I have an affinity for time travel stories. As a fan of science fiction, how could I not? Whether it be Star Trek, Quantum Leap, or my guilty pleasure of Starz Outlander. Coming out on November 11th, Comixology Originals presents writer Neil Kleid and artist Alex Cormack’s time travel adventure, “Medieval,” which mixes baseball with sixth-century Britain. In time for the release of the first issue, we are excited to present an exclusive essay by the writer that explores his love of baseball, the books and films that inspired him, and how this passion led to “Medieval.”
Medieval: Nine Innings of Storytelling Inspiration By Neil Kleid
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game — it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.” – James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, Field of Dreams (1989)
I’ve always wanted to write a comic book about baseball. I’ve been a fan ever since I was a boy, trading cards with my friends and thrilling from the grandstand—whenever school or day camp took us downtown—as the Detroit Tigers played in the long-torn-down Tigers Stadium at the intersection of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues. I’m a nostalgic man, and baseball is saturated with nostalgia: its history and players, the legendary moments and long-remembered games. I can’t say that I particularly enjoy sitting around at home for nine innings (or more), watching the Tigers play these days…but if given the chance, I’ll happily spend an afternoon in the sun, beneath the bleachers or slumming in the seats, munching on peanuts or popcorn (or a sausage-pepper-and-onions at Citi Field), washing it down with a cold drink, surrounded by other fans…whether or not they hail from my own baseball tribe.
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.
No, this new comic book of mine (co-authored with the great and talented Alex Cormack, with whom I’ve long wanted to collaborate) is about another baseball fan—Bronx resident Dany Landau, an apprentice contractor and loyal boyfriend—and his experiences which, if you give them a read, offer a baseball adventure very different than my own. For one, Danny’s from New York, and we all know what New York baseball fans are like. Secondly, he had the unfortunate luck to get in my way (and in the way of a wild foul ball) after I had an idea reading Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the classic satirical time-travel novel about industry and democratic values in the face of a feudalistic monarchy.
Look, I never set out to write an Arthurian baseball love story, especially one clearly for mature audiences (folks, there are a lot of f-bombs) about an ale-swilling, Boston-hating, full-bearded, out-of-time New Yorker who just wants to figure out how to invent electricity so he can charge his phone and see photos of the girl from whom he was accidentally parted a year earlier. I didn’t mean to set Danny at odds with legends like King Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain and that wily court magician Merlin—a spitballer and bat-corker, if ever there was. But then, like Danny, perhaps I had the unfortunate luck to get in my own way, too. And here we are, five issues in the can, written and illustrated, brilliantly edited for your enjoyment and brought to you by the fine folks at Comixology Originals.
Whatever the case, Alex and I sent Danny back in time to Camelot, away from his girl and the Bronx, with nothing but a bellyful of anger and steam, a gut full of ale and resentment, and a head filled with useless knowledge and a love for baseball.
But there are other baseball stories out in the world, of course—books and movies, comics and shows—that inspired and influenced Danny’s whirlwind clash of cultures, and I thought it might be fun to tell you briefly about nine of them. Hopefully, you’ll have read or seen a few and as a storyteller, I can offer you Terence Mann’s promise—memories so thick, you’ll have to brush them away from your face. And if not, like me…and like Danny…perhaps you’ll be inspired to give something new a try.
“Shoeless Joe” by W.P. Kinsella
Okay, yes. I did mention Field of Dreams above, the 1989 movie from which this book was adapted. And yeah, it’s one of my favorite movies and endlessly quotable (“if you build it, he will come”; “Is this heaven?” “It’s Iowa”) But the original Kinsella story is broader and more detailed, offering a father-son story, sure, but also one about brothers.
Expanded from a short story, the book is steeped in baseball lore and about magic and dreams, and the love of the game…but it’s mostly about complicated emotional bonds, a theme I wanted to stand out when writing Medieval. Bonus! Rather than pairing up Kinsella’s protagonist with the fictional Terence Mann, as was done in the film, the book partners him with reclusive author J.D. Salinger, the writer of Catcher In The Rye, one of my all-time favorite books.
“Summerland” by Michael Chabon
While we’re discussing baseball and magic, let’s have a look at an all ages adventure by the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning comic book novel, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon’s Summerland, a fantasy novel set both in the real world and the Summerlands, a place of tall tales, powerful superstitions, and yes—baseball. Ethan Feld, the worst player on Clam Island, is recruited to work with friends both human and fantastical in order to save his father—and the world—from an ancient trickster and the forces of evil. Tons of fun, and a really unique way to apply baseball traditions to a unique fantasy adventure story that I found far superior to other magical coming-of-age stories.
