Cold Brewed

Jett Cropper's best friend dies from a bad coffee roast that had been laced with chicory. To find the new burnt Master Roaster behind this mess, Jett dives into the city's underworld to bring back justice no matter the cost.

Told through both words and pictures, COLD BREWED takes place in a classic prohibition-era world where coffee is currency and third-wave coffeeshop lingo is drug slang.

Though filed among other graphic novels, this unique story uses silent film and film noir techniques. COLD BREWED favors classy black and white photographs over pencil sketches -- a grittier grandson of the narrative form developed in Selznick's books "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" and "Wonderstruck."

Shot and produced in and around Joplin, Missouri, Cold Brewed reinvented the photo novel for the 21st Century and testifies to the art revival happening in the formerly tornado-devastated town.

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"You get where you wonder how life got so whipless. Been there before, didn't want to go back.

"Did anyway.

"It happens. You end up staring at your boots asking how they got so wet. How the water on them got so hard. Guess these days, there ain't enough grinders like me left on the streets. Everything's darker than it used to be - more burnt, less clean.

"Some new Master Roaster comes into town and tampers with the trade and everything ends up in the knock box and the water gets hard again and runs the drains over.

"And when there ain't enough grinders like me who're willing to crawl down in there, down into the sewers to filter it all back out, then all that hard water creeps up higher and higher till it spoils us all..."

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