RED LIGHT PROPERTIES: ACCLAIMED CULT FAVORITE WEBCOMIC IN PRINT FOR THE FIRST TIME

In 2014, Dan Goldman’s critically-acclaimed cult favorite webcomic Red Light Properties will make its long awaited print debut. Re-edited, relettered, recolored and rescripted, the first-ever print edition of Red Light Properties will be available as a trade paperback from IDW Publishing in late January, 2014. The book includes more than 20 never-before-seen pages and is designed to be the definitive reading experience, the first of an ongoing series of Red Light Properties releases from IDW.

Red Light Properties presents the adventures of an ambitious Miami real estate agency with a very…specific business model. The husband-and-wife run agency unearths properties that are unsellable because they’re haunted. The husband then cleans out said haunted homes by whatever (often unsavory) means necessary. The ghosts find closure. The seller unloads their property. The RLP Agency receives a fee. Everyone wins… except maybe for the Tobins, who are barely on speaking terms. You see, it’s not an easy business, flipping haunted houses.

Following his Eisner-nominated work on the acclaimed Shooting War, his non-fiction graphic journalism graphic novel 08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail, and the launch of the web comics collective ACT-I-VATE, Red Light Properties represents a departure for Goldman. “2014 finds me at an interesting crossroads. It’s been more than a decade since I began creating comic books. After my work on “08”, I’d had my fill of politics and topical comics. Instead I wanted to use a longer story about a broken but unique family to talk about life, death, family and how the spaces we live in can hang onto echoes of us after we’re gone. ” said Goldman. “This coming January marks four years since the online launch of Red Light Properties and it’s the perfect time for IDW to publish the first print volume as part of their ongoing relationship with Monkeybrain Comics.”

Like fellow artists Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Cameron Stewart, the Brooklyn-based Goldman uses computers to draw comic books. At the forefront of digital-first comics, his approach with Red Light Properties is perhaps more akin to a film production than to traditional comic book storytelling. Building 3D virtual sets to shoot inside of, working off actors’ performances (often his own), Goldman produces the series using just a laptop, a Wacom stylus and a smartphone. As Douglas Rushkoff raved on BOING BOING, “Dan Goldman…has blossomed into one of the industry’s most innovative artists …This book represents an emerging comics talent coming into full possession of his storytelling powers.”

On the eve of his 40th birthday this May, the print publication of Red Light Properties represents a major milestone for the Eisner-nominated writer/artist and his series. With its memorable cast and mad mash-up of Ghostbusters and Property Brothers, Red Light Properties will have readers talking for years to come.