Interview: Neil Kleid Talks Outland Entertainment’s ‘Kings And Canvas’ Collection Now On Kickstarter

Welcome to the table,

Today I’m bringing you an exclusive interview with Neil Kleid, creator of Kings and Canvas, a fantasy boxing comic that combines the high-energy hits of the ring with some strange mythical creatures, a ton of heartfelt storytelling, and some truly extraordinary fantasy art

Before we jump into the interview, I want you to know that this book is a ton of fun. There is this low-fi fantasy vibe that plays through the majority of the story that sets the whole tone of the book apart from anything else I’ve ever read. I could tell you it feels like X or Y but it honestly feels unique and in a landscape where everyone has “the next Lord of the Rings” or an “it’s like Game of Thrones but different” story, a fan of sword and sorcery like myself can get lost in this sorta story.

Kings and Canvas is currently on Kickstarter at the link. Go check it out and then head back over here to check out more from its creator, Neil Kleid.

 

 

Anton Kromoff: Neil, thank you for sitting down with me. Before we dive in too deep can you tell our readers a little about yourself?

Neil Kleid: Hey, thanks for having me, Anton!

I mean, what’s to say? I’m an Orthodox Jew in New Jersey by way of Detroit, where I grew up, and have been writing projects in and around comics for over 20 years now. I got my start doing minicomics and anthologies, worked my way up to creator owned books and graphic novels, and was lucky enough to play with some other folks’ toys along the way.

At this point I’ve written for nearly every publisher in comics and have been able to pen a few licensed prose novels, as well, including an adaptation of Spider: Kraven’s Last Hunt for Marvel, an original Powers novel (with Brian Michael Bendis) for MacMillan Books, and two fun Quentin Quire/Kid Omega stories for Aconyte Books / Marvel including the short story “Kid Omega Faces the Music” for their School Of X anthology (that was nominated for a Scribe Award in 2022 by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers) and The Phoenix Chase, a full-fledged original X-Men novel which launched May of 2023 starring Quentin, Alex Summers, and the Starjammers.

Yeah, I’ve written everything, including comics based on music (stories in two Tori Amos anthologies, both of which have been Eisner-nominated; a Judas Priest graphic novel, based on their album Screaming for Vengeance) and of course, concepts of my own such as Brownsville, a graphic novel with Jake Allen about Jewish gangsters; Savor, a YA food adventure graphic novel with John Broglia and Frank Reynoso; The Panic, a thriller with Andrea Mutti about a New York City subway train crash gone horribly wrong…

…and Kings of Canvas, a fun fantasy/adventure comic with Jake Allen and Frank Reynoso about an exiled boxing champion who punches his way out of prison and travels across a changed America to regain the family and title he’d lost. I’ve currently partnered with Outland Entertainment to crowdfund a collection of that comic which, until now, had previously only been published as digital issues.

Anton: Wow! I knew you had worked on a lot of stuff but that is a mountain of work, Neil. We may have to circle back to some of those other titles down the road but for now,  how did the concept of “Kings and Canvas” come about? Blending the worlds of boxing and fantasy is not something I have seen before.

Neil: Well, originally the comic was not a fantasy tale…it was going to be a crime drama set in New York. Years ago, someone had used the term “Frank Miller dinosaur” in casual conversation somewhere online and I got this visual of an aging convict—a bruiser down on his luck, past his prime, hands wrapped in bandages who returned to a life that had passed him by in an effort to regain the life he’d lost…and find a new place and purpose within it.

A lot of folks I knew at the time were out of work…and I was going through a bit of an employment crisis myself, wondering if I would be able to cut it in a job market that might have passed me by. That was the original theme—could an old-school 1970s-era gangster cut it in today’s criminal landscape, where most of the real crime happens in cyberspace and the Feds are outfitted with state-of-the-art listening devices and detection gear?

Somewhere along the way, though…maybe because I had just started boxing at my local gym…my lead character—“Mammoth”—became not only an aging gangster, but a boxer…a bruiser…and because I wanted to build a world, I dug the idea of comparing boxing matches to the jousting littered throughout Game of Thrones, which was white-hot at the time. It felt very much like a natural fit — rules and principles, a certain gravitas and glamour that both endeavors share. Once I mashed the two together, it felt like coming home.

