Dan Goldman: Creating Social Change Through Comics and Gaming

UW-Milwaukee’s Geek Week welcomed Dan Goldman, creator of the graphic novel “Priya’s Shatki,” to discuss how he uses modern media such as comics and gaming to reach younger generations and create social change in the world.

“Technology is the art of now and media is changing all the time,” Goldman said. “You don’t want to get thrown.”

Goldman is from Brooklyn, New York and calls himself a professional storyteller. He writes and creates video games, comics and TV/Film. Goldman was heavily interested in the Indian culture and did a lot of research on the social issues that were common there. The findings from his research is what led him to come up with the story for the comic book—“Priya’s Shatki.”

This event, “Comics, Gaming and Social Change” was at the start of this year’s Geek Week. Students will be able to attend multiple other Geek Week events such as Star Wars Cosmic Bowling, Geocaching and the Explore MKE Trip just to name a few, all week long during March 5-9, 2018.

“Priya’s Shatki” is what Goldman says is “storytelling for activism.” The graphic novel is based on a teenage girl superhero who fights for gender equality. The main character, Priya, was sexually assaulted and then disowned from her family. After she was kicked out of the house she was wandering and realized she was being followed by a tiger. She went up into a tree and cried to the goddess Parvati, who had been assaulted before as well. The Parvati heard Priya’s cries and then reincarnated into her mind and body. Priya’s new strength allowed her to conquer the tiger and together they fight violence against women around India.

Goldman designed the graphic novel to create a symbol as solidarity against gender-based violence. But you might ask, why comics? Why would Goldman choose to use comics as the medium for bringing awareness to social injustices? In order to reach young boys and girls.

“It’s sneaky,” Goldman said. “You can hand it to a kid, and they’ll think they’re opening an adventure.”

Goldman had the hopes that if a young boy reads his comic book, he will see the hurt Priya experienced and not want to make anyone else feel that same way. When you teach kids while they’re young and on a level they can understand, it’s more likely they will grow up with a deeper understanding of those social issues.

“When you make people feel things,” Goldman said, “it changes them.”

With such a positive response from the first chapter of “Priya’s Shatki,” Goldman created the second one in 2016 called “Priya’s Mirror.” “Priya’s Mirror” brings awareness to acid attacks in India and helps empower the survivors. In the story, Priya holds her mirror up to the victims to show them who they were before the attack so they remember to keep chasing their dreams. The attack didn’t change who they are.

Joejoe Scott is a UW-Milwaukee student who almost missed the event due to class. However, his class was cancelled, making it meant to be for him to come. Scott always believed comic books and video games make an impact a lot more than people give them credit for.

“Fictional material is a positive force for change and inspiration,” Scott said. “These [Priya’s] stories reaffirm and give a great example for that by accurately depicting the struggle.”

With the help of technology, Goldman was able to unlock a digital world using augmented reality (AR) murals and the free Blippar app on smartphones. Audiences can scan the mural through the app to see special animations and cool pop-outs. While using the augmented reality app with the comic book too, it’s also possible to hear, in their own voices, the true stories from survivors of gender-based violence in India.

“Priya’s Shatki” has been downloaded over 600,000 times and featured in over 400 News/TV stories worldwide. “Priya’s Mirror” has been downloaded over 500,000 times and is still receiving attention weekly from international press.

Goldman also does community outreach at schools around India. He asks the students how they are doing and teaches them how to tell stories about what they’re feeling. This teaches the kids how to use social comics for social good. There is an entire curriculum with lesson plans for teachers to download and show the students with AR features.

“I want to not just make cool work, but do good work,” Goldman said. “I want to do things that matter. You know the saying, make the campsite cleaner than when we got here.”

Goldman has a few other projects that will become a reality very soon. Another chapter will be added to the Priya storyline this year called “Priya and the Lost Girls”, which will deal with human trafficking. Goldman said he isn’t trying to scare people with his stories, women specifically, but he understands that the world is not a safe place. He doesn’t want women and young girls to live in fear, however just become more aware of these situations because they ARE happening.

In 2019, Goldman plans to release an augmented reality card game, named after his grandparents Saul and Frieda, who survived the Holocaust. The game is a “choose your own adventure” story mixed with AR put into a single narrative contained in a deck of cards, to show how his grandparents met and had a family.

Goldman eventually wants to create a North American themed story that is similar to Priya, he’s just not sure yet which medium would work best for it. Since he said Americans aren’t big readers, as of right now he’s leaning towards a phone game…possibly.

An issue in particular he would like to look into for the North American story would be about the vast number of African American girls going missing in Washington D.C. He feels like there isn’t enough media covering this even though it’s happening so rapidly.

At the end of Goldman’s presentation there was an interactive session for the audience. The audience was able to create their own story and see it come to life with augmented reality. While everyone was drawing their sketches that would end up coming to life, a few attendees discussed what they thought of the entire presentation.

The audience was very small. Only Scott and another UW-Milwaukee Journalist, Paul Burbach, was in attendance for the majority of the discussion with Goldman. Burbach said it was a lot more interesting to him than he thought it would be. Burbach expected Goldman to focus on trying to get other people to make change rather than Goldman talking about how he does it, which was pretty cool to him.

“The way he presented what he does gave it more depth and made it all more meaningful and progressive,” Burbach said.

Goldman is passionate about what he does and the messages he’s able to spread through his stories. Even though there wasn’t much of an audience—at all—nonetheless, he still gave the same energy as if there were hundreds of people in the room.