“A League of Their Own,” 1992 and 2022
“There’s no crying in baseball!” Yes, yes, Tom Hanks. We know it. We love it. It’s probably embroidered on a pillow somewhere in your parents’ house. League, a 1992 baseball comedy directed by Penny Marshall starring Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna and a bunch of not-Madonnas (expect for Jon Lovitz, who is not-Tom Hanks) tells the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. There’s a lot of baseball, a bunch of laughing, only a little crying, and plenty of emotional growth.
To be quite blunt, I’ve only recently seen this movie and watched it after the wonderfully cast and produced Amazon Prime television series that came out in 2022, starring Chante Adams and D’arcy Carden. I felt the show was a bit more complex and contained more depth over the course of its one-season run (canceled in 2023!) than the breezier, lighter film, and wish we had received a second season. Watch them both, if you can, but I highly recommend the eight episodes.
“Moneyball,” 2011
Look, I’ll get this out of the way: Moneyball—adapted by Steven Zaillian and the great Aaron Sorkin from the 2003 book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, is only tangentially about the sport of baseball, and more about the business of baseball. Like the movie Air, which is more about Michael Jordan’s shoes than it is Jordan himself, moviegoers spent more time in offices and boardrooms than they do on the field when watching Moneyball, the Oscar-nominated story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who upended the 2002 A’s by managing his underfunded team by using sabermetrics to scout and analyze players, a move that didn’t win him any fans.
I’ll also say this: I can’t say that Moneyball inspired any part of Medieval necessarily, but I also believe it’s one of the better baseball movies out in the world because it shines a light on the part of the game few people understand or pay attention to…and it infuses back-office drama with emotional catharsis via what I feel are two exceptional performances by Brad Pitt, who played Beane, and Jonah Hill who plays Peter Brand.
“The Golem’s Mighty Swing” by James Sturm
I’m a big believer that the world needs more comic books and graphic novels about sports. Lately—like, the last five years or so—there have been quite a few sport-centric comics in the market, many of them middle-grade graphic novels, several biographic, and a few of them quite fantastical and pushing the envelope. But you don’t see many period comics and graphic novels about sports. Mighty Swing, which came out in 2001 (about the time I was beginning my career as an indie cartoonist) was an outlier to me not only because it’s set during the Depression but because it’s very, very Jewish.
The book tells the story of the Stars of David, a nomadic team of Jewish barnstormers who travels from town to town, through the rural backwoods of America, playing baseball. It’s about racism and antisemitism, of course, but it’s also very much an emotionally charged baseball story that’s set in the past—a perfect role model for Medieval, our much more satirical, tongue-in-cheek story set in sixth-century England.
“The Sandlot,” 1993
Pure baseball isn’t played in a stadium or in a major league park—it’s being played by kids in parks, in streets, and on the sandlots of America, and has been for generations. This feel good, coming-of-age movie (one of my kids’ favorites, by the way) stars a cast of unknowns (but also features a James Earl Jones cameo!) and is about a group of pals playing sandlot baseball in the summer of 1962. If you haven’t seen it, I highly encourage a watch (especially if you have kids.) The joy and excitement seen on Danny’s makeshift baseball field near the end of Medieval’s first issue—and on the face of Pee-Wee, a character named after Brooklyn Dodger shortstop Pee-Wee Reese—was a testament to movies like The Sandlot…and to the kids, like me, who played baseball on them before our lives were overrun by video games, rock and roll and girls.
“The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” by Stephen King
So, I just read this one, even though—like the Detroit Tigers—I’m a Stephen King fan from way, way back. A creepy little psychological horror story set during a hiking trip, about a girl names Trisha who gets separated from her family in the woods. Not exactly a baseball story per se, the novel props it up for the story structure—nine chapters, each an inning—and uses the sport as a way for Trisha to find hope, including by bonding her to Tom Gordon, a Boston relief pitcher who’s also her hero, who becomes an important part of helping her to survive.
Sure, in Medieval Danny uses baseball as a way to survive his year in the English countryside before arriving at Camelot, but more importantly…Stephen King is a huge fan of Boston’s baseball team, as is Alex Cormack, Medieval’s co-author. When I approached Alex and told him the story’s plot—a New York protagonist with a penchant for slandering Boston and its baseball team—well, let’s just say it took a bit of convincing to get Alex on board. For what it’s worth, Boston fans, though Alex fought me—and Danny—every step of the way…he never backed down from rooting for your team, and made sure that despite his tribe, every single page and panel of Medieval did both cities proud.
