dangoldmandotnet

I say this every year and every year it’s equally true: the Comic-Con is a completely different experience each year.

My first Comic-Con in 1999 saw me rolling solo from Greenpoint with a duffel bag full of my first full-length HAIRKUT and meeting many of my heroes for the first time, 1000% lovelove; that con ended with my getting a job at DC Comics a few weeks after my return to New York. What was once a childhood dream was suddenly just another dumb job for lousy pay, helping them shill Green Arrow’s explicable return from the dead. The following year at San Diego, I worked as a booth monkey for DC, being told by my boss to “smile more, be more approachable” in my XXL Tom Strong t-shirt and making sure no one stole the b&w previews of upcoming issues of Young Justice; I was dying inside to be on the other side of that table with my friends. I wanted to be able to play too… after all, Steve and I had been writing pitches and stories of all shapes and sizes sincer 1999, both of us itching for the moment when I quit my job and ended my “no comics work” agreement with DC so we could pitch them OUR dreams. Instead, I spent that show making the Ralph’s runs for DC staff and buying six-packs of Red Bull with Time-Warner money to stay awake after too many sleepless nights up drinking/etc with friends from overseas. I swore out loud to creator pals that next year, I’d come to San Diego as my own man again.

And so I did, and Steve and I had our first outing in the Brothers Goldman style the following year, pitching projects and kicking handfuls of ass… but we had a lot to learn. FWDbooks was a pipe dream, something we’d get glassy-eyed over and talk about from the top floor of our Park Slope house. Most of our projects-in-development were derailed by the fallout of those two planes hitting those two towers late in ‘01, and life, as ever, rolls onwards. Life in New York became too weird for me, work got kooky and the psychic landscape of the city something that didn’t feel recognizable anymore, and I needed out. Things with Steve and I were strained, nothing made sense anymore, our work was ignored… and the band broke up.

I moved back to Miami with then-girl in tow, got an apartment a few blocks from the ocean on South Beach, and DREW DREW DREW and WROTE WROTE WROTE. From Miami, my annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con couldn’t be stopped, even though I had little/no income to speak of. I missed those summer-camp-style friends and the ritual of it all. I came out sans pitches, sans comics, sans brother, just to stay in the mix and keep in touch with people after my move out of New York. People asked me about the comics scene in Miami and I replied, “You’re looking at it.” I went home to an empty bank account and a relationship doomed from go. This is the dark and strange when RED LIGHT PROPERTIES moved from embryo to fetus.

Sometime later, Steve (still in New York) wrote/produced the first STYX TAXI, which I lettered/designed from my post-then-girl apartment in Miami’s Little Haiti. Things had gone from weird to sour for me in Miami by that point, but I was beaming with pride for what Steve and Jeremy had done… taking our 2001 pipe dream and making it a reality by taking one of our “abandoned” ideas and moving it out of the flash-flash of high conceptville and into truer and deeper territory. PASTRAMI was something I was proud of, even being only a tiny part of it. Again, con vows. Again, next year, Dan. We fucked off from the con on Sunday early to meet a friend of Steve’s for Thai food, and wound up taking a ride up the PCH to La Jolla to watch the sunset. There stone cliffs about 100ft tall that led down to tide pools where sea lions were sunning themselves, vamping it up for the tourist set. Sitting there with Steve and Jeremy with the sun setting over my shoulder, I could feel the pages turning, a chapter ending, a blank page staring me in the ajna. I flew back to Miami, to my no-AC apartment in the hood, packed a few bags worth of clothes and computer and threw Mister Pussy in the cat-caddy. I was in Brooklyn 18 hours later.

The minute I landed, staying on Steve’s floor on an air mattress, we started thinking/making comics again. Steve was digging the vector-based stuff I schooled myself in down south, and I loved his more self-actualized theater-soaked writing voice. It was automatic, it was True Love… and before we realized it, the band was back together. Within a month of my visit, we banged out “Stranded” which will never see print due to typical Miami friends’ flakiness. Two months later, “Schmear” came out in SMUT PEDDLER. Things just snowballed for us, at slightly faster speed than intended, and after a few months, the comics were driving us and we were along for the ride. Ever my favorite baby, RED LIGHT was moved to back burner status while we tried to change the world with EVERYMAN.

Last year saw us exhibiting at San Diego (literally) under the FWDbooks banner; we had a new STYX TAXI, this time with a story I’d illustrated and pages from EVERYMAN and FLESH FOR THE BEAST. It was amazing, high-energy, carnival-barking time… trying to be noticed in the con floor circus, but the amazing part was being together, with Steve, Rami, Joe, Leslie and Donna. The love-fest continued through SPX and the release of EVERYMAN (just barely) in time for the election. Deep breaths all around, months of actual sleeping, a month to fix up the apartment, and back to writing/drawing again.

This year was Steve and I and Joe all over again, but with a twist: no booth tying us down and lots of recent work under our belts. I’d intended to have that previously-blogged RED LIGHT PROPERTIES teaser comic with me at the con, but as I mentioned, it wasn’t stylistically there yet. I’ll post it here as I redraw every last panel of it, I promise. Instead, Steve and I hit the floor with 4 pitches (1 top secret, 1 with Joe as the artist). As well as that went, and I ain’t saying nothing till contracts are signed, what was striking to me was the feeling of this one being different… again. This time out there was nothing to prove, no need to scream louder — just being jazzed up by everyone’s energy; from the self-publishers to the big presses to the dude who made a life-size Chewbacca out of Legos… it’s infectious and I was hurting in the sweetest way. Standing in the middle of the con floor, all I wanted to do was MORE. More work, more writing, more drawing, more screaming babies pulling from between the lobes of my brain… to the point where that’s all I do. Because there really is no greater joy. I’m looking forward to coming days/months/years of it, onward and forever.

————¡mua!———–> d!

As far as the straight-up name-checking con report I sat down this morning to do…. this is what came out. All the people I met for the first time, reunited with, got drunk with, danced with, introduced to other friends, bummed cigarettes offa, ate tacos with, sat in ballrooms at night with, walked along with train tracks with at 3am, listened to snoring, punched in the ribs, rolled my eyes at, got nuttin but love for…. you know who you are.