I am not what most would call a man of high-dollar tastes. The only suit I ever owned was from J.C. Penney’s and I readily admit to not seeing a problem with calling a pot of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese with hot dog chunks in it dinner. When it comes to The Hooch, things are different -- I love the good stuff... more

I am not what most would call a man of high-dollar tastes. The only suit I ever owned was from J.C. Penney’s and I readily admit to not seeing a problem with calling a pot of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese with hot dog chunks in it dinner. When it comes to The Hooch, things are different -- I love the good stuff but I don’t obsess over it. Okay, yes, I fucking do, but I still understand there comes a time when the only point to drinking is to get loaded. Like when you get dumped by a woman with a mustache or you need to forget how you sharted in that Old Navy changing room when you tried to pull a left cheek sneak. And that’s where the cheap shit comes in. But, being the discerning prick that I am, I still want to bitch about it. And, if at all possible, make a poop and/or dick joke at the same time. That being said, welcome to the inaugural edition of Plissken’s Shit Booze Review.

First on the chopping block is a delightful little beverage I procured the other day at the 7-11 across the street called Earthquake High Gravity Lager. Brewed in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, this bad boy weighs in at a whopping 12.0% alcohol by volume and is sold “on special” at two for three bucks. Bring a fiver and you’ll have enough left over to get one of those eternally rolling hot dogs or some plastic cheese nachos. Trust me, you’ll want something on your stomach before this shit hits it.

The Pour



Notice the complete lack of head. If I wanted this little head, I’d be dating a prudish Catholic girl from Indiana with her jaw wired shut. Don’t believe the hype kids, head on your beer is a good thing, delivering both increased aroma and flavor that are critical to the enjoyment of a proper pint. Poorer examples will often lack this trait, as their body has been overly thinned by large additions of adjuncts such as corn or rice. These adjuncts contribute simple sugars to the beer which are much more easily digested by yeast than the sugars brought forth from barley alone. Simply put, a shit ton of it in a beer like this means a lot more alcohol without making the beer thick and hard to slam. Undesirable traits one looks for in what is essentially liquid crack.

The Aroma

Earthquake is hard to explain. How do I put it exactly? Imagine a pile of sweet corn. Now imagine a pile of old aluminum siding. Now make those two piles fuck and then somehow have a child in defiance of all that is holy. Now smell that child. That is what Earthquake High Gravity Lager smells like. Corn siding.

The Flavor

As I savored the first sip, I noticed something unusual -- I didn’t go blind, so it passed the first test. As the rush of knowing I wasn’t poisoned faded, the flavor did not. The alcohol scorch dominated the first sip, making its presence known in a punchy fashion that takes your breath away. Sort of like going into the unisex toilet at work right after that guy Carl who always eats the microwave burritos out of the vending machine. Following the shock of the 12.0% comes a strange saccharin sweetness, a side effect of using large quantities of the aforementioned adjuncts. While I did find it unpleasant at first sip, I noticed that it faded over time. Most likely, this was simply a side effect of my taste buds dying. Either way, once that first gulp was down and over it became almost bearable. Not good, but bearable.

The Verdict

It’s shit. But you knew that going in didn’t you? Does it get you where you want to go? Yes, but it also may lead to you waking up at 3 A.M on a Greyhound bus to Ogallala, Nebraska with no pants on and a penis permanent markered on your cheek. Drink it very cold and with caution. And have some Tylenol ready for the morning

6/10 stars

SnakePlissken thinks 12 steps are more appropriate to fall down than follow.

Dame Darcy is a renaissance woman. The Idaho-born artist has crafted a broad and powerful body of work. She’s an illustrator and fine artist, a musician, dollmaker and designer. Her work has been exhibited in galleries around the world. In 2006, Penguin released a new edition of “Jane Eyre” heavily... more

Dame Darcy is a renaissance woman. The Idaho-born artist has crafted a broad and powerful body of work. She’s an illustrator and fine artist, a musician, dollmaker and designer. Her work has been exhibited in galleries around the world. In 2006, Penguin released a new edition of “Jane Eyre” heavily illustrated by her. She has an etsy store where she sells not just prints and original art, but dolls and other handcrafted work. She’s collaborated with Alan Moore and contributed to the Tori Amos comics anthology “Comic Book Tattoo.” Her other books include “Gasoline” and “Frightful Fairytales.”

She is an artist in the finest sense of the word. A new collection of her ongoing comics series “Meatcake,” the comics that she began self-publishing while living in San Francisco and was later published by the independent comics publisher Fantagraphics. A collection of the first 10 issues was released last month. She’s currently working on a series of illustrated books, playing dates as part of the band “Death by Doll,” and putting the finishing touches on a new graphic novel “Hand Book for Hot Witches,” which she described as a “Girl Scout guide for the apocalypse/field guide for the deflowered.” We spoke with her recently over e-mail.


ALEX DUEBEN: You just got back from Comic-con. How was it? Bigger than the last time you were there?

DAME DARCY: Yes, and crazier. Every year Comic-con gets even crazier than ever. I was signing my new release from Fantagraphics, a Meat Cake compilation with the best of stories from issues 0-10. I was interviewed by Miguel Cima's Dig Comics, and for a documentary about Tony Millionaire. Self Publishing is the latest thing I am doing with my partner Vincent D. Dominion. We profiled his new poetry book The Penalty of Hope which I illustrated as well as Paper Doll Dreams, a hand crafted one of a kind paper doll book as well as other new releases. To see it all please visit the book section of Dame Darcy.com.  I met the art director of Marvel, Mike Horowitz who hired me to write Fantastic 4 characters as a fairytale this year. It was great to see him in person, and I just saw the proofs for these pages, Invisible Girl stars as Cinderella. Robin Ha is doing the art. She's got a great style.  Online comics are our new goal now and they were everywhere this year, as well as this weird new big screen that looked like a mega IPhone which everyone was showing me. We have some leads for online comics now, and it seems to be a tough nut to crack, but don't worry boys in comics I'm going to crack that nut!

AD: Do you feel like a part of the comics world and the comics scene?

DD: I feel like I'm part of it all but again like there is a schism. I am in this world and have worked for big companies like DC and Marvel but only as a specialty item. I can only work within my style of writing or drawing, so if the rules can be bent to include me then I am included. I started Meat Cake in the early 90's before the Gothic Lolita scene had formed, and now the goal is to get my books into the hands of my target audience, which does know of me to the degree that due to Press Pop and Fantagraphics Books, my publisher, I got to meet them and do events in Tokyo. There is a big Manga scene there and it's normal to read comics, business men were reading comics on the subway.

On the other side of things, there is the usual alternative comics reader/buyer who are usually guys, they are a big part of my readership from the start, but there are many girls who find out about my comic through a guy who don't usually read comics, and I get a lot of girls saying that my comic is the only one they read or know about that they can relate to. I have a plan though that will unite everyone soon. It's in the works now, but when it's done I'll let you know. My graphic novels, Frightful Fairytales (Ten Speed Press), Jane Eyre (Putnam Penguin), Gasoline (Merrell) and the newest release Hand Book For Hot Witches (Holt) are sold in regular book stores worldwide (not just comic stores) and let me into a more academic scene, they also give exposure to my more underground work. 

AD: When did you first become interested in art?

