NJW&C 12: The Bat Mitzvah Edition (featuring Todt Hill)
Hey, Kids! It’s Nice Jewish Words & Comics!, the latest installment from Neil Kleid's bi-monthly newsletter with updates and info about his latest projects!
If it’s two weeks later, it must be time for a brand-spankin’ new installment of Neil Kleid’s newsletter about Jews, comics, teevee, movies and more!
Here’s the thing, tho: the last two weeks have been absolutely Bonkers Von Crazysauce here at the Ol’ Kleid Comics Salt Mines. First, I had to manage a round of end-of-winter family illness and then your humble host had himself smitten with a case of the Man Sniffles, as m’wife calls it, and I really couldn’t shake it—because of that, I got absolutely no writing done, which hurt even more than the crippling headaches and hacking cough. But once all of that cleared up, Our Awesome Daughter—one half of the sassy inspiration behind Savor, the food-fighting kicks girl adventure graphic novel I co-authored with John Broglia (whose daughter inspired the other half) and Frank Reynoso for Dark Horse—had her bat mitzvah this weekend! Mazel tov to us!
(A bat mitzvah, for those who aren’t familiar with the works of Adam Sandler, is an event or party which signified a girl has turned twelve years old and now an adult in the eyes of Jewish law—just like this newsletter, which has now reached it’s own twelfth installment. Mazel tov to us all!)
The prep for the event occupied most of last week, and now the family’s kinda recovering from it…which meant I got absolutely nothing done because I was falling on my face all weekend.
Additionally, two weeks from now is Passover, the Jewish holiday of unleavened bread, The Story of How The Jews Escaped Slavery (first in a series), bitter herbs, four cups of wine and the Prophet Elijah. Because of that, I’m going to need to skip a week for the next installment of this newsletter…so you can expect the next one right around May 4th (which, yeah, you know what it’s gonna be about, my fellow nerf-herders).
Meanwhile, what does all of the above mean for this, the Bat Mitzvah installment of Nice Jewish Words & Comics? Well, two things, in fact. First? The Business!
THE BUSINESS
We’re a month past the release of the Nice Jewish Boys finale and still waiting on pins and needles about news of a print version. Comixology tells us they’ve got a few good options in the hopper, so as soon as I know—you’ll know. For now, give it a third read, whydoncha? And if you haven't read it once, no don't worry...we'll only guilt you about it just a little bit.
Also, don’t forget to vote for us in this year’s Ringo Awards at this here ballotty link. You have until May 23rd to vote, and you don’t even need to be in the comics type industry.
Finally, we got a fantastic review for Nice Jewish Boys #1 here at Drop The Spotlight! Thanks, John, for reading the issue and we hope you enjoyed the rest. Here’s a little peek:
“A completely unexpected and pleasant surprise, the first issue alone has everything that a great crime story should start off with, which will keep you compelled to continue to the story’s very end…”
Check out the full review here!
As you all well now from last time, the Multiverse of Mystery Sherlock Holmes anthology was funded and my short story, “Silence of The Empty House” is due next month. I’ve started playing with an outline…and as it’s supposed to be a Holmes/Watson rom-com of sorts, I had to stop myself from formatting the thing like a teleplay…which would have been fun, in a Mad About You kinda way, I suppose. In the end, I committed to prose and prose it shall be. It’s only five thousand words, so I’m hoping to get a first draft on its feet real soon so’s I can polish, hammer and tweak before shipping to my amazing editor. So that’s on my radar for this week…as are the edits to my Project Unwanted pitch, based on even more fantastic guidance and brilliant recommendations from my wonderful Second Eye, with whom I jumped on Zoom late last week. Tomorrow I’ll start reworking the overview and synopsis for this vampire comic, and aim to have a new draft by the following week to send to an artist / co-author I have in mind. So, I’m excited to sink my fangs back in (puns! We love the puns.)
Before we end The Business, a quick look again at the Neil Kleid 2024 Writing PlanTM:
Project Baker: This is “Silence of The Empty House” for Multiverse of Mystery
Project Vigilant: The first of two prose novels—this is a family book, an intimate look at broken connections and how a daughter is affected when a husband and father struggles between his responsibilities to his family, duty and friends. I’m 22-thousand words in and had to scale back while finishing Nice Jewish Boys, but I’m ready to crack the knuckles and move ahead, one thousand words at a time.
Project Red (Book One): First in a series of supernatural crime novels set in McCarthy-era Chicago that I’ve been toying with in some form or another for a long, long while. I’m 56-thousand words into this one, and put it on hold to finish Nice Jewish Boys and also, well, I got more excited to write Vigilant. But this week I teased someone about reading this and he’s interested to check it out…so I have to consider which I want to focus on first when I’m done with the Holmes short story.