“Major League,”1989
If you can believe it, Major League was my first baseball movie, even before Field of Dreams. The year this raunchy sports comedy came out, Neil was fourteen years old and boarding at a high school in Milwaukee. I don’t believe I saw it in the theaters, so I must have caught it on a pilfered VHS tape (ask your parents, kids) or when it finally arrived on cable. This League, unlike that of the one starring Davis and Hanks, is not one of anyone’s own—it highlights a Cleveland Indians squad that may have been struggling more than the actual Indians were in the late eighties (73-89 in 1989) and a band of misfit players assembled by a calculating girl boss to sink the team long before Hannah Waddingham made it fashionable on Ted Lasso.
Funny, horny, quotable (“You trying to say Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?”) and packed with recognizable stars—including Wesley Snipes, Charlie Sheen, and a much younger Dennis Haysbert as the scene-stealing Pedro Cerrano—Major League is also filled with baseball celebrities like Los Angeles Dodger Steve Yeager, Cy Young Award winner Pete Vuckovich, and of course the late, great Bob Uecker who dominates the film with one-liners like “Juuuuust a bit outside” and “The post-game show is brought to you by… I can’t find it, the hell with it.” Of course, being fourteen, what stood out to Neil on his first watch was all the sex, drinking, and language. And mature readers can find at least two of those things (for now) in the exceedingly not-all-ages comic book, Medieval.
“42,” 2013
For my money, 42 is pound for pound the best baseball movie ever made. A biopic about the great Jackie Robinson, the base-stealing legend and first African-American athlete to play major league baseball, 42 is really about so much more. Sure, it’s about racism and it’s easy to focus on all of that. But it’s also about family, equality, and the heroism of those who stood up for both. It’s about Chadwick Boseman, who stars as Robinson, and a nuanced and brilliant performance the likes of which we will never see again. 42 is a movie about change, hope, and growth.
And yeah, it’s about baseball, too. Filled with names of legends whose names graced jerseys and trading cards, 42 is not only a movie that will stir your heart and give you courage, but it’s also a movie that will make you love baseball and inspire you to fight for the things in which you truly believe. While it will never hold a candle to 42, that’s the kind of story Alex and I are telling with Medieval, even if you’re just focusing on all the f-bombs.
And that’s the ballgame, folks. There are many, many more books and films and shows and comic out there about baseball, and about hope and perseverance; about growth and change, and what it truly means to hit a home run. I encourage you to seek them out and give them a read or watch when not sunning yourself on the third baseline, watching a player stretch a double into a triple, digging through your second bag of peanuts or a box of Cracker Jack, not really caring if you ever get back.
And both Alex and I, and the folks at Comixology, encourage you to read Medieval, the story of a baseball fan stuck in Camelot without his phone, without his girl, and without a way back, Cracker Jacks or peanuts be damned. Because, sure it may be a violent comic book laden with f-bombs…but it’s also a comic book with heart, hope, and emotional growth. It’s got jousts and swords, armor and bats, but it’s also a story about a man out of time, pining trying to get back to the girl —and the city and life—that he left behind. And yes, it’s about baseball.
And as the postseason ends and 2025 baseball comes to a close, Medieval is a chance for one more trip around the bases…and a lasting reminder that some rivalries—whether in sports or romance—are simply a chance for two teams or two people to hope, dream and fight for what they believe is right…and chance for them to go absolutely, positively #$%ing medieval.
Comixology Original’s “Medieval,” Issue #1 by Neil Kleid and Alex Cormack, comes to digital on November 11th.
Baseball fan Danny Landau and his girlfriend Gina Rabinowitz attend a baseball game to watch their favorite Bronx team take on their most notorious rivals. After being hit by a line drive, Danny wakes up in sixth-century England, out of time with no skills other than a knack for construction, a love for baseball, and a penchant for violence. After spending the next year drinking and fighting, seeking a way back home to his girl and New York, Danny’s unique form of loud-mouthed chivalry – and “The Babe,” his custom-designed iron baseball bat – gains the attention of Camelot, and Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, bringing him helm-to-boot with King Arthur, Lancelot, and Merlin, the notoriously wily magician who may have Danny’s ticket home… but whose true intentions aren’t trustworthy! When cultures clash and their meeting takes a violent turn, Lancelot suggests a Grand Tournament of valor, gallantry, and might as Arthur Pendragon of Camelot and Danny Landau from the Bronx – an ale-swilling, bat-wielding brawler – engage in a battle of the ages.
Senior Writer at GeekVibesNation – I am a 60 something child of the 70’s who admits to being a Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book junkie who once dove headfirst over a cliff (Ok, it was a small hill) to try to rescue his Fantastic Four comic from a watery grave. I am married to a lovely woman who is as crazy as I am and the proud parent of a 21-year-old young man with autism. My wife and son are my real heroes.