DD: I come from a family of cowboy poets in Idaho who played music, painted and wrote. So I was always exposed to art as a normal part of life. I began drawing sequential stories when I was two. My great Grandma Marler was a cowgirl and a school teacher, she taught me to read and write at an early age, which I am thankful for because without her help dyslexia would have made it even harder for me to be a writer than it already is. I think my will to tell stories got me through it, and I can remember wanting so badly to be able to write the words over the pictures. Vincent has an idea to self publish these books by that my Mom has preserved from my childhood. 

They are horror stories and fairy tales. I loved Klimpt and Maxfield Parrish when I was a kid, pre-Raphaelites, 20's and Victoriana. 

AD: I’m curious about your childhood. You mention in the introduction that you grew up in Idaho. What kind of environment was it like?

DD: In the summers we lived on a appaloosa horse ranch in the mountains. In the winter we lived in a craftsman house from 1902 in town (town was Idaho Falls).The beauty of the ranch (Bone Idaho, population 15)  has been unparalleled by anywhere in the world I have been since.

I dreamed about it all last night, it had a crystal clear lake that the Rocky Mountains reflected in like a mirror, forests of aspen and pine trees, fields of wild flowers, running creeks with rainbow trout. We were so excited to go to the little general store once a week to use the pay phone for a dime and drink pop. It was like we lived in another age. A summer storm would come over the valley and make all the ions in the air go crazy before the thunder struck, setting fire to a tall tree and frightening the horses. Cowboys and Indians blended into the same thing, they both lived close to the land and seem to have had the same kind of concerns. The cowboy would wear beaded Indian fringe leather and Indians would wear cowboy hats. My Grandpa knew what every flower was named, every kind of bird and insect, all the animals, like they were neighbors he knew for a long time. I'll always think of him when I hear old cowboy songs that he taught me and the day we went horseback riding and he showed me a sweet water creek where you could drink right out of the ground, that water tasted like malted clear ambrosia. I have never had anything like it again. When I last went to Idaho with my brother in 2007 I went to the ranch and was walking in the woods. I felt the presence of my Grandpa very close so I called out to him, and told him I loved him. I turned around and saw a huge owl about 4 feet tall perched in a tree staring at me, I know that my Grandpa has the same kind of Native American beliefs about animal spirits, and I know this was his spirit come to visit me in the form of an owl. He blinked his eyes once slowly then turned his head around completely like owls can do, then with a 4 foot wing span flew into the woods soundlessly. 

AD: What was the kind of work that really made an impact on you when you were young?

DD: I learned to draw and paint when I worked as a sign painters apprentice for my Dad until I was 16 and he sold his shop. My Dad also taught me how to play banjo and electric bass. He was in a bluegrass band which played festivals and shows to bring in some extra cash for our family. My mom is a nurse and really loves to craft, sew, knit, and embroider; she made us dolls and quilts. She is very creative in her own right and is a feminist and environmentalist. She sewed all our clothes and grew and canned lot of our food herself. She read to me every night, a lot of the things she read were classics and fairy tales. 

AD: What made you create a comic initially. Were you a big comics fan as a kid or afterwards?

DD: Most comics were not the kind I could relate to, but I loved illustrated books.  I had a great copy of Alice in Wonderland and my Grandma had the complete Oz series from when she was a kid, these books were from 19-teens through the 20's, and have greatly influenced the way I design my graphic novels today.

My Dad had some Zap comics and heavy metal magazine which I wasn't supposed to see, due to the fact they were racy, but I'm glad I did know they existed because I realized at an early age comics could be more than just Superman. I also liked Tales from the Crypt and my brother and I had some of these and some Little Lulu comics from the 50's we found in elderly yard sales. What made me think I could do what I do were Edward Gorey books. I liked those books that came with records, in the past I put out a lot of 7 inches or booklets with CD's that had stories with them.  Everyone at school always said I was going to be a children’s book author but by the time I was in High School my comic strip for the school news paper, Tumor Humor, was too edgy and controversial to be considered for children and they didn't say that any more. I thank god for the 60's cartoonists, like Crumb, Deitch, and all the ladies Trina Robbins knows because this is the weird scene and early ladies in comics that paved the way for someone like me to even be able to get published, this is such a niche market.  It's kind of a miracle I have a career at all.

AD: I love the comics but it feels like a side project for you. Is that fair?

DD: It is interesting you say that, because I always saw comics as a stepping stone to making a feature film or animated TV show. Although, I will never stop making comics and graphic novels no matter where all this ends up. Whenever a new book comes out I also do a corresponding fine art gallery show to sell the illustrations, (my gallerist is Sloan Fine Art in NYC) in this way the comics are in the fine art genre as well and I exhibit some paintings too. I've always loved animation and I majored in film at the San Francisco art institute so I would know how to design and animate. After that I moved to NYC where I started doing freelance illustration and comics.  

AD: Are you into many other comics?

DD: I am aware of ones I like, there is a new one I found out about recently called School Bites by Holly Witch that is really cute and also Gothic Lolita style, it is a comic on line. I kind of like the weird comic Bleach, its Japanese Manga. I also like the classics, Alan Moore's old and new releases, particularly League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. But sometimes I get exposed to new title’s self published Zines etc, that I like a lot, lately it's been Princess Witch Boy by Storm and Out Of Control by David Drexler. He is a genius btw. I lately found out about a wonderful lady Carolyn Turgeon who does novels that rewrite fairytales, she did Cinderella, and her new one is called Mermaid. In general though, I am multitasking a million times at once every day and it's super exhausting and difficult to keep track of anyone else’s career. Plus I move a lot. I'm currently planning and saving up for yet another move.

AD: How has the comic changed for you over the years?

DD: I like multimedia, and I don't mind the tech way that things are headed because I think books will always be a classic and will always be desirable even if just as a art object.

The only daunting thing is that I don't know how to use computer technology very well, so to put out my comics on line and on phones and kindle is to rely on other people and put the fate of everything in the hands of something virtual. The way things are going is very elusive. Technology changes all the time and you have to do all kinds of insane things to keep up with the latest gadgetry. This costs a lot of time and money, and I'm still not sure of the pay off, but I'll do it, because I know the classic form of publishing will always be a staple and will never die. 

AD: You seem intent on being defined as an artist in a broad sense and not tied to any style or even form. Is that a conscious decision you’ve made?

DD: No, it's just what happened. I have to do different kinds of art and marketing my art so that I can patchwork my income together and make a living.
Though I also think different kinds of art have to be expressed different ways, and I don't see a reason why if someone can sculpt dolls, draw, paint, make films, write, or play instruments, that they should limit themselves to just one thing. It has always been beneficial to the promotion and sales of my books that they can be sold at music shows and at galleries as fine art.

AD: So the book is out. What else are you in the midst of? 

DD: I did a tour in Portugal this summer to promote Meat Cake Compilation and all my other books. I also just finished some shows in California as Death By Doll with my Dear Mr. Vincent D. Dominion, he does it all.  Death By Doll can travel easily and we have had a lot of fun shows with other great bands and audiences. Right now I am creating children’s book pitches with an 85 year old French Boudoir doll and calling it Isabelle Red Riding Hood, Isabelle in Wonderland, etc. I am taking photos of her in the Ancient forest near Astoria Oregon where Goonies was shot. My latest graphic novel Hand Book for Hot Witches is in full swing and this Girl Scout guide for the apocalypse/field guide for the deflowered will be out just in time for 2012 on Holt. It features Eco-fem philosophy as well as how to make your own makeup, raw food recipes, feminist fairytales, self defense tips, fun spells, and women’s history, the how to start your own E.Z. Bake Coven, sew, knit, doll craft, play instruments, ancient lore and so much more! 