Anton: It really works as a noir low-fi fantasy story for sure. It’s funny you mention Game of Thrones as I was just telling someone that it felt so far removed from everything else out there so you succeeded in putting your unique fingerprint on it.

Now, as the Games Director at Outland Entertainment, I’ve worked with Jake Allen on a few projects including my upcoming TTRPG The Outer Seas. How did you two come together to work on this project?

Neil: Jake and I did a book—Brownsville, about Jewish gangsters in the 1930s—for NBM Publishing back at the start of our careers. We had a lot of fun making that book, but we got burned by some of our early experiences in comics (including the making and marketing of that book) and so never really did a follow up. I went off to write other books, and he went off to do his thing.

Originally, I dreamed up Kings and Canvas with two other artists, neither of whom worked out…and I had again felt burned and wanted to find a co-author on who was a bit more dependable. I reached out to Jake, and he was into it. From there, I managed to connect with the wonderful folks at Monkeybrain Comics, who were producing fantastic digital comics via Comixology, and the rest was history!

Anton: The dragon in “Kings and Canvas” feels truly unique not only in look but in lore. Can you tell us a little bit about them and what readers can expect? 

Neil: Well, there’s really just one dragon in the book’s narrative—the eponymous unnamed dragon featured in our one-shot issue, “The Dragon’s Gloves.” But yeah…we wanted to present a dragon that felt like it stood apart from the usual reptilian types of dragons you usually see in fantasy stories, or shows and movies like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. So the first thing we decided was: let’s remove the wings, and then Jake chose a more insectoid, crustacean design that really let our dragon be its own thing.

In terms of lore, one of the best things about this book is that it’s steeped not only in rich characters but a deep history. I crafted a large world bible stretching back about thirty years, and one of the main things we’ve established is by the time of Mammoth’s story, all the dragons are essentially gone—as they are in Thrones. We didn’t do this out of homage or imitation, but because it made sense for our world…which, readers will find, takes place in a country that used to be, well, America.

What we wanted to do was convey that so much time has passed between our America and Mammoth’s, that dragons—which don’t exist now, and are simply not a thing—came into our future world, were common as house cats…and then passed from its face like the dodo.

To us, that really helped show that America as you and I know it is basically a myth by the time we arrive in Mammoth’s country. There are no cars or sodas or video games or phones—whether by holocaust or war or who knows…America returned to feudalism and abandoned even such things as guns (and swords, to some extent). So when Mammoth tells the story of the dragon and its magical gloves—which, if we get to do more of the story, become incredibly important—he’s talking about the last of its kind, a creature that came into our world after we—you and I, our society—passed into myth and legend…and then became myth itself.

Anton: There is something so charmingly beautiful about using time in that way to frame the world the story is set in. Speaking of our “real world” since you brought up “our world”, Boxing is a sport deeply rooted in our real-world dynamics. How did you manage to maintain the authenticity of boxing while incorporating the fantastical elements?

Neil: Well, to be a boxer means having discipline and adhering to a set of strict rules of competition. That felt like a stone’s throw from jousting to me, and I wanted to create a world in which a specific style of competition had replaced not only all others, but conflict itself. In Kings and Canvas, most civilized debates, judgments and successions are solved not by war but inside the ring, judged by a mysterious group of monks known as The Shrouded Monks—like priests of the boxing ring, if you will.

For the laws that governed those competitions, I spent a lot of time reading up on the Queensberry rules, the code by which boxing competitions have been governed since the 1800s. Many of the towns, rivers and places in Kings and Canvas have been named after famous boxers, styles of fighting, punches and adornments seen throughout the sport.

But essentially, in this story, boxing is magic. There’s a discipline to it—sewing a canvas, making your own gloves, the training and balance—and a wonder that translates quite well to a fantasy setting, especially when you compare it to jousting. Once I got started, it really all just fell into place.

Anton: The world-building in “Kings and Canvas” seems expansive and intricate. Can you provide some insights into what you pulled from to create a world that feels so lived in?

