AS A MATTER OF FACT… Local author/filmmaker Mathew Klicksteini’s double trouble of upcoming book releases

Referring to himself as “the absolute embodiment of Niwot’s Curse,” area boomeranger Mathew Klickstein moved back to Colorado this time at the beginning of 2024. For this go-around, Klickstein came armed—already set in motion over the past three years, most of which he lived outside of Colorado, are his two forthcoming books in January and February, with local live Q&A’s, guided discussions, book signings, movie screenings and other multimedia public events to follow.

After a stint in Loveland this past Spring, Klickstein ultimately ended up settling in Greeley where, over the last 11 months, he’s been acting as Publication Director for Greeley Lifestyle Magazine, essentially responsible for a variety of editorial/production and administrative needs.

“This is the first time I’ve lived in Greeley,” Klickstein says. “I lived in Lyons for a while a few years back, and my wife at the time and I would head to Greeley sometimes for a friend’s regular hip-hop shows and for the food trucks to get some of the best authentic Mexican food around. It’s definitely been an adventure living there, but I can also see why it’s become the fastest-growing community in the state.”

Originally having lived in Boulder during his first few runs at being a Coloradoan, Klickstein right from the start had become engaged in the goings-on of his adoptive home’s media and culture/arts concerns.

He was a regular contributor to many of the local outlets, including this one for which he developed a unique program: While working as an arts instructor at Imagine!, Klickstein guided young people with mental/physical disabilities in their reviewing of local hotspots for articles that this magazine and others such as Boulder Weekly would publish. Klickstein developed a similar program through partnering Imagine! with KGNU, as well.

“I really fell in love with Boulder—so much so, that I would get involved in whatever I could, whenever I could,” Klickstein says. “I’d always lend a hand to groups like BIFF and the Conference on World Affairs, as well as a lot of other things at CU and particularly at the Dairy Center, where I become passionately involved with the development and programming of the Boedecker Theater.”

Being such a self-professed gadabout during those early years in Boulder, Klickstein eventually transitioned from being a freelancer for the Daily Camera and Colorado Daily to being recruited to fill a new staffing position. Klickstein would focus his coverage on, appropriately enough, the arts/cultural goings-on of the town and surrounding area.

It was around this time that Klickstein began developing what would end up being his first book for one of the major publishers. SLIMED! An Oral History of Nickelodeon’s Golden Age was put out by Penguin Random House in 2013. It celebrated a fifth anniversary with an updated edition in 2018, has become a beloved totem and resource for nostalgia/pop culture fans around the world and was recently granted the greatest honor of all: being a clue on Jeopardy!.

The book tells the full story of the creation and early years of kids cable channel Nickelodeon through more than 250 interviews Klickstein conducted with all manner of Nickelodeon cast and crew. And, of course, there’s an added foreword by none other than Nickelodeon icon and game show host Marc Summers.

SLIMED!, kickstarted Klickstein’s wider career. An eclectic array of projects followed—many of which continued to whisk the burgeoning writer-producer away to places elsewhere before he would repeatedly find himself coming back to Boulder, Louisville, Lyons … and now Greeley.

“Over the last few years, I really felt most at home in rural college towns,” Klickstein says. “Lawrence in Kansas, Iowa City, places like that and now Greeley. It’s the best of both worlds, because it’s calm and quiet, I don’t have to deal with parking or traffic issues, it’s convenient getting around … And the price of living there is still relatively more affordable. Plus, I’m still close by to places I may go to visit friends or for work stuff—Boulder, Fort Collins, Longmont and the occasional trip to Denver.”

Klickstein will certainly be getting the most out of the nearby “convenience,” as he puts it, of living in Greeley over the next few months. He’s hosting and producing a limited promotional tour of regional bookstores, comic book shops and movie theaters as part of the release of his two newest books.

Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews is the latest installment in University Press of Mississippi’s long-running “Conversations With Filmmakers” series of collections of previously published interviews with different prominent filmmakers. Each book, like Klickstein’s Kaufman collection, is also expertly fact-checked, annotated and quietly edited. Lloyd Kaufman: Interviews will be out in February.

There’s, perhaps not too coincidentally, a local connection to the subject of Klickstein’s book. Kaufman co-founded and runs the oldest still-running independent film studio, Troma, which is best known for its gorey, goofy and gratuitously gelatinous “Midnight Movie” fare like The Toxic Avenger. Kaufman and Troma were also the ones who helped launch the careers of hometown heroes Trey Parker and Matt Stone when the company put out Cannibal! The Musical, the notorious South Park creators’ first feature film, which the provocative duo developed and shot as film students at CU.

Klickstein’s second upcoming book hails from the other side of the spectrum. It’s a 96-page graphic novel, based on an old novella of his published in 2008 and illustrated by award-winning cartoonist Rick Geary. Geary is best known for his youthful work throughout the 1970s and 80s as a contributor to the likes of National Lampoon and Heavy Metal, as well as his previous solo graphic novels that tend to focus on Victorian Era serial killers, most notably his 1997 illustrated chronicle of pint-sized axe enthusiast Lizzie Borden.

“I met Rick while working on my podcast and later book on the origins of the San Diego Comic-Con,” Klickstein says. “We hit it off right away, I was blown away by his work—which I had heard about but had never really seen before—and right away realized he’d be a perfect illustrator to adapt my earlier novella Daisy Goes to the Moon to the graphic novel realm.”

After Geary read Klickstein’s small, strange and sci-fi/fantasy-based (by way of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the works of The Little Prince’s Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) novella, he immediately decided to work on the new iteration. Klickstein and Geary then set a deal with longtime indie bellwether Fantagraphics Books, and three years later, their collaborative version of Daisy Goes to the Moon will be out in mid-January.

“It continues to be quite a rollercoaster through all of this moving around, finding new places in the area like Greeley to explore and putting out new books and other projects,” Klickstein concluded. “But it’s nice that I can still call this whole community that connects all the local places I’ve lived home. Living here has been one of the very few consistent things in my life, even if it’s been fairly sporadic. I think, no matter what happens or where I may go next, I’ll probably keep finding my way back.”