I also have some other book pitches, getting things published in other languages, online and phones etc. A fashion line pitch, mixing the new Death By Doll album Electrococo, starring Skippy Spiral on keys and Charlotte Antique singing and of course drawing more Meat Cake Comix.  The biggest things I am under contract to not divulge, but if any of you lovely readers want to keep up on the latest hi-jinx, books, art, etc. please feel free to join the mailing list at Dame Darcy.com. Just go to "join" and put in your e-mail address. Also we post events and updates every week or so, on Dame Darcy Facebook. I always have new art/illustration/fashion/music/dolls/craft items at my Etsy store www.damedarcy.etsy.com.

By Edward Kelly It starts innocently enough. A woman with red hair and a nervous smile sits in a non-descript room where the lighting is perfunctory at best. Behind her the wall is textured and yellow-ish. The woman rifles through an off-camera plastic bag. She holds up a receipt showing that the product... more

By Edward Kelly

It starts innocently enough. A woman with red hair and a nervous smile sits in a non-descript room where the lighting is perfunctory at best. Behind her the wall is textured and yellow-ish. The woman rifles through an off-camera plastic bag. She holds up a receipt showing that the product in the bag was purchased recently (if memory serves, the timestamp on the receipt read August 30, 2010, around 2:45 p.m.).

The video is eight minutes long and therefore above average for something on YouTube. I’ve described the first minute or so because, since I saw it, the woman in the video, Karen Alloy (a popular YouTube vlogger with the user name “Spricket24″), has changed the settings and the video is now logged as private. If the description above sounds downright banal, well, that’s because it is. In fact if it weren’t for the title I would’ve bailed on it after the first 15 seconds. But the title of this video is “How To Take A Pregnancy Test” and thus I am in it for the long haul.



In the era in which we live, Internet-speak has become commonplace. If I say “I tweeted it” or “let’s skype” or “just google it,” you probably know what I’m talking about. I mean, hell, this is being posted on a blog, a noun that Microsoft Word is underscoring with its passive aggressive red squiggly line. I’m okay with these 21st century additions to the English language, but for some reason the word “vlog” makes me cringe. There’s something about the sound of it-the “V” mixed with the “guh” at the end-that evokes an image of a monster in an awful JRR Tolkien knock-off.

I’m not sure how I feel about vlogs and vloggers. I’m ready to admit that I don’t “get” it, even though I should. Vlogging is basically a video diary. I like diaries. I like people who are willing to express themselves in innovative ways. I love social media. But there’s just something about vlogging and vloggers that feels uncomfortably rooted in narcissism.



[Ascii Suicide in Video Arena]

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Let’s be honest: all art has its roots in narcissism. Narcissism is what makes singers try to hit the high note; it’s what makes writers so sure that their 800 page sci-fi romance epic is important on a societal level; it’s what makes comedians get back on stage after bombing night after night. Believing that what you are doing is important enough that other people need to see/hear/read it is essential to doing it. If you don’t believe in it, then why do it?

Well, it could be fame, of course. All artists want to be recognized for their contributions but somewhere along the line we started to bastardize the definition for “celebrity.” “Celebrity” used to mean “someone to celebrate.” These days however it basically means “anyone famous for virtually any reason.”

Which is where things get icky for vloggers. Sure, there are several vloggers who seemingly are trying to elevate the vlogging to an art form. But many have given up on the idea of a “video diary” in favor of weekly skits. Popular YouTuber Natalie Tran favors Seinfeld-ian observations while another poster, Craig Benzine, prefers expertly edited site gags and absurdist ideas.

For most of her videos, Alloy (Spricket24) follows the light-hearted standard of vloggers and doesn’t really bother to get too personal. She usually addresses the hot topics of the day, includes lots of quick edits, and is sometimes pretty funny. Alloy is a “full time” vlogger (according to this video), which apparently is a job. She’s also an Emmy winner, which apparently means you can get an award for that type of thing now. Her videos consistently get tens of thousands of views and, as best I can tell, she’s able to support her three children with the money she makes. She’s a photogenic goofball usually, which made “How To Take A Pregnancy Test” all the more fascinating.

As I said before, Alloy has since made the pregnancy test video private, so the rest of my recap is being done from memory. Exact quotes are not possible and are only as accurate as my memory.

The video continues and she says she’s “documenting this for documenting purposes” which is kind of redundant but okay. She uses an EPT Test and fills in the viewer that one line means not pregnant and two means she is. Eventually she mutes the sound and adds subtitles like “I’m peeing!” when she’s urinating on the stick. She turns the sound back on and sighs as she waits for the results to appear.

She holds up the test to the camera: two lines.

“Shit,” she says in small, worried voice. “What am I going to do?”

She then recovers with some more nervous laughs and a lot of smiles. She tells the viewer that she expected such a result since her period has been worryingly late and she’s had morning sickness.

Before it was made private, the video went viral. I saw it on AVClub.com’s Videocracy section. Comments both there and on YouTube have been…well, you know how reasonable people on the Internet can be. Obviously, they responded with only the most thoughtful and engaging ideas. Yes, it was a regular Algonquin Round Table, with anonymous users respectfully debating each other about this new and controversial idea.

Ha ha. JK. They called her a slut. A lot.

Alloy wasn’t on my radar before the pregnancy test video, but since then I’ve tried to watch some of her previous vlogs. As I said, they were generally typical of the YouTube community and rarely had anything truly interesting to say about anything at all.

Ever thus the interest, Lebowski. The pregnancy video might have been simply a way to garner some controversy and jack up the viewership. Or it could have been a genuine moment put online for reasons I will never understand. If it was the latter, then it just may rank as the best and most daring work to ever grace YouTube’s tiny video window. If it was the former, well, you can’t say it didn’t work, because here I am writing about it.

I hope it was the latter, to be honest. I like the idea that Alloy made this video and didn’t bother to play a character or have some elaborate premise or bitch about traffic or something. It was just a woman dealing with something that a lot of women have to go through. Her response felt genuine and genuine moments are rare, especially on the World Wide Web.

The more you think about the video the more complicated it gets. Like, does it mean that her subscribers were privy to this information before the father was? What happens in a few years from now when the fetus is old enough to click a mouse and see the video? Is that when narcissism has gone too far?

And if the goal of art is to raise questions then congratulations, Ms. Alloy, you’re an artist all the way.

At least, I hope you are.

The Pleasure Principle is an album that's provided its maker, Gary Numan, with both instant and delayed gratification. Three decades ago, when the now classic electro album first came out, it made a massive impact culturally and commercially. The Pleasure Principle, and the iconic single it spawned,... more

The Pleasure Principle is an album that's provided its maker, Gary Numan, with both instant and delayed gratification. Three decades ago, when the now classic electro album first came out, it made a massive impact culturally and commercially. The Pleasure Principle, and the iconic single it spawned, “Cars”, hit the number one spot simultaneously on the album and singles charts in the UK in September, 1979. The following year, the records crashed the US Billboard charts, making the painfully shy young vocalist, composer and musician a household name here too.

