067 Eisner Nomination
Deep Cuts is nominated for the 2024 Eisner Awards!
Hey everyone! Happy Memorial Day weekend!
I’m coming to you today from my hotel room in Oklahoma City, mere minutes away from heading over to the convention center for another edition of Galaxy Con. If you’re in the area and/or planning to hit up the show, do stop by and say hello— I’ll be tabling all weekend and we’ve brought a host of books, including the just released trade paperback of our *Eisner Award Nominated* (!!) Deep Cuts!
Which is actually what I wanted to spend today’s newsletter talking about.
For those who don’t know, I’m a big jazz nerd. I grew up playing the trumpet, which both helped me pay for film school and also introduced me to one of my best friends and collaborators of twenty years— Joe Clark.
For the last five years, Joe and I have been working on this book alongside a murderers row of artistic partners— Danilo Beyruth, Helena Masellis, Diego Greco, Ramon Perez, Juni Ba, Toby Cypress, with colors by Igor Monti and interlocking covers by Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi.
In April of 2019, Eric Stephenson and I sat at a restaurant in Portland talking about comics and our love of long form projects, series that take the time and effort to really explore a subject matter and the inner workings of a world. “You should do a book like that about jazz,” he said.
In addition to being one of the best publishers in comics, Eric is also a massive fan of music— jazz, in particular, is one of the things that we’ve connected about many times over the past decade, a shared love of music, history and virtuosos fueling countless conversations.
The second Eric pitched the idea, I sat up, ideas immediately riffing. I could see how amazing and unlike any other comic this could be. But the first thing I actually said (after “yes”) was that I had to write it with Joe Clark.
Some of you may recognize Joe’s name from Radiant Black or Ordinary Gods but Deep Cuts predates both of those— as does our friendship and collaboration.
Joe and I first met in Lockport, after we both made our high school’s top jazz band as underclassmen. There’s an old joke about how many trumpet players it takes to screw a lightbulb? The answer is three— one to do it and two to say how they could do it better. There are always little rivalries amongst musicians but as anyone who has ever spent any time with Joe knows, it’s impossible to feel that way around him. Joe is not only one of the most talented musicians and composers I have ever met, he is also one of the most kind, funny, and insanely well-read people out there. He’s a wealth of creativity and support— it was Joe who first introduced me to Alan Moore’s work and who I rented a little indie film with called Memento.
By the time I moved to California in 2005 and enrolled at Chapman University, music had become more of a hobby—I’d come to terms with the fact that I was as good as I was going to get for the amount of time I was able and willing to put in, instead choosing to pursue my first love of filmmaking. Joe, on the other hand, enrolled at Depaul where he graduated with a masters in jazz composition and continued to refine his playing, becoming a killer player in the city, an in-demand writer and arranger for everyone from Yo-Yo Ma to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a fantastic teacher at Northwestern and DePaul.
Joe also scored my senior thesis film, The League, which kicked off my comic book writing career and set the stage for The Massive-Verse with the eventual Image series it inspired, C.O.W.L. (For which, Joe also composed an in-universe bebop album that we’re going to release on vinyl next year.)
Joe had never written a comic book when Eric and I called him but in classic Joe fashion, he could not wait to leap into the unknown.
This book has been a true passion project and one of the most ambitious labors of love that I’ve ever been a part of. The series— which, again, just came out in trade paperback this week— is a 288 page opus, one vast story spanning 60 years that commits to awakening humanity, challenging the labels of success and failure and welcoming the unknown. It’s a book that explores and celebrates creativity, music and art. It’s a book that I am so immensely proud of and feel incredibly grateful that we were able to make together.
I like to say that the best part of making comics is the collaboration but my favorite part is collaborating with friends. It’s rare that as you head into your 40s you still have the opportunity to create art with people you knew in your teens and I am so immensely grateful that I get to do that.
A huge, huge thank you to everyone who joined us on this journey— Danilo Beyruth, Helena Masellis, Diego Greco, Ramon K. Perez, Juni Ba, Toby Cypress, Igor Monti, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, Michael Busuttil, Chris Brunner, Rico Renzi and of course, Eric Stephenson and everyone at Image.
And to Joe— thank you so much for everything you’ve done on all of our projects, for trusting me and always being willing to take the leap into the unknown. I’m so proud to call you my friend. Congrats, buddy. We did it. And now everyone gets to eat the fucking pizza.
If you’re a comics pro and any of this sounds up your alley, please feel free to reach out— I’d be happy to send you a PDF. And if you dig it, we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d consider voting for us for the Eisners— we’re nominated for Best Anthology!
The deadline to register to vote in the Eisners is May 30 and the deadline to cast your vote is June 6!
Thank you so much!
(Also, a very special thank you to Herbie Hancock and the late, great Wayne Shorter. If you haven't read their open letter to the next generation of artists, I highly recommend it. You can find it right here):
Okay, that’s actually going to do it for me today! Next week, some SDCC news! Plus, I’m doing a CGC signature series signing! Which, you can find out more about right here:
Stay Radiant!
Kyle
Oklahoma City
This was quite the insightful read. I never knew that this much work went into Deep Cuts, but it has me really hoping that it will win the Eisner.
Heard such great things about the book so I'm very excited for the trade, congrats on the nomination, good luck, hope you win!