NJW&C 28: Medieval #1 is out TODAY!
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!
Hello, newsletter friends! Sending this one out early in the morning versus the afternoon so you can read it on your commute or with your morning cup o’ joe/tea/beverage of choice…
I’ve know I’ve been quiet—especially for me—even with so much going on in the world now, and it’s been due to a mixture of deadlines, holidays, and medical stuff (minor surgery, taking me out of the game for a week or so.)
Anyway, hoping to get these newsletters back on track after Thanksgiving, right on time for The Winter Ride of Mariah CareyTM and the onset of Chrismukkah (sorry, my wife and daughter are doing an O.C. binge right now, and more on that below…) But I did want to get out a quick installment today because…
MEDIEVAL #1 IS AVAILABLE NOW!
If you recall from our last newsletter, Medieval is a five-issue “mature readers” Arthurian /baseball comic book from yours truly, my fantastic co-author Alex Cormack (Drive Like Hell, Sink, The Devil Wears My Face, Road of Bones) and Nice Jewish Boys editor Sarah Litt via our pals at Comixology Originals. The first issue is out now, and available for you to read for $2.99 (FREE if you’re an Amazon Prime member!) Get it HERE.
As stated last month, Medieval is “A New York baseball fan in King Arthur’s Court.” But it’s also the fun, brutal, emotionally-cathartic result of two things: first, after writing The Panic and Nice Jewish Boys, I was looking to write something from my gut versus my head (nothing heavily researched, nothing too dark or personal or introspective.) I wanted something visceral and fun and let me stretch myself creatively into areas I hadn’t gone before. At first, I’d been thinking about writing a superhero or a horror comic…but then I read Mark Twain’s classic novel. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and accidentally transposed the state “Connecticut” with the word “New York” and well…I realized that what I was after was actually a fun, over the top sports comic with a twist.
As a reminder, Medieval is about New York baseball fan Danny Landau, a plumber from the Bronx who wakes up in sixth-century England after being struck by a line drive. Out of time with no skills other than a knack for installing toilets, a love for baseball, and a penchant for violence, the comic is about a regular guy who has lost his girl, his world, his career, the team he loves, and even the internet. When a big part of who you are—something you love or feel passionate about— is taken away (or you are taken from it), then who do you become? What do you have to do in order to become that person? That’s—at its heart—what Medieval is about. Sure, it’s a ridiculously fun and irreverent (and violent) comic book with a ton of f-bombs and a lot of baseball…but it’s also a book about big emotions and what it means to find yourself when you’re lost in time.
Folks have asked me if I spent a lot of time doing research for this one—how much is baseball, and how much is rooted in Arthurian mythology. For those who have never met me personally, let me make this perfectly clear: I am not an Arthurian scholar. I do not have a burning desire to heavily research sixth-century England. Look, I’ve definitely done that for other books and graphic novels, like Brownsville or The Phoenix Chase, and I do enjoy knowing enough about a time, setting or historical period in order to properly give it my own spin…
…but, for Medieval…like I said, I was looking to write something from my gut that didn’t require a whole of historical accuracy or level of faithfulness to characters or place that I’ve demanded of myself in the past. To that end, the one big rule I gave myself when writing Medieval was a Danny-esque “fuck research.” I know just enough about Camelot, Excalibur, and King Arthur, to be dangerous here. I’ve winked to that in passing throughout, draping the narrative with enough of it so that the story feels accurate, but…yeah, I’m sure anyone who knows a lot about Arthurian myths will be horrified. I’m taking a baseball bat to King Arthur, yo—both literally and figuratively. If that sounds like fun, come run with me, Alex and Sarah around the bases and give issue number one a whirl. If that feels like sacrilege to you, well, I promise that sometimes a little sacrilege can be a whole lot of fun.
I don’t want to say or spoil too much here, to be perfectly blunt. There’s one hell of a twist at the end of issue #1, and I hope people dig it (and the rest of the series.) I’ve done a bunch of interviews about Medieval—some are below, and others you can read or watch as the pop up, especially if you follow me on social media. But the best way to learn about Medieval, Danny and what happens to him, honestly…is to buy the book.