Numan's Kraftwerk-inspired tracks, which channeled the voice of the machine, had a raw energy and DIY aesthetic that served as the bridge between '70s punk and the early dance and hip-hop scenes of the 1980s. Indeed the bare break beats from the opening segment of "Films" (the fourth track on The Pleasure Principle) became the sample of choice for a generation of producers, thanks in part to the song's inclusion on Street Beat's tastemaker compilation series Ultimate Breaks and Beats (which served as the primary DJ and studio sample resource pre-CD).

Ironically, as the spotlight faded on Numan, the sounds he created proliferated exponentially through the fabric of pop music culture. As a new generation of producers sampled samples, the origins of these staple breaks escaped many. However those in the know - such as Basement Jaxx, Armand Van Heldon, Afrika Bambaataa and Dr. Dre - openly covered, used, credited and paid homage to Numan's body of work.

In 2002, Numan once again toped the charts in the UK with an all-girl band called the Sugababes and a song called "Freak Like Me." The track was essentially a highly produced and super slick mash-up of the top line from Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" and the riff and groove lifted directly from "Are Friends Electric," a song Numan recorded pre-Principle with his band Tubeway Army (which first hit the #1 single spot across the Atlantic in May, 1979).

More recently, Trent Reznor outed himself as a fan, inviting Numan to perform his songs with Nine Inch Nails during the band's 2009 shows in London and Los Angeles. The strong reaction Numan received following his guest spots at NIN's four final shows in LA in particular turned heads, and a coveted invite to play Coachella this year was forthcoming. Unfortunately, fallout from a volcano in Iceland, which grounded flights throughout Europe, meant that Numan, along with several other artists, was unavoidably a no-show at the festival. However fans won't be disappointed for long, since a dedicated tour honoring the 30th Anniversary of The Pleasure Principle will stop off in 15 US cities this fall.

We called Numan up at the East Sussex home he shares with his wife and three children to talk about the shows, his music - past and present - and the realities of life beyond The Pleasure Principle.


NP: Can you talk about a little of what you have planned for this tour?

GN: We actually did it a little while ago in the UK. It was the 30th anniversary of an album called The Pleasure Principal, which first came out in '79 in England, and 1980 in America. It's 30 years since it got to number one and it's not an anniversary that's likely to come again really for me. By the time it's 40, I'm going to be 60-odd and I probably won't be doing this anymore. Even though I'm not a big fan of retro, it seemed a reasonable thing to do. We did a tour in November of last year, just doing Pleasure Principal for the first half of it, and then new stuff for the second half. And because I don't really like retro things at all really, I didn't expect to enjoy it so much, but it just seemed the right thing to do. I played keyboards and everything, and it surprised me, I actually quite enjoyed it. I think because it was a mix, the first part of the show was this particular album, which I have sort of grown to be more proud of than I was when I actually released it, and then there was new stuff after that. It felt like it was almost like a documentary set of where you were and where you are, so it didn't feel entirely nostalgic and retro, which I was grateful for.

That actually went much better than I expected. It sold really well. Then, we were going to come to America in the early part of this year to do Coachella, and to do another couple of shows. The promoters that were putting on those shows were interested in doing the Pleasure Principal thing that we've done here, and I thought it'd be cool. It was just two shows, so I didn't mind so much. Then, that got blown out because of the volcano. So now we're coming back to do it properly, and the Pleasure Principal thing seems to be kind of the vibe that everybody wants for the tour. I'm okay with that. All we're really doing is that particular album and that kind of a focus on it. It's nothing special. It's not as if we've got a massively impressive light show or anything like that. It's really concentrating on the fact that that album came out 30-odd years ago now, and a number of people have talked about it being influential, and a number of people have done covers of the songs on it, or taken samples from the songs on it. So it's become - I shouldn't say "important" because it sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet - but it's become one of the better-known albums for this genre of music anyway. So we're kind of going out and celebrating that fact. Then, when that's done, hopefully they'll be a new album and we'll come back and do more music.

NP: It almost feels to me like that volcano was sort of serendipitous for you. 'Cause instead of Coachella, we're getting a whole tour from you in more optimal circumstances.

GN: Coachella, to me, seemed like a massive opportunity. I was absolutely, just hammered when [the volcano erupted]. Of all the weirdest things you could imagine stopping a tour, a volcano wasn't one of them.

NP: It isn't something that you'd have contingency plans for.

GN: It wasn't top of my list when I woke up that morning and thought, "What's going to go wrong today?" It felt like a massive opportunity and the fact that the two shows they'd put either side of it, or with it, both sold out, for me was quite a good thing. It's not as if they were massive venues or anything, but none-the-less, for me, that was a step forward. Because the last time I was there, it wasn't that great to be honest. I began to feel that it was all over for me. It feels a lot more positive now. I did the Nine Inch Nails thing last year and got a lot of positive feedback from that.

NP: Right, you got up on stage with Nine Inch Nails and performed some of your songs while they were on tour in LA.

GN: We did it here first. Trent invited me along to the O2 in London, which is a big place, and that was just brilliant. I actually couldn't believe how kind the audience was. Because if it was me, and I was going to see Nine Inch Nails and somebody stood up and did two non-Nine Inch Nails songs, I don't know if I'd be very happy about it to be honest. I was kind of expecting that sort of a reaction really, but, it actually went really, really well and I was kind of blown away by that.

Then Trent invited me over to do the American part of it as well, doing a very similar thing, just going on and singing a couple of songs. Because the London experience was so good, I was really keen to do that. But I could only do the Los Angeles things because of other commitments. I came out and did the last four shows that they did. Again, it was just a brilliant experience, because Nine Inch Nails are my favorite band anyway. I'm a huge admirer of Trent Reznor's, so to be involved at that moment, at that sort of level, was just a real honor. I was massively flattered and in awe of the whole thing really. It was just really, really cool. But the spin on from that, the effect that that's had on me and the opportunities that have come to me since then, have been really noticeable. That's why, not only was I in awe of it at the time, I'm really grateful for it now. It's been just a brilliant experience from beginning to end.

NP: How did the Trent thing come about?

GN: A long time ago, we were doing a show in Baton Rouge, near New Orleans, and he had come to see us with Clint Mansell [of Pop Will Eat Itself].

NP: Was that during your 2006 tour?

GN: I think it might have been the one before that actually.

NP: Wow.

GN: I can't remember when it was. He was making the The Fragile anyway, so it was before that actually. He bought me a cover version that he'd done of a song of mine called "Metal," and it was just brilliant. I was blown away by that - not just the fact that it was so good, but the fact that they'd even bothered to do it. I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. So I got to know him a little bit then, and whenever they came here to play I would go and see them and I would meet up with him. So it's kind of, not a close relationship, but it was friendly and ongoing.

