Today I’m talking to the legendary Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, whose latest ongoing comic, Brain Fist, is now running on Modern Tales. Goodbrey is a prolific creator of experimental, fourth-wall-smashing webcomics and minicomics, many of which can be seen on his website, E-Merl. He’s also the designer of the Tarquin Engine, a tool for creating infinite-canvas webcomics. In 2005, his minicomic The Last Sane Cowboy won the Isotope Award for Excellence in Minicomics.

Shaenon Garrity: You always have pretty ambitious creative goals for your work. What do you hope to accomplish with Brain Fist?

Daniel Goodbrey: World peace! Okay, well, maybe not. I wanted Brain Fist to be something that really used the strengths of mobile devices like the iPod but that also didn’t feel out of place when read online or (eventually) in print.

I tend to think of iPods as “looking into” devices. You’re looking through a little window into another world that you hold in your hand. There’s a more intimate connection there than you get from looking at the screen or even (in my opinion) the printed page. And that’s what I wanted Brain Fist to be–an intimate connection between the character and the reader. The fact that people you’re connecting with are a bunch of freaks, psychopaths and drug addicts is, you know, just part of the fun.

SG: How do you produce your artwork?

SG: The artwork for Brain Fist is a fully digital creation. It starts in 3D in a rather outdated copy of Poser that I really should get round to updating at some point. I then take it through Paint Shop Pro to break it down into black and white and tidy up any loose or ill-behaved pixels. Then the final stage comes in Flash where I convert everything into vectors and add colour, outlines and text.

It’s the kind of strip where I maybe could have used cut-and-paste repeat artwork for a lot of the strips. But I decided early on not to go down that route with the series and try and make every panel an original. I’m a big fan of copy-and-paste comics but so little actually happens visually in Brain Fist that I felt the little variations in facial expression and positioning were a must.

SG: Brain Fist is also a feature on Clickwheel, a service that puts webcomics on the iPod. How did you get involved in that?

DG: One advantage of being the crazy-out-there formalist guy is that when someone wants to find web cartoonists for something crazy and out there, I’m one of the people they come to. Also, Colin White recommended me to them, which helped.

Around the time Clickwheel came along I’d been mooting the possibility of running some kind of weekly ongoing comic at E-merl because, well, I’d never actually done that before. William Simons (Clickwheel CEO) was originally interested in me just reworking some of my existing comics like Ninja Vs Jesus, but I decided to chance my arm and try and sell him on something new instead. I put together the first three BF strips across the course of a couple of weeks and the rest, thankfully, is now history.

SG: You’re also bringing your comic The Nomad Church to Rocket Pirates, Warren Ellis’ new webcomics collective. What’s The Nomad Church about?

DG: The Nomad Church is always about one chapter longer than I thought it was going to be. Hey, want to see how I pitched it to Warren? It went something like:

“To high-concept the series, its Doctor Who meets Little House on The Prairie. Mysterious young girl on the run (Sarah) from dark forces (The Fracture Men) takes refuge in strange trans-locational Chapel owned by an enigmatic preacher (James. Who’s not actually a preacher at all, but still). Rounding out the cast is a Russian cowgirl on the outs with the law (Katyusha) and a cat with a teseract for a head (Jeremy) who functions as the Chapel’s servitor system.

“Essentially it’s a series about running away. I wanted to look at the old wisdom of not being able to run away from your problems and turn that on its head to focus on a group of people that found peace in the act of running away. The Nomad Church of the title is a place that exists inside James’ head but its also a real, physical building that can itself move from location to location. James is someone who retreated into his own head, found it suited him so kept on retreating. Sarah…”

Oops, gonna stop there, as I don’t want to give away the whole deal yet. The series is set in my Unfolded Earth universe and is my first stab at a big, cohesive, graphic-novel-length narrative. Whether it all comes together like I planned or I end up falling flat on my face remains to be seen.

SG: Are you planning any new comics for the Tarquin Engine?

DG: Yes! But I don’t know what they are yet. I’ve been wanting to put out something new on Tarquin for a while now but inspiration, she is a cruel mistress. Once I get an idea that I think has legs, I’ll definitely do something with it.

Part of the problem is that I actually want to show off a slightly newer version of the engine that lets me include animation and interaction within individual panels. However, from a formalist point of view I’ve already said most of what I want to say about animation in things like The Tragic Death Of An Animated Gif and The Mr. Nile Experiment. I’m also, generally speaking, much more narrative-focused in my work these days and would like to do something with a bit more meat on its bones. But, you know, still doesn’t take me too long to draw/animate.

I’m sure I’ll come up with something eventually.

SG: What’s the webcomics and minicomics scene in Britain like?

DG: It’s a lot like the US scene only with more alcohol and less comics industry. Actually, to give you a flavour of the scene, I’ll take the opportunity to plug three of my friends.

Douglas Noble is the owner of the pickled Scottish brain behind Strip For Me. He’s been running his self-described “unfriendly romance” anthology in print for a while now and more recently he’s started putting his stuff online–lovely and horrific in surprisingly equal measure.

Dave Baillie will surely be writing for Marvel or DC any day now, but until then can be found in attendance at most UK small press gatherings with an assortment of his fine mini-comics to hand. I don’t think Dave’s site really does enough to show off the scope and range of his work for print, but have a root around and you’ll see some examples of the finest the UK print scene has to offer. He’s Scottish too, for reasons that escape me.

Oli Smith is so young and full of talent it’s vaguely annoying. He joined the world of small-press less than a year ago and he’s already becoming a name to watch for in the scene. I did a thing for his first anthology book, I Dream of Real Life, which should hopefully be available for purchase from E-merl at some point in the near future.

Paul Fryer, who I’m shocked to discover no longer has a website outside of his DeviantArt page. Folk may remember Paul from his unfinished Brit-SF webcomic classic Great Vagueness. He’s currently living the life of rock star excess with his new band, but he’s also promising a bunch of new comics out soon and I’m sure they’ll be worth the wait.

SG: Any final thoughts?

DG: That world peace thing would be nice, wouldn’t it? I’ll see what I can do.

Oh! And I’ve got one other new web-based project on the go, which I can’t talk about yet but that should also be out in September. And…um…I can’t really talk about it. But watch the skies!

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