Interviews from APE: Daniel Merlin Goodbrey

I have to read anything that’s described as “Doctor Who meets Little House on the Prairie“. That’s how writer and artist Daniel Merlin Goobrey describes some of his comics. Goodbrey premiered his first trade book, The Last Sane Cowboy and Other Stories at the Alternative Press Expo in April. The book includes the story that won him the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini Comics two years ago. We talked with Goodbrey for a few minutes while he was promoting his book at the AIT-Planet Lar booth.

Pink Raygun: Can you tell me a little about your book?

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey: Yeah. It’s set in a place called the Unfolded Earth, which is sort of a surreal version of our Earth and in that same universe there are lots of little odd short stories about life there. The Last Sane Cowboy is a sort of western about insanity and The House that Wasn’t Her which is kind of a love story and then I Bleed Scorpions, which is about a guy who bleeds scorpions when he’s cut. Strange kind of stuff, but it has it’s own internal logic to it. Dead pan surrealism, I call it. It’s a very English surrealism.

This is my first published book. I started doing stuff on the web, then started doing mini-comics. On the back of the Isotope Award two years ago, I go AIT-Planet Lar interested. This is my first full trade book, so I’m quite excited. The follow up to The Last Sane Cowboy is The Nomad Church which is set in the same universe, but I”m trying to tell a continuing long story as opposed to lots of short stories. That’s three issues in so far and I’m working on issue four at the moment. It’s kind of like Doctor Who meets Little House on the Prairie. Easier to sell that one.

PRG: Tell me about your web stuff.

DMG: It’s at e-merl.com. Through there I do a series called Brain Fist. I do a lot of hypercomics, kind of interactive, multiple branching comics stuff. I was one of the first people doing stuff like that. I had a series called Sixgun on Comic Book Resources which is where the Unfolded Earth stuff came from. That was my first big success.

PRG: As the writer and the artist, when you’re ready to sit down and draw, are you working from script?

DMG: I tend to write dialogue and my thumbnail clip with the dialogue. Then I do 3D on the computer. It doesn’t look 3D at the end, but I work with 3D and photographs and simplify it down so it has that 2D look to it.

PRG: Are you using Poser?

DMG: Yes. I’m using Poser and bits of 3D Studio Max and Photoshop and Flash to smooth it out. So, it’s a little bit of cheating there.

PRG: Not really. The end result is the important thing. You still have to know visual storytelling. Who has been influential for you?

DMG: Grant Morrison is a big influence in terms of general world view and writing. Morrison, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Alan Moore in terms of comics. Scott McCloud as well, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics really got me into the comics scene. My web stuff is a lot more experimental, it’s where I came from. I owe a big debt to Scott McCloud for getting me moving in that direction.

PRG: Are you a self-taught artist?

DMG: I can’t draw well enough, which is why I do the stuff on the computer. I have some training, but I was never really happy with my art skills enough that I’d want to draw freehand. I can, but it’s very cartoony kind of stuff. I did a Masters in multimedia animation. While I was working on my Masters is when I started to have a go at really doing comics and finding ways of working within what I could do. In the next year, I really want to focus on the writing and find other people to illustrate my stuff.

PRG: Is there anyone you’re looking at or have in mind who you’d love to see draw your scripts?

DMG: No. There’s lots of people I’d love to do it, but it’s getting them to agree to do it. I hope to do some more stuff through AIT and I got an agent off the back of winning the Isotope. But it’s really a matter of sitting down and writing a script and finding an artist for it. Some of the stuff I’ve tried to avoid doing in the past because it’s so hard to find an artist when you’re starting out. I think you see a lot of people like Matt [Silady] who’s done The Homeless Channel. He wound up doing the art himself because it was a way of getting the book out there. I think you see that a lot in people who really want to get their books published. They find a way of getting the art done rather than relying on an artist.

PRG: Bendis was like that. He wasn’t a great artist, but he managed to get out Torso and Jinx and those books. Your stuff reminds me of his a lot.

DMG: I didn’t know him until I started doing stuff then people said “oh, your stuff looks like Bendis” and I devoured everything he did. My art style was literally me mucking around on the computer until I found something that kind of worked. I was trying to rip off Frank Miller. I was like “that’s really high contrast, I wonder if I could do that?” But, yeah. It does look very Bendis-y.

PRG: Are you using any custom Poser models?

DMG: I’m using a really beat up copy of Poser 4 because it’s what I had. I try and customize it as much as possible. Because I’m not doing it fully rendered, I can really brutally customize them and not have to worry about it looking believable because it all gets cleaned up in the process. It’s a handy program. It means you can get your ideas on paper without having to rely on an artist.

The Last Sane Cowboys and Other Stories is part of Pink Raygun’s “Couldn’t Make APE?” prize pack. A winner will be drawn on May 31st. For more of Goodbrey’s comics, visit his website.