Then, when they was doing that last tour, somebody sent me an email saying that there was a link on YouTube of them doing the "Metal" song live. Because my wife is an absolutely obsessed Nine Inch Nails fan and she knows Trent obviously through me, she got in touch with Trent via the tour management and said, "are you going to be doing it in London," because I was coming, and "wouldn't it be a good idea if..." All behind my back. I had no idea she was doing it. The first thing I know, I got an email from Trent saying it was great idea. I didn't even really know what he was talking about, then it all kind of fell into place. It was just brilliant. I would've never have had the courage to ask myself, and it was such a great thing to do, and, as I say, it sort of went on to even better things. So I'm very grateful to my wife really, for being sneaky.

NP: [laughs] Ah, women, you can't trust 'em.

GN: [laughs]

NP: I guess Trent's got a little bit of time on his hands now he's knocked the Nine Inch Nails thing on the head. Are you guys going to be collaborating on your new album?

GN: I don't know about the new album. When I was with him in September, we went out for an evening and he said at the end of that we should do something together, but that we should do something that nobody expects. Not a continuation of what I've done, or a continuation of what NIN has done, but something completely different that would surprise people. But since then, obviously, he's done the [How To Destroy] Angels thing, and he's doing a film score I think with Atticus Ross at the moment. So I know NIN are quiet, [but] Trent is as work obsessed as ever. Pinning him down to actually say what days could we do it is a little tricky in itself. But hopefully when we go back there on this tour we'll be able to meet up with Trent. We've got some time in Los Angeles so maybe we can meet up and maybe get some tracks done. I hope so. I'd love to. For me it'd be a great thing to do. But I wouldn't ever want Trent to feel like I was pushing for it or using it in any way. So I'm very passive with the whole thing. I guess, I want it to happen...

NP: But you're being very British about it.

GN: [Laughs]

NP: Don't want to presume.

GN: Yeah, a bit I guess. I just wouldn't want him to think that I was using him to try to advance myself, so I'm absolutely not pushy. I just have to hope that I don't go so far in the passive way that it looks like I'm not interested.

NP: Exactly. It's so weird, Americans see being pushy as a virtue whereas English people would be horrified if they were ever considered to be such a thing.

GN: It's weird, I don't really understand the American psychology at all. I'm so British through and trough. I really struggle, and I'm quite shy anyway. I'm not bristling with confidence or ego. I'm actually quite laid back and shy about the whole thing. Like I said, I would never have gone on stage if it hadn't been for my wife being pushy behind my back. That would never have happened. I would never have thought, never dreamed of actually asking if I could come and sing one of my songs on his show. I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a needle than do that.

NP: I have to say though, I was doing some research last night and I was watching an interview with you on Graham Norton's show a couple of years ago. What really struck me was that you seemed so much more happy in your own skin now then you were when you first had success back in the late '70s, early '80s. You seemed very relaxed and comfortable, and actually at the point where you were finally able to enjoy your success.

GN: Yeah, I think that's true. I think when it first happened, well, first of all, it happened very quickly. I think that's always a bad way to have it. If you could ever choose, then I would choose a slower line to success. I went from being completely unknown to number one in about two weeks. From my first TV appearance to being number one was two weeks, and then I was massive everywhere. That's quite a lot to take in, especially when you're a solo act. It's not as if you're part of a band and you can share the burden, share the worries, and the stress, and the shock of it. It's quite a lot to take in. I was with a brand new record company that had no experience either. I didn't have a manager. I was looking after myself. I felt very much out on the deck. Almost immediately I was plunged into something that I was totally unprepared for and totally ill-equipped to deal with. Although I was 21, which seems quite old these days compared to the age of some people that have become successful, to me, it was very young. And, I was a young 21 as well. I was a very immature, childish 21.

Where I should've just been enjoying every moment of it and just having the best time of my life, I was panicking and worrying, and kind of overawed by the whole thing, and intimated for much of it. I said some stupid things, and certainly did stupid things. I've got no sensitivity. I'm Asperger's, so I don't really understand subtlety and interaction too well. There's a lot of personal communication skills that I think are very important if you do this for a living, if you want to have a relatively easy ride through it - and I have none of them. I think people found me abrasive or obnoxious or whatever - and I'm really none of those things - I just don't know how to be.

That's become better as I've gotten older. What was shocking at first isn't anymore because you've been doing it for such a long time you kind of get used it. I think that's what happened now. Now I'm comfortable, and, of course, it's at a much lower level now. It's nothing like it was in those days. So all the weirdness that goes with being that successful that young isn't there anymore. It's kind of settled down to a more pleasant, bumbling along kind of path really. It's just easier now. If I go out, people don't scream and faint and all that sort of stuff. They just shake your hand and say hello. It's a much easier way to be, 'cause I'm nowhere near as successful as I used to be. All that's kind of tailed off now.

NP: Well you say that but in England you had the number one with the Sugababes. America didn't experience that, which is a shame because I loved what they did.

GN: I love what they did. I thought it was great. When that happened and it went to number one, I was doing lots and lots of interviews at the time, and almost everybody was prodding me to say something bad about it. To ridicule the Sugababes, or to just be a shit in one way or another. I couldn't understand why people wanted that, and I didn't have any of it. I don't think I've ever said a bad word about it because I don't have a bad word to say about it. I thought they did a really good job. I thought the music sounded really good, even though it was 20, 25 years after I'd first written it. I was fine with it. I thought it was great.

I remember I went to see The Mission in London, because I know Wayne Hussey really well, and I had goth girls coming up to me in the crowd, giving me a hard time because of the Sugababes. I thought, how snobby is that? ...Because you've got pink hair and wear black clothes, doesn't mean to say that your taste in music is the only valid taste there is. I just don't like the attitude anyway. There's lots of things that I don't like. I actually have very narrow taste in music, but I don't go around slagging off the things that I don't like because there's something for everyone. I'm quite tolerant. [laughs] God, that's not the right word is it?

NP: Ah, tolerant works.

GN: I wouldn't put people down because they like things that I think are dreadful. You get what you can out of life through music or anything else. You find what you love.

NP: What can we expect from the new album? 'Cause musically, you've made a progression and your later work is very different from what people perceive as the classic Gary Numan from the Pleasure Principal era.

GN: Well the last two or three albums that I've done, I've actually been really happy with where I've gone. I like the direction of them, and I like the whole feel of it after certain music that I've been into for the last 10 years or so. All I want to do with the next one is just do it better. I want it to be darker, heavier, and more menacing. More epic, if you like, in terms of light and shade. I want to do what I've done before but better. I also want to make it much more aggressive, much more powerful, almost like a wall of noise. That's a very bad description, but it's kind of the way I feel it in my head. It's just everything that I've done, but more of it, you know, darker, heavier, and so on. I'm very bad explaining music I'm afraid - that's about as good as it gets.

NP: What's inspiring you lyrically?

GN: For a quite long time I've been having a bit of an issue with religion and so on, but I think I've done it to death.

NP: Right, 'cause you are famously an atheist.

GN: Yeah. Yeah. A few years ago, me and my wife, we couldn't have children naturally, or at least we couldn't for a while, so we did IVF. We were very lucky, in the first attempt that we had IVF, Gemma got pregnant. But then there was something that was really horribly wrong with it, and it was just horrible, and then it died. It was all heart breaking stuff, and I remember getting messages from people telling me how much god loved me. And [I'd think], "Fuck off." For that reason it just really got to me and I was on a bit of a crusade with it. But I just think I've done it a lot now. I feel like I've explored [it]. I could actually write songs about it until the day I die because it's an unending sort of inspiration, but I think, from a fan's point of view, I've probably done it enough or too much actually. So where I go next is a bit different.

