Red Light Properties

by Dan Goldman

Dan Goldman's Shooting War really impressed me a couple of years back, so I decided to take a chance on picking up his new book, Red Light Properties, when I saw Goldman at TCAF this year.

The book is about a very unique real estate company in Miami, and is set at the height of the housing crisis of a few years ago.  Red Light Properties investigates and clears up dead housing stock that can't be sold because its haunted.  Jude, their in-house exorcist, takes some drugs and communes with the spirits in the house, helping them to move on, while his assistant, Zoya, takes photographs that actually show the supernatural presence.  The actual real estate side of the business is run by Jude's wife Cecilia.

It's an interesting set up, but Goldman doesn't really get into the ghostly side of things for a very long time, preferring to make this a book about Jude and Cecilia's faltering marriage.  He's recently been dumped to a basement apartment, as the couple plans of separating, due to Jude's on-line activities.  He's portrayed as a bit of a screw-up, but is also having a very hard time managing the stress that his job places on him.

Cecilia is a bit of a piece of work, and suspects that something is going on between Jude and Zoya.  Stuff happens, and the family suffers through these issues and financial pressure, all of which grounds the stranger side of the high concept.

Goldman is an interesting artist.  He uses a lot of photos for his background, and then photoshops in visual elements he's drawn on the computer, like the family car.  The figures themselves are drawn on top of all of this, which sometimes looks really cool, and sometimes feels incredibly stiff.  The landscape format of the book leads to a few awkward panel lay-outs, as well as makes the book a little unwieldy to read.

I enjoyed this comic, and would definitely come back for the second volume, but at the same time, hope that the book is edited a little more rigorously, as there are a few places where speech balloons point to the wrong person, or where the dialogue feels very stiff.

Everyman Vol 1: Be The People

Written by Dan & Steven Goldman
Art by Joe Bucco

I'm finally getting around to reading the rest of my TCAF purchases from the spring, and I regret having left this for so long. I picked this up from Dan Goldman because I had enjoyed The Shooting War, and wanted to read some of his other work.

Everyman is a very political graphic novel. President Birch, a thinly-disguised stand-in for George W. Bush, is scheming to steal the upcoming election through the use of modified electronic voter machines. He is discovered by his 'affirmative action political aide', who leaks the information to Onelove.us, a website being run by a popular author and political think-tank lobbyist, with the aim of returning some semblance of sanity to American politics.

The Onelove crew set out to publicize Birch's plans, mostly through carefully arranging to steal network television ad time, and by hijacking the inauguration ceremony. Parts of this book were reminiscent of Jonathan Hickman's 'The Nightly News', yet with a more non-violent stance.

Most interesting would be the way in which this book seems to have foreshadowed Obama's ability to use the Internet to generate popular support in the last election. Thomas Womack, the author in the book, bears a great resemblance to Obama. It's worth noting that this book was published in 2004.

This is well worth tracking down if you enjoy intelligent political thrillers.

Shooting War

Written by Anthony Lappe
Art by Dan Goldman

This is a terrific read. Shooting War is about Jimmy Burns, a liberal video blogger who just happens to be filming a Starbucks when it explodes from a suicide bomb. Burns video propels him into media stardom, and soon he is hired by Global, a sensationalistic 24-hour cable news channel (not to be confused with our own Global TV here in Ontario) and sent to Iraq.

This is not the Iraq of today - this is Iraq in 2011, after two years of a McCain administration. Early into his time there, Burns meets Abu Adallah, the leader of The Sword of Mohammed, a jihadist organization that is trying to create a modernist, non-secular approach to killing Americans - mostly through the use of Iranian equipment.

What follows is an exploration of warfare, in which no side is innocent or noble. Americans shoot unarmed civilians, and use robotic weapons that kill indiscriminately. Journalists report what they are told to report. Iraqi children carry suicide bombs. Dan Rather is more than a little clueless. There is nothing in this book that is implausible really, and it makes no suggestions on how things can be improved. Instead, it's an entertaining and amusing look at where things might end up (and probably would have had McCain actually been elected).

The story moves quickly, and the characters are well developed. In a lot of ways, Jimmy Burns reminds me of Matty Roth in Brian Wood's excellent series 'DMZ'. They are similar in that they are tossed into a conflict they don't understand, and are often used for their fame to promote a certain message.

The art in the book is different. Most of the backgrounds are photographs, with the central characters digitally drawn over them. In more than a few places, the characters look stiff and out of place, but in others, this method is very effective. The American soldiers with their strangely glowing face masks look amazing and terrifying at the same time.

This book comes highly recommended, especially at the relatively inexpensive price of the softcover.