear friend and comics revolutionary, about chopping time, isolating moments, the squeezing maximum drama out of quiet moments. We'll talk about a film being "pure manga" in its storytelling and why and how that effect is achieved.

NRAMA: What do you currently do for a living?

DGM: At the moment, Shooting War is my job; it has been for the last few months, peppered with some magazine illustrations and whatnot. I'm fantastically lucky as Shooting War's been an experience that's gotten pretty high profile in the last few weeks. Leading up to last year, I was making nice money doing corporate graphic design, but it's just... so... uninteresting unless you've got the right clients. Doing things for strictly for the money drains your joy and thus withers the fruit, so instead I choose to follow my brain and my heart.

It seems like the minute I seceded from World of Job and declared myself a professional cartoonist, things just started happening all around me to take care of me. Case in point, I finished my website on Tuesday and was laid off on a Wednesday; coincidences like that rob a man of fear and doubt. I know my feet are walking the path I am meant to right now. Jah teach, Jah provide.

NRAMA: What prompted you to seriously look at comics and start creating your own?

DG: I moved from Miami Beach to New York in 1998 to work in films; a year later, I'd racked up some indy feature and commercial credits... but I worked all the time doing art department grunt work on other people's projects. Maybe once a week I'd scribble or doodle in my "idea notebook" but nothing ever got FINISHED. So I stopped taking those movie jobs (and they stopped calling); I didn't move all the way to New York to feed other people's dreams.

Next thing I know, I'm temping in an insurance firm and I've drawn a 24pg mini called Hairkut; I rolled out to San Diego with 500 copies in a backpack and came home with about 20. Since then, I've done marketing for DC Comics, been a freelancer, run our FWDbooks self-publishing imprint with my brother, now I'm doing comix online both at ACT-I-VATE and drawing Shooting War.

NRAMA: So is that door to doing film work closed for you, or do you think you might pursue that again down the road?

DG: It's something I'd love to get back to someday, yeah... but when I can do it myself and on my own terms. I'm in no rush. Right now I'm having the time of my life pushing my own limits as a writer/artist, and people are only now beginning to notice my tiny speck on the map.

Besides, film takes years fighting for attention and luck and money just to surround yourself with enough people who believe in you enough to help you create (what will hopefully be) your vision. Part of the reason I love independent comix is that I am such a crazy control freak; I can script/edit/cast/act/design/direct an entire "film" with just my old Powerbook, a crappy digital camera and a good idea. What medium allows purer vision than that?

NRAMA: You're one of the enterprising few comic artists who are doing their work entirely digital; no paper at all. How did you transition to this, and what would you say are the pros and cons to it?

DG: Truth is, I am a really sloppy artist, mountains of Wite-Out and tears in the paper, ink splats and mistakes and ink-bleeds from my tears of frustration hitting the bristol board. Working in vectors keeps my screw-ups from forcing me to redraw everything fifteen times. Thanks to the magic "undo", suddenly I can reach onto the screen and create things I've never been able to do otherwise. The effects of ink mixed with pastel, oil paint, photocollage and scratched all happened between the windows of Photoshop and Illustrator.

I bought my Wacom Intuos2 back in late 2001 and it changed everything. I got it initially to experiment with digital inking after talking with Kyle Baker at the DC offices about his work. I remember getting home from night-shift corporate design job at 3am, plugging it in and just.... going. I looked up and it was light out and I was still drawing. I credit Wacom with reigniting my lusty romance with drawing.

Digital processes are synonymous with comix-making these days; the tools are there and the saavy are using them in at least at some phase of process, even if just to letter or tone. Some of my major inspirations for my own digital work have been Kyle Baker, Frazer Irving, Jamie Grant, Ben Templesmith, Ashley Wood and all that experimental early-version Photoshop ____ that happened in the early 90s in Deadline. New tools + new results x lessons of the past + unknown territory = the future of comix.

NRAMA: Readers of your blog have learned that you're part of an informal group of artists that hang out at Dean Haspiel's place. Can you tell us more about that?

DG: Dean's place, aka STUDIO ACT-I-VATE, is the womb where ACT-I-VATE was born. I haven't been around there much during SHOOTING WAR, but I aim to fix that soon. I miss seeing Dino and Mike Fiffe and Nikki Cook daily; there's vibes and love and lessons every day over there. It's in a great spot in Carroll Gardens, close to food and Rocketship and a quick bike ride to Red Hook for an extended recharge of polluted ocean air.

There's been alot of talk amongst us recently, after rapping during MoCCA with Cameron Stewart, Ramón Pérez and Chip Zdarsky about their Royal Academy of Illustration studio in Toronto and how they work, of scoring a Brooklyn workspace for us all to share. It might be months away, but that seems to be the next phase of Studio ACT-I-VATE. Having EVERYONE around all the time would exponentially improve all our stuff, pooling our ideas and energy together would make us all stronger. Plus, it'd be nice to be around your friends all day too, like a dream office.

NRAMA: How does this community help you as a freelancer typically working in seclusion at home?

DG: I love working at home because I don't have to wear any pants, but you get a little... edgy being alone all day, sliding right off the edge of society. I talk to my cat, and when he starts talking back in Ancient Greek about Philip K. Dick, I know it's time to put in some more time around other artists again. I think that's what we cartoonists love about Livejournal and the internet is that there's some modicum of electronic socialization where we talk about our lives and work, etc without actually leaving the house. It's a constant source of forehead-smacking giggles when we see each other in person at bars or events.

That said, I have a great little area in my place called The House That Everyman Built, a bookcase/suspension desk made out of planks from a disassembled bookshelf and still-unsold cartons of Everyman. It's very comfy at home, lots of light and good feng shui and good strong tea; most of the time, that's all I need to keep going all day and late at night, with breaks for my precious "Human Time" with my lovely wife Lilli. She's an artist too (www.lillotnyc.com) and we spend alot of quiet time at home working in our respective workspaces and giving each other sexy looks across worktables. There's alot of joy in creating and in giving your all in doing what you love, around people you love. I feel really lucky, because I've got that in spades these days.

For more information on Dan Goldman and his work, visit http://www.dangoldman.net.

[Chip Zdarsky]

Ths sounds sweet. I'll defnitly b checking it out.

[c_andrew_s]

Dan is amazing!!! I really love his work


If you have an opportunity (and like shows like the west wing) you should buy a copy of Everyman