Diamond Item Number: JUL043096
Cost: $5.95

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Samples illustrations from
NINETY CANDLES:

ninety candles

LIFE. ONE PANEL PER YEAR.

New York, NY - The Xeric Foundation, established by Peter Laird announced Neil Kleid as a recipient of one of seven grants. The Foundation will award Kleid with funds to publish and distribute NINETY CANDLES, a 48 page improvisational "mini graphic novel" that documents the life span of a struggling cartoonist ­ each panel acting as a snapshot of a consecutive year.

NINETY CANDLES is a completely improvisational comic book - no script, no net. Each day is created THAT day. The original plan was to do a page per day and set three months as the cut off date for the story. Whatever I ended up with on Day Ninety would be the finale. Time and method become major factors in the narrative itself.

Each panel of NINETY CANDLES represents a consecutive year in the life of its protagonist, Kevin Hall. The "spaces" between panels morph into "spaces" between years and as such we get
to see the shape and breadth of our intrepid cartoonist's life, the decisions that shape that existence, and his eventual final days. Each page presents two panels or two years, and with a total of ninety illustrations the book comes to a 48 page count (including title, introduction and assorted odds and ends).

NINETY CANDLES began as an exercise in style, method and patience, but has resulted in far more. It has grown to present not only the unfolding of a life through sequential illustration, but also the reiteration of the importance of time and pacing in the medium of comic books.