Medieval #1 is out now, available digitally from Comixology, and another issue will drop every month leading up to baseball season. Here’s how to get it:
Buy the first issue here NOW (if you’re a Prime member, it’s FREE)
Download the Amazon Kindle app on your mobile device
Read the issue in the Kindle app
Get each issue as they come out from now through April
And if you do love the comic, please tell a friend and have them tell a friend, and so on. Email them, DM team, post about the comic on social media, please. The more buzz and word of mouth we get out about Medieval, the more that Alex, Sarah and I get to do. Danny’s story has some layers, folks, and we’d love to have the sixth-century bards sing his tale all the way to its end. The only way that happens is if the book either sells through the roof or becomes such a monster buzz hit, that fans literally demand Comixology for more. So yes; bang the drum and sound the call. It’s Baseball, Bronx, Britain, baby. What’s not to like, right?
Also, I know folks may be confused because I am writing a comic about New York baseball when I have been a fierce advocate for all Detroit sports. But hey, I used to belong to the Pinstripe Tribe, yeah? See?
I mean, I was FOUR. This was before my Detroit era, 1979. wearing a Yankees cap, already thinking about writing MEDIEVAL nearly forty-five years later. But whaddya gonna do?
Oh, and here is Alex’s cover for issue #2; we’ve been using it a lot in our promo materials, because it’s just so good. Buy this book for the cover art alone!
TALKIN’ MEDIEVAL WITH OTHER PEOPLE!
As promised, folks have already reached out to talk to me and Alex about Medieval. More links, videos and such to come in future newsletters but in meantime, here’s me chatting with Barbra Dillon at Fanbase Press about the book.
Then there’s me and Alex talking with Cody at Keeping it Geekly—check it out!
Here’s an essay I wrote—”Nine Innings of Storytelling Inspiration”—about baseball movies, books and TV shows that inspired Medieval, up now at Geek Vibes Nation.
“When folks immerse themselves in baseball, like Mann says in Field of Dreams, it’s as if they’d ‘dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.’ For those who enjoy the sport, its trappings, superstitions and lore, a day at a baseball game writes its own special kind of story—it may be a day you’ll remember for the rest of your life, one way or another, depending on your experience and which way the home runs fly.
“I’ve always wanted to tell my own baseball story—about my relationship to the sport, my own childhood, my history thrilling to a Tigers victory and suffering the agony of their defeat.
“Medieval isn’t it.”
There’s also a nice Medieval mention inside this interview with Comixology head honcho, Jeff DiBartolomeo!
"...I love that Neil is clearly a Yankees fan...and artist Alex Cormack is...a Red Sox fan – they must have had some clashes working on the book!”
Sorry, Jeff...I'm a Detroit Tigers fan! All the clashes are IN the book.
And finally, at New York Comic-Con I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Jace at the Comic Source at the Comixology booth. Check out the video right here.
Which is a great segue into…
NEW YORK COMIC CON 2025
So yeah. Don’t do a big comic convention and then have invasive surgery. Y’all I was in pain all over the next day. That said:
It was great to see and meet so many of you at the show—and catch up with a ton of friends and peers—at this year’s New York Comic-Con. Alex and I were lucky enough to be invited by the fine folks at Comixology and both of us spent time signing these fantastic posters featuring Alex’s artwork from the cover of Medieval #2. We were also happy and surprised to see that Comixology turned the art for issue #3’s cover into a glorious little enamel pin.
