This & That Draft

There’s more to the story than this comic you’re holding in your hands (or reading on a screen).

And that’s the story of just how this comic series developed in the first place. You see, this all started based on a simple premise that by collaborating with urban youth to bring their creative ideas to artistic life, we could provide participating youth with a unique creative experience and develop some cool comic stories along the way.

But make no mistake about it, we’re learning as we go along as well, which is the true nature of any collaboration really. We’re just a small group of self-funded (gulp) artists, without any sort of road map on where this project might ultimately go, or this comic story for that matter. But our North Star is clear. We believe that we can help promote creative thought and empowerment of participating youth through open and innovative collaboration. And the hope is that this new comic series will be a creative platform for many such collaborations to come. So, with that in mind, here’s some more information on the story behind story. And you can always learn more at madecollaborative.com

ANDRE’S DILEMMA

Andre, like the other major characters in this first issue, was developed as part of the original collaborations during the winter of 2013 at a high school in the West Side of Chicago. One of those participating kids, a well spoken articulate young man with seemingly boundless energy, wanted to create a character from their own neighborhood that suddenly gained fantastical powers, “and then he’d have to deal with the moral dilemma of what to do with these powers. Like, if I were to have all that power, do I use it for good or for revenge? I really don’t know.”

Staying true to the young man’s original vision, we anticipate that Andre’s struggle will be a central part of future youth collaborations and this comic series.

IT’S ALL IN THE HAIR, MAN

When collaborating with our artists on the concept sketches for the character, the youth wanted Andre’s hair to be thick and “puffy,” like a lion’s mane, because they felt it would symbolize Andre’s bold and determined personality.

WITH AGE, COMES WISDOM

Ahh, the Elders–that’s what we’re calling the three lifelong friends that hang out at the corner by Koz’s general store.

Big Earl, Dex and Peaches were developed by project collaborators Len Kody and Jimmy Briseno as a way to connect the youth's individual stories within the broader Back of Yards neighborhood backdrop. The Elders, through their combined years of experience and wisdom, will provide some perspective for the younger characters and a context to the fictional “Back of the Yards” neighborhood.

RUSSELL AND DRAYMOND

Russell’s character was also developed as part of the original 2013 collaborations. The story is based on one kid’s idea of two cousins escaping the trauma of a recent confrontation with a neighborhood bully. Russell and Draymond play video games and engage in a mock ninja battle in the living room of their Chicago home. They imagine themselves as more powerful than they are, but it’s a shared fantasy, rather than a solitary daydream.

And so, right away we begin to see a trending thought from the participating youth that dreams can be more than just a refuge. They can be a way to connect with others.

And so, right away we see that dreams can be more than just a refuge. They can be a way to connect with others.

JUST DREAMIN’

Whether as an escape from everyday reality, or as a conduit into the supernatural comic book world they were creating, dreams as phenomena were repeatedly mentioned by participating youth during the Phase One collaborations. The potency of dreams became the most consistent connecting thread weaving the kids’ ideas into the tapestry of a larger story.

More on that in future issues.

THE POWER OF IMAGINATION

– Phase One Participating Youth

“I like to daydream a lot. I like using my imagination. It’s a way of escaping all of the drama around here. I like imagining things, especially before I go to sleep. If you’re lucky, whatever you imagine becomes part of your dreams.”

TAMIA AND WILSON

That question set the stage for the characters of Tamia and Wilson, boyfriend and girlfriend, based on a participating youth’s own experience of first love, heartache and betrayal. In her story, Tamia finds out that Wilson has been with another girl. Not only that, the other girl is pregnant with Wilson’s baby.

All this happened just a year before Phase One. So, she wanted to use the comic as a way of expressing the feelings she felt during that time. More importantly, she wanted to share what she learned from the experience.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL US, ONLY MAKES US STRONGER

“So, my idea isn’t based on any superheroes or anything like that, is that okay?”

“But that’s not really why I want to tell the story. I feel like I learned from the whole experience and I want to share that… It taught me a lot... I’m going to be my own woman. I mean, I’m doing better in school now. Just happier in general.”

– Phase One Participating Youth, now a freshman at a prominent Division I University

Behind the Back of the Yards

Our fictional “Back of the Yards” neighborhood is based on the real one on the South Side of Chicago.

The gritty, rust belt neighborhood is well-trodden ground for poets, like Carl Sandburg, and investigative journalists, like Upton Sinclair.

What follows is a short featurette that further explores the subject.

“Hog Butcher for the World”

- Carl Sandburg

- the conditions were horrific.

A century ago, more meat was packed and processed in Chicago than anywhere else in the world.

For both man and beast -

The Union Stockyards were a bright red symbol of the changes in the urban and industrial landscape at the turn of the 20th century.

Peasants

The work they found was brutal and dangerous.

Life was cheap, back of the yards.

Journalist Upton Sinclair went undercover as a worker in the Stockyards.

from the countrysides of Germany and Eastern Europe, and Southern Blacks, too, came to Chicago by the thousands in search of opportunity.

whoa!

Somebody’s gonna get a surprise in their sausage.

Please -

-

The savagery he witnessed inspired “The Jungle,” Sinclair’s historic expose´ on the cruelties of the meatpacking industry.

It’s okay to laugh when life is terrible.

Thanks, Koz. Heh -

It was the first to use community organizing and direct action as a means to give working people some say in their own destiny.

In the streets Sal Alinsky and local leaders from the oftexploited community of immigrants and outcasts created the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council.

By the Great Depression, folks were just too poor to let the bosses continue to pit them against each other by race and ethnicity.

People organized to make a better life for themselves.

In the Stockyards they formed the United Packinghouse Workers of America to leverage their numbers against the concentrated wealth and influence of the meatpacking industry.

By the second half of the 20th century, however, white flight and gentrification nearly gutted the American city.

Escalations

In a lot of ways, things seemed worse than ever, back of the yards.

New struggles exacerbated the old.

So, though our destiny is now our own… …Our search for that destiny is only just begun.

in gang violence and drug use coupled with institutional racism against the neighborhood’s growing black and brown majority.

WHAT’S TO COME

Staying true to our collaborative ideals, we hope to have a healthy rotating crew of artists illustrate every issue of Back of the Yards comic series going forward. Issue #2 is already well into production with a new artistic team. They are hard at work contributing their own unique style and sensibilities to the project. And lord knows we can use all the help we can get.

We will also initiate a new round of youth outreach for collaboration on Issue #3. It’s our plan to work with youth throughout Chicago to further develop the stories we’ve begun here, creating additional characters and storylines for our fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood.

In short, we we’re going to try to use this comic series as a creative platform for as many future youth collaborations as we can. And with that, the hope is that we can together create a continuously evolving and immersive fictional world where participating youth will have the freedom to dream and a voice to tell their stories.

Our Inspiration: Harvey Pekar

Harvey Pekar (October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was a powerful influence on this project. For those of you not familiar, Pekar was the creator and author of the award-winning comic anthology American Splendor, which later enjoyed mainstream notoriety after a 2003 film adaptation.

American Splendor was based on the everyday life of Pekar in Cleveland, Ohio. As such, he would integrate his own friends, family and associates into the ongoing story. Pekar himself was not an illustrator, but he wrote the comic scripts for the book

that were illustrated by established artists, including Pekar’s friend, the legendary underground artist Robert Crumb.

Pekar would often say “comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.” And it is that very basic premise that has inspired the humble collaborators on this project. Our hope is that words and pictures not only can help tell the stories of future participating youth, but in doing so, also provide those participating youth with a unique and truly positive collaborative experience.

And with that, we close our first issue with this “monument” in gratitude to those initial contributors.