Featured Collabs

Featured Collaborations January - March 2026

Featured Collaborations January 2026 – March 2026 Page #

Part 1-A Quick Word on Intellectual Property……………. 3 Part 2 – Your Featured Collaborations .......................... 7 Part 3 – Issue 1 of the Back of the Yards Comic……….. 17

- Part I A Quick Word on Intellectual Property

A Quick Word on Intellectual Property Having now provided an overview of our virtual studio framework and related digital tools, we are ready to present to you a set of Featured Collaborations relating to our next comic production, Issue 3. But before we do that, we wanted to take a quick moment to talk about intellectual property.

One of the things we struggled with as we were developing this new virtual framework was the whole notion of having to put some sort of copyright restrictions on the sharing of our comic, the characters and the storyline.

That’s just not something we ever really thought about when developing the comic because profit and intellectual property was never the motivation – collaboration and promoting creative thought was always our North Star.

And in that context, this didn’t even start out as a comic-based project in that context, but rather, as a supplementary after school program that connected artists and youth.

But, of course, this project did evolve into a comic project and because of that, we realized we had to figure out how we wanted to handle the dreaded intellectual property piece. And that’s where the Creative Commons comes in. The Creative what?

What is the Creative Commons?

The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of expanding the range of options that artists and others share their creative works.

Per Wikipedia, the organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they want to waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

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Under the Creative Commons framework, content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, that are necessary under the “all rights reserved” framework for more traditional copyright protection.

In other words, Creative Commons provides more options to share information as compared to the standard copyright system. And because of this additional optionality, as of 2019, there were nearly 2 billion works licensed under the various Creative Commons licenses.

The Creative Commons License for the Back of the Yards Comic So, as we dug a little deeper into the Creative Commons licensing options, it quickly became apparent that we wanted to adopt some of the least “restrictive” options when it came to the sharing of this creative content.

And one Creative Commons license model in particular that jumped out at us was the Attribution-Non-CommercialShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA).

What that basically means is that we will provide digital copies of our Back of the Yards comics for free on the project website, and in addition to downloading or copying the comic, anyone can create new versions of the comic or characters if they make it available under the same noncommercial terms.

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This means after-school programs, for example, can download the comics for free and use these same characters, themes and storylines to facilitate their own independent collaborative projects or workshops. And, with that, anyone can create new characters and storylines relating to these original Back of the Yards comic collaborations and characters so long as they are done so under the same CC BY-NC-SA license.

You can learn more about this Creative Commons license by linking here.

Ultimately, the key for us is to make it as easy for others to access these comics, characters and related concepts in support of our central mission of promoting collaboration and creative thought. And we will see how this Creative Commons license works out in that regard, together. ****

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- Part II Your Featured Collaborations

Developing Issue 3 And Your Featured Collaborations Having developed this basic virtual studio framework, our goal is to now launch a new set of corresponding collaborations with after school program youth and others, including whoever may be reading this now.

And these virtual collaborations will be anchored around the development of Issue 3.

Furthermore, to help frame this next round of virtual collaborations, we have developed a set of “Featured Collaborations” which we have identified as part of an initial working manuscript for Issue 3. We will present you with these featured collaborations in Part IV of our initial Project Chronicles summary, along with the corresponding Studio Cards.

Of course, all of this is designed to facilitate actual content development, and in that regard, we will also be hosting virtual Zoom workshop sessions between participating artists and invited collaborators. And we will post regular updates of these ongoing collaborations on our “This & That” blog on the website.

And ultimately, we will highlight some of these collaborations in these Project Chronicles, leading up to the full publication of Issue 3 to complete this first volume of our Project Chronicles.

That’s the plan anyway, and you can obviously follow the ongoing development of these collaborations on our website, along with taking part in those collaborations at any time!

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Featured Collaboration #1 Let’s Create a New Character(s)!

We will do this by providing you with a digital template in the form of Studio Card#1 that walks you through a basic character development process.

Within that digital template, you will be presented with the following related collaborations: 1.

2.

We will present a digital template that will help you develop your own new characters, and We will provide you with an option to submit any new characters you may develop to us to include in the Back of the Yards comic series

Within our digital template, we start with the basics – name, age, birthplace, current residence, etc. We then build upon those basic characteristics to develop the new character’s personality and physical traits.

It is at that point that we dig deeper to develop the character’s core values and with that, we will present you with an overview of Carl Jung’s Character Archetypes, which, as you will learn, are universal, symbolic patterns that exist within the collective unconscious, shaping human behavior and experiences of all of us – your new character included!

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Finally, to bring all together, we help you create your character’s biographical history, i.e., the character’s back story. And with that, you should have the makings of a new character, which you can continue to use and build on your own as part of your independent creative projects. Or… If you’d like, completely at your option, we will provide you with an opportunity to submit your newly developed character to us. We will then select some of your submissions for further develop with you, along with concept illustrations by our participating artists. And, ultimately, again at your option, we will include a few of your new characters in our Back of the Yards comic series, starting with Issue 3!

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Featured Collaboration #2 Building the ”Ordinary World” of Our Fictional Back of the Yards Neighborhood With this quick featured collaboration, we’re further developing the “Ordinary World” of our Back of the Yards Fictional Comic Neighborhood…and you can be a part of that collaborative process.

As described in our Studio Card #3 Introduction to the Back of the Yards comic series, the fictional "Back of the Yards" neighborhood is inspired by the real historical Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois.

The real Back of the Yards neighborhood extends from 39th to 55th Streets between Halsted and the railroad tracks along Leavitt Street in Chicago and was until the 1950’s the largest livestock yards and meatpacking center in the country.