But the best part, honestly, was spending time talking about the comic with all the fans and readers who found us in the back of the convention hall (seems like NYCC finally shoved all the comics publishers to the far corner of the show floor this year, something that seems to have been coming for a while now.) Everyone I got to meet seemed excited and intrigued by Medieval, and it was also cool to meet and hear about upcoming Comixology Original books from the folks I was signing with, including Marc Guggenheim )who literally helped invent the DC Comics Arrowverse!), Omar Morales, Lee Loughridge, the great Scott Snyder, (read Absolute Batman!) and more. I also had a few quick but promising meetings with some publishers, so hopefully (as always) one of those conversations turns itself into a fun new comic, book, or graphic novel that you will get to read. Cross dem fingers for me!
Here are a few fun little snaps from the show, including a little something I had to get for myself (I also bought my 17 year old a 1995 Starting Line Up Detroit Lions Barry Sanders action figure and I thought he’d roll his eyes but he actually loved it and so that means, no matter what, that the convention was a success.) Enjoy!
THE WORK, PRE-THANKSGIVING
So, as I said: aside from promoting Medieval, I have been incredibly busy.
Picked up a fun little logo redesign I’m doing for a friend’s re-issue of a book series he put out a while ago…but I’m mainly looking down the final week of a deadline for my first original horror novella. I’m very excited about this one, and hope we stick the landing on it—the title is still a work in progress, but even our placeholder title was received like gangbusters by the publishing and marketing teams behind it. Hoping we get to announce it soon….but it’s not set to debut until Fall 2026, so we may need to hold on and wait for a while. For now, I have about seven thousand words left in the first draft of ‘Project Wonka’ and I’m grinning as we skate quickly to its end.
Apart from that, I think I know what my next Jewish graphic novel is going to be. it looks like I’ll be returning to my roots, like Brownsville, and doing a heavy research dive into a non-fictional story that appears quite fascinating to me. In the space of the last month, since NYCC, I’ve had calls and meetings with both a high school friend—now a Rabbi—and someone I consider a real-life-hero about the subject of the proposed book, and holy heck did I get a push in the right direction here. This could be a great graphic novel…and I think I have found my way into the story. It isn’t just a piece of sequential journalism, but something that naturally has evolved from an experience I had, to an experience others have had…and offers some visibility to a wonderful Jewish organization doing necessary, important work. Further, based on a conversation I had at NYCC I may have a publisher intrigued enough to make a commitment here…but I’ll probably need to find a co-author, someone to draw it, and I’m still trying to figure out who that might be.
Just as a tease, here's a fascinating article my aforementioned friend wrote after heavily researching the history of Jewish GIs and their dog tags in World War Two. Really interesting stuff, if this is up your alley.
So with the horror novel and this graphic novel pitch, I have plenty on plate to get me rolling into 2026. That said, I always have several iron in the fires, of course—sample script for a new comic with John Broglia code-named Project Main Street, and I still want to finish writing Projects Taylor (a contemporary screenplay) and Red (a supernatural crime novel that’s been pushed off for way too long.) And yeah; maybe one of those other pitches out in the world right now (there’s about three or four) will hit? Or maybe some good-looking editor with taste will hire me to play in their sandbox (#LetNeilWriteAStarWar)? You never quite know.
Hopefully, we’ll be back here in December to recap the year and assess the 2026 Writing PlanTM. That should be somewhat informative, yes?
In the meantime, we’re getting ready for the Best Holiday Ever here at Kleid HQ. I’m always annoyed by all the folks saying “oh Halloween is over now it’s Christmas” as if i haven’t already been researching which turkey to buy and am dreaming about my first hot cider on Thanksgiving morning and the first Lions touchdown of the afternoon. So, if you’re celebrating…may your ciders be warm, your turkey be duckened, your stuffings be crispy, and your football team be winning. If you can be with family and friends (or if your friends are your family), I hope you can be with the folks you love…and if you can’t, I wish you find joy and happiness with whomever you’re with.