With the last album, Jagged, I tried to look at some of the more bizarre people that I've met over the years, and the things that they were into and that kind of stuff. I magnified it a little bit for the sake of entertainment, but, none-the-less, you're looking back into your own past and the people that you've met through the last 20-odd years or so. 'Cause there's been some peculiar and frightening people at various times, that were into some strange and interesting things. I thought I'd write about that a bit, but I recon about a third of it was still going back into the god thing.

But the next one, I actually don't know yet to be honest. For me, the lyrics come at the very end of the album, so it's one of those things that I don't necessarily have to think about too soon. The music is well underway now, but the music is all done with working titles. Then the lyrics, they come towards the end of it, [and] the proper titles come from that.

NP: So you make the tracks, and then you do the top line melody and lyrics on top of the tracks at the end?

GN: I do the top line right at the beginning. I'll have a vocal line and the melody, sometimes quite complex multiple melodies going on, but I won't actually have any lyrics for them. I'll just sing noises. You know when you're laying out text when you're laying out magazines, it looks like weird Roman shit?

NP: Right, you just use dummy text.

GN: It's like an audio version of that. That way you get to know what type of word will fit a certain part of the song. I've never done it the way where you write lyrics first and then you make the music fit. I write the music first, get the atmosphere, the mood, get all that sorted out first. Then the lyrics will just flow because that bit of music puts you in a certain frame of mind anyway and that automatically takes you towards a certain type of lyric, word or feeling. For me, it's just a natural progression. The mood creates the lyric, rather than trying to create a mood because of a particular lyric. I actually don't know what's normal. To me, that seems quite an obvious way to do it. I know other people do lyric first.

NP: I think each to his own process. Sonically, I know that you've flipped between synth-based and guitar-based music. Where on that scale is the new music falling?

GN: I would say it's getting more and more synth-based with the new one, far more electronic. The guitar is still going to be a part of it, but the emphasis is swinging very much back to - not synth necessarily - but just noises. Noises and weirdness, and that kind of thing, rather than guitar grooves. Although the one I wrote yesterday is a guitar groove, so I'm still doing that. It's not that it's going to be all synthesizers, it's where the main focus of it switches. I think the last one, certainly the one before that and the one before that, were very much a guitar emphasis, but now it's swinging very much the other way again.

NP: Being a gear head, is there a particular piece of equipment that's exciting you right now?

GN: As far as hardware, I'm still using a thing called Access Virus, which is a brilliant, brilliant keyboard. It's too damn unreliable for taking out live, but it actually puts out some really good noises. I love that. In terms of hardware, that's the only one that I'm into for the minute; Software-wise, quite a few things really. Omnisphere, obviously, which I think everyone has now and knows about. That's just absolutely awesome. And there's a company called Native Instruments who've got a series called Kontakt. There's actually seven now, but I bought Kontakt 6, which is actually an array of different bits of software that all do certain things. That's absolutely brilliant. That and Omnisphere are the background of all the new stuff.

NP: Outside of music, you were also known for playing with some pretty spectacular toys. Are you still flying?

GN: Not too much now, no. Since the children come along there just isn't the time. Whereas before on a Saturday morning you'd wake up and if it was a nice day you'd go down the airfield with your airplane, or you go off to do a air expo in Europe or somewhere. You'd be away with the airplane for the whole weekend, doing all your loop-the-loops and all that kind of stuff, you know, really exciting. Now, you wake up on a Saturday morning and the kids want to go to the beach, or the kids want to go to the park. Your life becomes totally dominated by these little things who just get whatever they want really.

NP: What crazy things do the kids have you doing? What are they into?

GN: Honestly, it's a two-month cycle of obsession. At the moment it's horses, everything's all about horses for one of them. The other one is Thomas the Tank [Engine], so today they've been out to a park near here that's got a Thomas the Tank train that runs around.

They've been through dinosaurs. We've been up to the museums in London looking at dinosaur bones. That was a big thing for a bit. Then it was Pink. We had to go to London and watch Pink in concert, which [my daughter] got halfway through before she fell asleep. Then we had the Madonna period, we've had a Gwen Stefani period. They're quite musical, we've have lot of musical periods.

NP: You've got two daughters?

GN: Three. All young.

NP: Surrounded by girls.

GN: Yeah. Fantastic. [laughs] It is actually. It is fantastic. But, I'm surprised at how much they fight - just the amount of time - you could say almost every minute of the day. Even working is a problem. Just trying to get out to write songs, because your days are now broken up into chunks. You might have an hour here and a couple of hours there. Before I'd get up in the morning and I just had all day to do nothing but think about songs and spend time in the studio working on ideas. It's not like that now, and I'm useless when it comes to working in chunks. So my actual amount of output, if you like, the amount of work that I'm doing, is just a fraction of what it used to be. And that's a problem, 'cause I'm not the youngest thing in the world and I need to be working as hard as possible because I don't know how many years I've got to still do it, and the opposite is happening. I'm genuinely worried about it. I don't know what to do. I love them so much and I don't want to not be there and not be a part of their lives - especially at this stage when they're so young - but I've got to work to give them the life I want to give them.

NP: I guess that's why a lot of artists hole themselves away while they're recording albums, just so they can have a period of concentration.

GN: I could see that. For me, the compromise would be if I had a studio, even if it was just a mile away, but so you can go out to work in the morning. So you leave the house, and you leave all their little things. Not that I want to leave, I don't mean that, but I need to get away. I need to go somewhere. At the moment I've got a studio in the garden, and it's just pointless. You go out to the studio and two minutes later they're knocking on the door [and they're going], "Can I have some orange?" They've had to walk past their mom to come and ask me. Then they want to sit in and watch, and then they never do. They start pressing things and chatting. It's lovely, but it's so not conducive to actually writing songs.

NP: Well Virginia Woolf said it, an artist needs a room of one's own. You need a space where you can lock yourself away from distractions.

GN: Yes, absolutely true. Distractions, they will kill your career more than anything else you could ever do.

NP: I think that's often the battle artists have, because you feel selfish asking for that, but it's essential for an artist's soul just to be able to lock yourself away and create. Like you say, you want to be able to give your kids the life that you want them have, and that does require that you to allow yourself to be selfish, and I guess that's the hardest thing.

GN: Yes. Yes, that's exactly right. It's one of those things that it's easy to say, but it's much, much harder to actually do, and I still haven't got on top of it. You know, my oldest is just coming up to 7, so I don't know if I ever am going to get on top of it. The amount of songs that I'm writing now is nothing. In 1979, I think I wrote three albums in a 12-month period. I'd be lucky if I write an album within five years now. I want to. I love it just as much as I ever did, but there's all this other life stuff that gets in the way.

NP: The ironic thing is that although you might not be making any new tracks yourself, other people are making new tracks using your music. So probably in terms of where your music appears, you've probably got one of the highest outputs of any artist ever. And knowing where you come from, understanding what Essex represents, it must be so bizarre for you to have the likes of GZA from Wu-Tang Clan, Afrika Bambaataa and Dr. Dre using you as an inspiration for their music - all of these hip hop greats who couldn't come from a more opposite world.