Project Madness: This is the sports/horror pitch I’ve mentioned that I wanted to distill into 2-3 pages. I’m done and have sent it around. No bites yet, but we’ll see.
Projects Unwanted, Long Ago, and Burn: These are three comics projects I’ve got on the docket. As I said, I’m doing a new pass of the pitch for Unwanted, and Long Ago is going to have to wait until I’m finished with the novels above. That one is pretty fun, too—it’s half sci-fi and half gangster drama, but on an epic scale. Folks who get to read it will definitely see its influences from page one. Burn, meanwhile, is a slice-of life middle-grade graphic novel I’ve been wanting to co-author with the aforementioned Awesome Bar-Mitzvahed Daughter. It’s her story, so I don’t want to say too much…but if I actually get around to it, I may actually draw it, too. (Yes. I draw. You know this.)
The last item on the 2024 Writing PlanTM was to start the second volume of Project Red but the more we step into the Spring and Summer, the less I can see that happening…especially because I have a new pitch I want to do—Project Dog Day, a period piece starring, well, dogs—and I think I’m actually gonna slot that in above Long Ago and Burn once the pitch for Unwanted is done. I’ve done a fair amount of research for this one, and I’m really looking forward to the challenge of getting it on the page…so much so, that I’m considering going right to script with it before I even get it placed—something I rarely do. But we’ll talk about my process for pitching and writing in a future installment. For now, let’s add Project Dog Day to the 2024 Writing PlanTM … and Project Last Resort, a crazy idea that needs a lot more meat to it before I can get around to giving it serious thought, to the 2025 Writing PlanTM .
So, that’s The Business. More on that later. Now, for your Bat Mitzvah present!
THE PRESENT
Because I didn’t really have a topic time around, I decided to devote the rest of this installment to one of my comics…and give you a free taste of a story I’m really proud of that never got off the ground. Let’s talk about Todt Hill, okay?
TODT HILL, the Pirate/Zombie/Mobster webcomic that could…but never really did.
Nearly twenty years ago, I was part of a group of comic book creators / cartoonists who co-founded a webcomics collective called The Chemistry Set. That kind of thing was hot around the LiveJournaling heyday, following in the footsteps of Acti-i-Vate and several other webcomic collectives, long before Webtoons was a thing. My contribution to the Chemistry Set, co-authored with Eisner-nominee Kevin Colden, was an adventure comic titled Todt Hill.
The brief high concept explained that Todt Hill was a tale of ancient treasure, insular societies, immortal greed and the infinite possibilities of youth. “Yesterday, Mike and Gil Tompkins, newly arrived on the isolated island of Todt Hill, found a secret map and alongside a zombie mechanic, a Mafia princess and the smallest pirate in the world. They are out to find a treasure that will heal their community and reunite them with the rest of America”
Ever since the initial Pirate of the Caribbean flick hit me on the back of the skull (that score! The action! Keira Knightley!, it made me yearn to tell a yarn of adventure and high seas of my very own. A weekend visit to my wife’s hometown of Staten Island only confirmed set of place when we tooled through a patchwork community easily set adrift in the waters near the New York/New Jersey mainland if only someone only removed the bridges. When Vito Delsante, writer of The Stray, cornered me in a darkened New York pub one night at an event dedicated to serialized webcomics and laid out a grand plan to tell ongoing collaborative comics, he asked if I had anything brewing. I immediately flashed on my tale of Todt Hill, hidden Peruvian treasure, corporate Pirates, Mafia shakedowns and a child’s quest for adventure and excitement. Of course, a lot of it is inspired by The Goonies.
Kevin and I only got to finish the first two “issues”; soon after, both of us got fairly busy (he with his Eisner-nominated book Fishtown; me with a heavier plate of mainstream comix work and creator-owned graphic novels). I’ve often gone back to stare in awe at Kevin’s pages, colored with an amazing yellow-and-blue duotone that made his line art art pop and the characters sing, hoping that one day we might return to tell more (and even finish) our sprawling tale. Though that may never happen (and if any editors or publishers out there are interested, we’d love to chat about just that!), I did feel like offering the first two issues in this installment for those who have never had the chance to read the comic.
Thanks for giving out little pirate-zombie-mobster-family comic a read; the pages follow after my sign off. Kevin and I hope you enjoy, and avast!
I’ll see you back here after Passover when we return to our usual format and yeah, we’re gonna talk about Star Wars. In the meantime, may your four cups of wine be flowing, your balls be matzahed and your savory brisket never be passed over.
Good early yom tov—here’s the comic!
—Neil
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