A RANDOM BAG OF NONSENSE
We’ll dig back into essays and media reviews after I’ve delivered this book, but a few things that caught my eye this month…or said and thought in passing:
Doing my best to rethink how much social media or doom scrolling is ruling my life these days. I mean, the world’s a divisive place right now and I spend a lot of that time either getting frustrated or angry about the various splinters in my life on both social media and in family or community group chats. So I’m deciding to focus on joy and reducing anxiety where I can, which has mean scaling back on what or who I engage with online and in chats. Sometimes you have to put mental health ahead of all else, right? For instance, it’s frustrating when me, a Jew, posts how someone has made an antisemitic statement online and then some rando who isn’t following me comes along to imply, oh no, that group just said there’s no such thing as “the scourge of antisemitism” and that Jews made it up. So, old anxious Neil would have engaged and stewed on that engagement for days—but Neil now has realized that a wide majority of Internet Randos aren’t folks who should be affecting his actual life, and can be easily ignored, muted or blocked. I know this doesn’t feel like a huge revelation to most of you out there…but for those of you who (like me) have dealt with the all-consuming monkey on your back that is Anxiety, well, to those of us it’s a bit of clarity and breakthrough. So, yeah. Let’s all choose to embrace joy and support one another where and when we can…and spend less time spiraling and letting our lives or days get ruined because of Internet Randos.
I learned that my graphic novel, Brownsville, is out of print at the publisher level and soon The Big Kahn will be, too. But the rights will revert to me completely, so now to figure out what to do with those books. I can definitely get them posted for sale digitally. But yeah. Sad. Should I kickstart them as a single volume—would anyone be interested in buying a single edition of them both? Unsure. Any publisher out there willing to pick up both books and put them back in print? We’ll figure something out.
I want to say: I'm not a big horror guy, but I do really want to see Anaconda, which feels less like a straight horror movie and more like a horror comedy.
Speaking of movies, I did see Springsteen:Deliver Me From Nowhere with my wife and as a big Bruce enthusiast, it was just okay. It was hard for me to see Jeremy Allen White as anything but Jeremy Allen White. He felt like Bruce during some performances, but I couldn't shake that. If you see this, go in with this in mind: it's not truly a biopic about Bruce Springsteen—it's a biopic about his Nebraska album. That helped me a lot. Also, I love Stephen Graham in just about everything he's in (his Capone in Boardwalk Empire is my favorite Capone), and both Marc Maron and Paul Walter Hauser are in this thing too, though they don't get a chance to really shine. See it when it streams.
I gotta say I love what I'm reading about the DC Comics Next Level books. That's the kind of fun in-continuity superhero stuff I'd like to do, if they would let me. I mean, Ragman would be perfect for that line, too. Me and Phil Hester, maybe? A suit of souls, Jewish magic, street-level crime, and lots of guilt. Sign us up, DC Comics.
Ragman! He’s like Batman, but poor! And Jewish! And he’s got souls in his suit! Okay, so like I said, my wife and daughter are bingeing THE O.C. and I just have to say to the whole comic book subplot that this is not how the comic book industry works, THE O.C. I tried telling my family. They told me that they don’t care…but I mean, one bad reading at a single comic store doesn’t mean your comic book launch is a failure, right? (Also who is doing comic book readings and should I do one for Medieval?) Also, you don’t put out out a new indie comic and then immediately have dinner with George Lucas so he can make your comic into a movie and listen to him talk about how sad he is that he didn’t go to his prom because he was busy drawing Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks. That all said, I one day they were watching the O.C. in one room and my ten-year-old was watching Lego Star Wars in another and I had a great idea for THE OR, a teenage soap drama set in the Outer Rim, starring a podracer from the wrong side of Anchorhead and the rich Mos Espa girl that he loves. I mean, hey, #LetNeilWriteaStarWar, yeah?
Okay, that’s enough. Go buy, read and tell your friends about Medieval, yes? Issue #2 is out on December 9th. We’ll see you back here to wrap up the year!
Peace and comics,
Neil
MIGDAL: Neil Kleid's Nice Jewish Words & Comics is free! Tell your friends, enemies and interested dragons. If you enjoyed this email, you can show Neil that his writing is valuable to you by checking out his books here and supporting independent comix: https://bookshop.org/shop/neilkleid