GN: Yeah, it's great. Again, like the Nine Inch Nails thing, it's incredibly flattering and all that. I do not take it for granted. Every time I hear that someone else has sampled something or covered something, I get a huge grin on my face. I'm really, really proud of it, and I ring up my mates and tell them. I do think of it as a cool thing, and I'm still shocked that it happens. I think that my mental attitude, or self-awareness if you like, is still very much the same as it was when I was 19 or 20. I go into a studio and do my best to write the songs that I write, and I just hope that people like them. I have no expectations whatsoever.

When people like what you do, it's nice to see that. I'm genuinely surprised and pleased about that. I don't expect it. I think that's one of the reasons why I've handled the years that have not been so good, when the press have not been so kind, because I didn't really expect anyone to like what I did anyway. So if I get a bad review, I've almost been expecting it. I'm not crushed by it. You see what I mean? I think there's other people that are far more confident than I am, which I envy, but when they get a bad review, they're staggered by that, that somebody could actually not like what they did. And they're ruined people, sometimes forever, and I'm so the opposite of that.

NP: It's actually good that you expect the worst because then when the best happens, you actually enjoy it. Whereas someone that's over confident and expects the best and gets the worst, they just don't enjoy any of it.

GN: I don't do it for the praise either. I don't do it to get good reviews and for everyone to know who I am. I do it because I love doing it, first and foremost. To me, what I do for a living is a lovely big cake, and if you get a good review, or if something sells particularly well, that's just like the icing on the top. I actually love doing what I do anyway. I would choose to do this for a hobby even if I couldn't earn a living from it. I'm just happy that I get up in the morning and then, apart from having to take the kids to the park, I can pretty much do what I want. I have that kind of the freedom in life, which I don't think many people really have. I massively appreciate that, and you don't have to be the biggest thing in the world to have that, to have that kind of a life. I think very early on, I recognized that and enjoyed it.

I'm very realistic. When you're touring, for me anyway, you're in a lovely big bus. You're with your mates. My wife comes with me, so everything is cool. You're going out, you're traveling all over the world, which I love to do anyways. You're going on stage each night and playing your songs to people that like them. That's a pretty brilliant way of living. I've got no qualms with it. I never quite understand all these people who hate touring and say it's very stressful and that sort of stuff. I don't really get that. I think it's a great thing to do and I love it.


The US Pleasure Principle tour kicks off at Club Firestone in Orlando, FL on Aug 17. For full tour dates visit GaryNuman.co.uk.

Dan Goldman is a name familiar to people who follow webcomics for “Shooting War,” the comic written by Anthony Lappe and illustrated by Goldman that appeared online at Smith Magazine before being collected into a book in 2007. Since then Goldman, a member of the online comic collective Act-i-vate,... more

Dan Goldman is a name familiar to people who follow webcomics for “Shooting War,” the comic written by Anthony Lappe and illustrated by Goldman that appeared online at Smith Magazine before being collected into a book in 2007. Since then Goldman, a member of the online comic collective Act-i-vate, has crafted a number of comics for print and the web.

“Red Light Properties” is a project Goldman has been developing for years and since January he’s been serializing the book on Tor.com. The story of a small Miami Beach real estate firm with a specialty, taking on haunted properties and exorcising the ghosts before selling the properties. This isn’t ghostbusters, though. It’s a lot stranger and more complicated. There’s Jude, the drug-addled would-be shaman who communicates with his dead father far more than his wife, Ceci, who’s the realtor and the brains of the operation. Drugs, family, ghosts and some incredibly trippy sequences have all been leading up to the final installment of the book which goes live this week at http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/05/red-light-properties. We spoke to Goldman by e-mail from his home in Brazil.


ALEX DUEBEN: You started posting the book in January and now it’s the beginning of September and you’re bringing it all to an end. How does it feel?

DAN GOLDMAN: I'm feeling very proud, very tired, a little winsome; doing 200 comic pages since November is a new personal record.  I've had such a blast getting these characters out into the world after tinkering with them for the last nine years, and it's a little hard to let go, even for a few months.  

Thankfully I'm already moving forward with further scripts, with so much more story to come (and soon), we won't have to be apart for too long.

AD: When you started posting in January, how much of the book had been drawn and was finished by that point?

DG: I'm ashamed to say, but the farthest I'd ever been ahead of myself was 3 chapters (~24pgs) in the beginning.   The comic was running weekly then too (I moved to a biweekly schedule about 100 pages in), and drawing/coloring/lettering/exporting 8 pages a week was a heavy grind.  Combining that with relocating from the US to Brazil, the initial disorientation of functioning in a new language and learning how to set up shop here while keeping pace with the deadline train, it all contributed to my never getting too ahead of myself.

I didn't (and still don't) think moving to a biweekly serial was a great idea — "every Tuesday" rolls off the tongue way easier than "every other Tuesday" — but the final book script was written with an 8-page syncopation, and halving those to create a 4pgs-a-week schedule would've made for a clunky reading experience.  For the next volume Mala Fama, I'm going to rework the script with that tighter syncopation so I can keep the comic running weekly in 4 page installments.

AD: How much has the book changed as a result of posting it in chapters and getting feedback from people as you went?

DG: In all honesty... zero.  With my past webcomics, reader feedback played a big factor... either to flip the audience's expectations back on them (“Kelly”) or tailor the storyline's veracity to current events unfolding at the same time as the comic (Shooting War).  

RLP's script was capital-F-final before I ever started drawing, with a specific structure to the story that I believed in and didn't veer from.  I tend to make tiny edits to dialogue at the end while lettering — sometimes you just think of something funnier or crazier while lettering at 4am — but the comic really remains the same as the final version of the script.

AD: Now the high concept of the story, a real estate company that handles haunted properties and cleans them up is a great one. I know you mentioned that your mother is a realtor. What was the origin of this idea?

DG: There were definitely germs planted early; my mom got her realtor's license when I was about twelve, and I knew all these amazing and horrible characters in her 1980s North Miami Beach office who clearly stuck with me.  I remember her telling me about this house in our neighborhood where the father had died while having sex with his wife, and how no one wanted to buy that house.  It stood vacant on the market for years.

Even after moving away to New York, I've listened to her grumble over the years and experienced the sea changes in the market from her very South Florida perspective: from re-gentrification to over-building to reckless subprime lending to the Big Crash that fucked the world economy.   

I didn't know it then, but I was subconsciously making notes, percolating these ideas, and the concept for RLP appeared to me whole-cloth a few years later when I was taking my first forays into writing new comics myself.  I was living this broken shit-hole of a house I was renting in Brooklyn circa 2001.  New Yorkers are real-estate-obsessed as it is; house envy is such a New York-specific kind of pornography, since people pay so much for so very little, it's all fetishized (especially if you're a poor artist/temp).  I'd been living in the city for a few years at this point, steeping in real-estate-fetish culture and raised by a realtor to boot, while living in a house with a hole in the roof where the heat bled out all winter.  There was a ghost there, not someone I could see but could definitely feel puttering around; I never felt alone there, toiling on comics at all strange hours of the night.  

