Gilt Frame from Dark Horse Comics is a delightful throwback mystery about an Aunt and her nephew solving mysteries in France. But what makes it truly unique is that it is drawn by Matt Kindt, and written by Kindt and his mother, Margie Kraft Kindt. And in advance of the final issue of the series hitting next week, Comic Book Club is delighted to share a personal essay from the elder Kindt.
In the essay, she talks about working with her son, helping craft (no pun intended) his creative chops, and their Mother’s Day comic convention tradition. Read on for the lovely, poignant essay. And Gilt Frame #3 hits stores on November 6, 2024.
What you do (with your baby) can influence not only him, but everyone he meets
—Rose Kennedy
and not for a day or a month or a year but for time and eternity.
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders,
—James Baldwin
but they have never failed to imitate them.
A week before Matt was born, his dad, brother, and I were sitting around the family room when he decided to shift his in utero position and the movement toppled me over on the sofa—we all burst out laughing and that pretty much set a tone for his growing-up years, a time filled with surprise and great fun.
G G G
Because for years we traveled back and forth to elementary school on weekdays and during the summer enjoyed long car trips, our family kept a basket of books in the car—mostly playful read-alouds that focused on problem-solving which led to lively all-family debates, sometimes based on observation and deductions about what was going on outside the car windows. During winter months we often puzzled over the snowfalls . . . whether or not a driveway was cleared with a snow blower, a snow plow, or a shovel . . . why snow was stuck on the guard rail at only certain spots . . . what caused the weird snow shapes . . . what made the tracks in the snow.
Often we chose a read-aloud of short stories, each tale ending with the question of how something was done . . . how the king knew the true mother of the boy . . . how the crow was able to easily drink from a pitcher with a too-low water level . . . how the man got a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage across the river, two at a time, without the wolf eating the goat or the goat eating the cabbage.
The liveliest family discussions grew out of a thin book of real-life court cases, briefly outlined for young people who to decide how thought the case was decided, before reading the actual judge’s decision and the law that informed the case . . . if a boy threw a lit firecracker into a carnival crowd and many fairgoers tossed it along so it would not blow up near them and it finally exploded when it landed in the booth of a concessionaire, who—if anyone—is responsible for the vendor’s damages?—turns out, the scamp who started the whole thing in motion was the one hauled to court, which led to another round of family debate.
Snow Stumpers, David Webster
Stories to Solve, George Shannon
You Be the Judge, Sidney B. Carroll
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Perhaps the best puzzles were the real, everyday mysteries like the L-shaped hole formed in the leather-soled shoe of Matt’s dad, who did all of the driving back-and-forth to school. The pattern of the hole was in perfect alignment with the car’s brake pedal, a tough deduction for a youngster who was unfamiliar with the repeated day-after-day function of driving and stopping a car. The toe of the opposite shoe was worn thin on the tip—this was from pivoting on that foot as he got out of the car.
There were also staged crime scenes—not because of an attraction to evil-doing, but rather the intent to develop close-observation and deductive skills. As Matt headed toward the television to tune in to Saturday morning cartoons, he might find one of his action figures knocked out cold, evidence of an all-out brawl with Lincoln logs strewn everywhere, and a trail of red-clay blood leading to a messed-up brute passed out behind the toy box . . . all the clues there to determine motive and who dunnit.
G G G
Occasionally there were discoveries and cracking of real misdeeds—for example, when everything from the junk drawer was left scattered across the kitchen floor—triggering a question that bellowed throughout the house, “Okay, who did it?” followed by dead silence.
One Saturday morning, as I cleaned the boys’ bathroom, I brushed off gravel that dirtied the window sill and kept going . . . but within a minute or two was asking myself how gravel got inside the bathroom, way up on a window sill. Since Matt was the younger of the two boys—probably innocent but most likely a holder of important information—he was always deposed first. Not so guilt-free this time, he was the lookout while his older brother cranked open the narrow second-floor window that overlooked the garage and climbed out for a stealthy walkabout . . . busted.
Matt said that this incident taught him not to lie to his mother—nice to hear—and he also learned that abetting is also a crime.
G G G
In 1977, the summer Matt turned four, we headed the family station wagon toward Washington, D.C., intending to pitch the tent at an outlying campsite for a few nights and during the day sightsee in the Capitol. Along the way we picked up the buzz that a new outer space movie had just been released but was sold out until the 11.00 p.m. showing—it would be way past everybody’s bedtime before we took our seats and settled in with our popcorn for the opening scroll—da (sustained) da (sustained) da-da-da da (sustained) da—that wound us back to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away . . . and Star Wars. The force was with us and Matt stayed awake through the closing credits . . . family lore is that the same could not be said of his mother.
Matt—the impressionable four-year-old—remembered the usher asking his dad to unstrap his Bowie knife and take it back to the car. He wore it because it was useful at the campsite . . . though not much needed or wanted inside a crowded movie theatre.
Later that summer, with the film’s images fresh in his mind, when we noticed a Star Wars drawing contest sponsored by a local newspaper, Matt was ready to enter for his age group. His sketch of the TIE fighter spaceship won first place at his level, a prize of tickets for the movie which was still showing at the local theatre and his drawing featured in a fall edition of the paper.
Perhaps it was then, as Matt drew another rendition of the spaceship to be sent off and replicated on a Melmac plate, that I first thought deeply about his promising talent and interests—there was never a cap on the number of books and reading materials the boys could buy, and there must not be a limit on art supplies and experiences.
It may have been around this young age—when Matt entered the Star Wars contest—that goal setting, raising the bar, use of time and self-critique entered the picture—at an age-appropriate level and with plenty of room for him to be a child, but with the hope that these skills and habits would someday help him reach his potential. And it may have been that I was the only one conscious of goal setting for him, but at some point he internalized it, too.
A few years later, when Matt was in first grade, Miss N wore a stern face as we sat across from each other at parent-teacher conference time. She began by telling me that he was disruptive during her lessons—this floored me . . . it did not sound like Matt. It seems that while she was trying to teach, he fiddled inside the front opening of his desk, forming teensy-weensy figures of paper who manned itsy-bitsy cannons that really fired teensy-weensy paper cannon balls—he was not paying attention and distracted other students who were trying to see what he was making and motioning for him to make figures for them.
What Miss N did not know was that this was not the kind of thing one got in trouble for in our family—of course Matt was reminded of when it was and when it was not appropriate to be so creative, but production continued and student orders were fired off after school. Teeny twisted-paper figures had been floating around Matt’s room for quite a while by now—though I did not always know what they were, I knew enough to dust around them.
In the late 80s, during Matt’s middle school years, every Mother’s Day afternoon was celebrated at the annual comic book convention at a strip mall in Kansas City, Missouri. Each mother was handed a fragrant, live carnation at the door and a warm thank you for observing the day in such an untraditional way, but it was an event we all enjoyed. A mother can be acknowledged any day of the year, but the comic show was a now-or-never, once-a-year, not-to-be-missed opportunity. Nowhere else was there such a wide offering of comic books, plus the opportunity for Matt to meet and watch graphic artists at work, like Steve Lightle, and talk with them about their inspiration and craft—it was there that Matt learned from Lightle that shadows on faces were painted with blue watercolor.
It is quite an honor, not only to have been part of a creative environment that helped shape Matt, but to still be part of a family team that continues the collaboration that enriched us all through our shared years.
—Margie Kraft Kindt
Gilt Frame #3 hits comic book stores on November 6, 2024.
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