Neil: After we created Mammoth, we needed a reason for him to exist. So I began dreaming of the place that he was —a hole, a cell (physical or metaphysical) from which he needed to be released, and started pushing outward. The room outside his cell. Then the town, then the nation. I knew I wanted it to be in some version of America—having been influenced at the time of the bible’s creation by the landscape of Marvel’s Old Man Logan —and so I grabbed a map and started naming towns and charting the path Mammoth might take once he escaped that dreary cell…and more importantly, the reason for why he would take that path.

And were there other paths, paths with which his might cross? And if so, why? Did it have anything to do with the vast history I was spinning for my beloved, broken lead character? And what did the world look like ten years ago? Twenty? Thirty? What would it look like in fifteen?

The world bible I mentioned earlier, it has become a tool I’ve adopted on other projects since, because it serves as a map to not only place and location but also time and space. It allows me to flesh out social norms, currency, etiquette for a particular town or Watchtown on the edge of the Western Kingdoms, for example. The bible charts ties between every settlement in the Training Grounds, and connects the dots from one point of Mammoth’s journey to the next…stretching back to the cell from which he’d escaped at the beginning, even farther than that—ten years, twenty, thirty…the steps and dots that led him to the cell in the first place.

A proper map is key for me to understand where characters stand, where they’ve been, where they might be going. I’d get lost without it, especially on a journey of such scale. And my partners—Jake and Frank— help ground me to where I’m standing with amazing visual landmarks, intimate and culturally specific color tones and architecture (the river town of Southporte in issue #2, for example, inspired by New Orleans, is much different than Westgate mere pages later, inspired by both St. Louis and dozens of inland towns we’ve seen in fantasy literature over their years).

Merging all of that—the history, the factoids, the map of culture, progress and society along with incredibly diverse and yet completely relatable illustration—helped bring a vivid, unique and exciting world to life not only for our readers, but also for the creative team as we navigated the journey at Mammoth’s side.

Anton: So this Kickstarter collects all of the current Kings & Canvas stories in one Mammoth Edition. Is it foolish to ask if there are plans for any more stories set in this world in the future? 

Neil: So, this edition collects “Mammoth”, the first arc that sets the stage for our hero’s journey across the country, back to the life he’d lost ten years earlier. When we leave him at the end of issue six, we’re beginning the second arc, which follows Mammoth, Nik and their new friends as they travel north and begin to amass the allies they need in order to get where they’re going.

Hopefully, we can find enough of an audience with this edition to demand some more. You know how it is—without support, without enough folks asking to see more and backing us by pledging to the campaign and telling their friends about it, I doubt we’ll get to do more. I have many stories to tell set in this world, and whether we do them as comics, prose novels or role-playing games (man, I’d love to do a video game!) really depends on people coming out to support the Kickstarter.

I will say that I have several chapters of a novel written set decades before the events of Kings and Canvas—imagine it’s the “House of the Dragon” to my “Game of Thrones”—and I hope to finish it over the next year or two. It’s called Dragonhearted, and if we can reach the halfway point of our campaign, I’m going to post several chapters to the Kickstarter page for backers to read. So let’s get to 50%, shall we?

Anton: I’ll drop another link here and then we can wrap up. Before we do though where can our readers follow you to keep up on what you are working on next?

Neil: So, I’m on all the usual social media channels as “neilkleid” — Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, Threads, Tumblr—and I’m pretty vocal about the projects on which I’m working. As I said before, I just released an original X-Men novel (School of X: The Phoenix Chase) via Aconyte Books/Marvel that’s a fun cosmic space adventure across Marvel’s galactic landscape, featuring a ton of awesome cameos. And next year I’ll be releasing a very Jewish, very intimate original suburban crime comic with my pals John Broglia, Ellie Wright, and Sarah Litt. So keep an eye open for that.

Anton: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me!

Neil: Thanks for having me. And support Kings and Canvas!

 

Until next time, this is a really cool fantasy story that I feel like people are going to miss out on so if you are a fan of D&D or low-fi fantasy I urge you to at least check it out. I may be the Game Director of the company putting out the book, but it’s not something that crosses over into my work in any way at this point, I just think it’s really cool.