As I became more and more aware of it, I started piecing together facts about previous tenants by asking "lifers" who'd grown up on the block; it turned out that a painter who lived there in the 1980s died in the house.  I'd never felt anything malicious from him/it... more curious if anything, the feeling of someone looking over your shoulder while working on my stories, etc.  One afternoon, I was passed out cold on my glamourous futon mattress on the floor after working my night shift job, and my invisible roommate leaned into my skull and said "hello" into my eardrums, waking me up from REM sleep to a cold and empty room and heart palpitations.  I went downstairs and poured myself a glass of rusty tap water, and the moment the water hit my stomach... there was this office called Red Light Properties, this exorcist named Jude, his ex-wife Cecilia (though she was Conchetta in that first version), the ghost of Jude's dad.

In fact, the original draft of RLP took place in Brooklyn and contained very Brooklyn-specific flavors (Italian instead of Cuban ex-wife for example).  I'd had the pitch floated around to a few comics publishers already, but no one was interested in some no-name writer with no artist attached (I hadn't "gone digital" with my artwork yet, and thus didn't have the chops to draw it myself).  

A few months later, these two planes knocked down the World Trade Center and nobody cared about acquiring anything for a while.  My mother, like all Jewish mothers, was frantic that her boys were in New York, and once it was "safe" to fly again, I went down to Miami to visit her like a good son.  We got lunch at our old favorite place and drove around Miami Beach together, specifically San Souci and North Beach, which were old "beats" of hers back in the early nineties, and she started rattling off all these memories again.  Listening to her tales and looking at crumbly pastel Art Deco buildings, the new upscale condos and the still-rough parts of Overtown and Little Haiti... suddenly the Miami sabor was way stronger for RLP than just doing another damned New York comic.  A few months after that I moved back down to Miami for about a year and soaked it up fresh, wrote and drew furiously every day, and developed the seeds of what would become my digital art style... so in both the writing and the artwork, Miami is very much in the series' DNA.

AD: At what point did the character of Jude and his shamanistic efforts become such a big part of the story?

DG: From the beginning; it's always been Jude's contribution to the firm (and the series) that makes RLP more than just a comic about a real estate office.  The deeper I dug into his character, the more his struggle emerged, which drives the drama of the series; he's his own antagonist in many ways.  Jude's heightened perception of the spirit world drives his need to be taken seriously, but his intake of hallucinogens works against that, and in the process he pushes away the people he's trying to be there for.  He always seems to do the wrong things for the right reasons, and that misunderstood-schmuck quality about him makes Jude very real to me... and very easy to write.

Even though Jude and Cecilia were always intended to be our front-and-center characters, over the years of my obsessive script rewrites, I'm amazed at how present the characters of Zoya Pashenko (the firm's ghost photographer/receptionist) and Turi Tobin (Jude's non-biological son) are for me.  It took me years to "know" them, but now future story elements are orbiting them as well as Jude and Ceci, regardless of my wishes.

AD: Whas is a challenge to think about the book in satisfying chapter length chunks because you knew that people would have to wait between them?

DG: I'm actually thinking about them simultaneously as both web-serial chapters and as invisible components of a print graphic novel, which is a real challenge. In a lot of ways, it's a continuation of the workflow I stumbled onto doing Shooting War, and always felt like more people should be doing.

Many cartoonists making long-form comics online just slap up a new page every week willy-nilly with no consideration that the web could/should be its own kind of reading experience, and tailor the experience accordingly.  In crafting Red Light Properties (and "Kelly" and Shooting War), my metaphor has always been the Tasty Bite: that you're giving the reader a satisfying portion of something perfect and delicious but never enough to be sated, and moving the story forward enough to keep them coming back.

This idea furthers a sense of auteur-control here, which I look for myself as a story addict.  When there's a film/comic/novel/whatever that forces you to take it on its own terms, there's a unique pleasure in surrendering yourself to a gifted storyteller and going along for the ride wherever it takes you.  I try to tailor my own work that way, as a ride, and crafting serialized webcomics-as-shared-event is too sexy of an idea not to tickle it.

AD: I did want to ask about the interface, which I love but on some level I can’t help but feel is a cheat in some ways, because it forces people to read the page the way you want them but wouldn’t necessarily be how their eye would follow it. What was the thinking behind it and just how hard was it to pull together?

DG: The click-through panels was something I'd created for another job that I (thankfully) didn't get, which left me with both a prototype and an open schedule to start RLP (for realz this time!), so I got to apply the click-through panels to my baby instead of a work-for-hire project.  When I pitched RLP to Tor.com's former chief, he was excited enough about this aspect to put me together with his programmers to create a proprietary comic- viewer for their site that other comics may or may not use.

Over the last few years, I've done a lot of thinking and a lot of public speaking about what comics can become when you present them on a screen instead of a paper page, all the inherent new possibilities and the point at which they cease to become comics.  With a new project and codemonkeys, it's something I had the chance to play more with... so I did.  That's really the Why; I was curious and I wanted to try it out.

But here's the shitty part: I noticed a few months in that the readership had gotten very quiet, and I received a lot of complaints from friends and peers that the pages wouldn't load, chapters wouldn't navigate, that the fancy-schmancy experience was frustrating instead of cool.  There were a handful of bad designs built into the player, and it was costing me my audience.  It was the worst and most-urgent webcomic's nightmare imaginable, and since I wasn't running the site myself, I had no access to the back end to fix anything myself.  I had to navigate nine circles of corporate inter-departmental who-gives-a-fuck just to find the person with enough pull to help sort RLP out.

After a few months of stamping my feet, the right person surfaced and was nice enough to help troubleshoot the hiccups and brainstorm solutions with me; together we made many front/back-end tweaks over the last few months so the comic ran much smoother as we moved towards the book's conclusion.   I'm quite happy with how snappy it is now, here at the end of this ride.

As far as the click-through panels being a "cheat"... I think/hope it's something new, and as the creator, I like having the control over how you take in my work.  But built into the player is also the option NOT to advance using click-through, instead using the plain-old "Next Page" buttons... but you can read it in the plain-vanilla webcomic version if you like, but what's sexy about that?

AD: Now you’ve said that RLP is the first book in a series. Do you have this macro plot for the characters and this larger plot about the afterlife?

DG: Yes and yes and yes.  The next two novel-length books in the series, Mala Fama (Book 2) and Hurricane Melodie (Book 3) are already written, with about seven graphic novels in total on the table at the moment.  There is a larger structure, a hero's quest, a company arc, to the whole series.  I don't want to blow that load just yet, but I tend to chop big chunks of wood and then carve termite-tunnels through them until each component is beautiful and everything fits together just so. 

I'm also planning some interstitial short comics that I want to draw in between larger volumes, to keep my knives sharp; they're little things I've written that didn't fit into the novels but I want to exist in comic form, stories from the past, from the future, from other characters points of view.  Every one of them helps flesh out the world better, and together they could make a nice collection later.

I'm also writing a novel that builds out the RLP universe in a different direction; prose is my first love, and I'm really into the transmedia storytelling, building the gestalt story across multiple platforms.  I think RLP is really suited to that.

AD: So the deal with Tor is for a webcomic, which means you still have the print rights. Are there any plans for a print version of the book?

DG: I fully intend on having the series in print in a beautiful format, but I'm still considering offers for the right home for the series.  I've had a few experiences publishing comics in the book trade already, and I want everything to be just right with my precious baby this time.  My literary agent's contact info is right on my site if interested parties would like to get in touch.