And you can learn more about the real Back of the Yards neighborhood by visiting Studio Card #8, where we will also present you with an overview of Chicago’s early origins and and parallels to other urban centers and neighborhoods.

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And with this featured collaboration, you can help us to further create and develop our fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood by submitting places from your own neighborhood. These places can be stores, churches, parks, restaurants ... literally any place from your neighborhood.

The collaborative key will be that when you make your submission, explain to us why this place is important to you? As with everything relating to this collaborative project, context matters.

So, if you’d like to have any such place from your own past included in our fictional Back of the Yards comic, just take a little time to more fully consider what place or location meant something to you in your past and why. And whenever you then may be ready, refer to the corresponding Worksheet in this Chapter 12 to help make your submission to us! And we will be highlighting some of your submissions throughout this round of featured collaborations.

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Featured Collaboration #4 An Open Dialogue & Two New Characters I thought I’d start with these set of featured collaborations with picture I took in the early summer of 202. A picture taken by me in my hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

Just across that drawbridge is Chicago’s infamous Magnificent (Mag) Mile, Michigan Avenue. A famed stretch of real estate that hosts some of the finest shopping, food and other tourist attractions year-round. Yet on that day and week in 2020, Chicago had decided that nobody would be going to Mag Mile. Indeed, no one would be going anywhere.

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The picture was taken just after the George Floyd tragedy and the protests that occurred in the aftermath. By the time this photo was taken, the National Guard had been brought into the city. And drawbridges throughout the city had been raised to cut off access to the city’s center from just about every angle.

Surreal may be an overused word these days, but there may not be a more apt description when describing the city that morning. And one couldn’t also help but think that those drawbridges were the perfect metaphor for the state of our country’s discourse of the time. Instead of talking with one another, let’s just cut the whole damn thing off.

It is in that context that at that time, we decided we were going to integrate the topics of law enforcement and community relations into our new comic series, the Back of the Yards. And as a very practical matter, we knew we couldn’t continue our comic-based narrative, based in our fictional fictional Back of the Yards neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, without incorporating law enforcement into the ongoing narrative in some central way.

And when the events of 2020 occurred, and the corresponding protests, we felt these collaborations were even more relevant and timelier. So, it is with this set of featured collaborations that we present you with two related opportunities to collaborate with us as part of these Issue 3 collaborations.

Within the Studio Card #9 Law Enforcement series, we present

a brief overview of the early origins of the state police force, starting its early founder, Sir Robert Peel. This illustration by Eric Nyamor, depicts Peel traveling in time to observe his modern-day police force and the issues they face today.

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First, we invite you and participating youth from after school programs to submit questions to police officers from Chicago and other parts of the country.

These questions, the responses from the participating police officers, will form the basis of an ongoing dialogue over the next 3 to 4 months as Issue #3 of the Back of the Yards comic is developed in parallel.

The objective of this dialogue collaboration is to try to promote a balanced discussion and hopefully with that, some better understanding between all participants. We will also publish excepts from this ongoing dialogue in the supplement of Issue 3 of the Back of the Yards comic series.

And in parallel with this ongoing dialogue, as part of the second set of related collaborations, we will work with you to create two new characters for our comic series, both police officers and each to be first introduced in Issue #3 (with perhaps some of the dialogue captured above also incorporated into a comic scene with those officers).

You can learn more about those character collaborations in the corresponding Worksheet included in Chapter 12, or by simply visiting the Studio Card link above!

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Featured Collaboration #3 Back of the Yards – Issue 3!

Having walked you through the first two featured Studio Cards, we then bring you to Studio Card #3 – our Back of the Yards comic series! It is here that, with your collaboration, we will: 1.

2.

Bring Issue 2 (already fully illustrated) to final production, and Present you with a working manuscript for Issue #3 of the comic series to develop into a final script for production

First, with respect to the Issue 2. we have fully developed 25 pages of illustrated pages, and at this point, we will invite you to be a part of the production process as we finalize front and back comic covers, identify a printer and go to print production.

Separately, using concepts from the first two featured collaborations, you will be presented with opportunities to review and provide input and “notes” to the Issue 3 working manuscript over the duration of this collaboration. And eventually, with your help, this working manuscript will become a final script for illustrations and production.

At which point, we will continue to provide you with opportunities to provide your notes and input all the way to final production and publication of Issue 3!

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- Part III -

A QUICK ISSUE 1 INTRODUCTION To help further set the collaborative stage, we thought we’d include a copy of Issue 1 of the Back of the Yards comic series. Issue 1 of the comic series was developed collaboratively bweteen, including John Golden, Dan Dougherty, Manny Dominguez, Eric Nyamor, Andrew Dimitt and Kanila Tripp. It was this group that would work together to bring those original comic ideas to life in the form of one single comic narrative that we would eventually name as “The Back of the Yards” comic series.

Production of Issue 1 would begin in 2018 and final edits to scripts and illustrations were completed by 2019.

The issue was largely self-funded and was, more or less, a proof of concept for the project team.

The comic issue itself is divided into two parts. The first part is the actual comic script panels, 25 pages in length. The second part of the comic is a supplement that essentially tells the “story behind the story,” i.e., the underlying collaborative process that led to the comic itself. We felt this underlying context was essential to provide a framework for future collaborations with other participating youth.

And the plan all along was, indeed, to build upon this comic foundation by working with other participating after school programs to create new comic characters within this Back of the Yards storyline, and with that, new comic storylines. In that way, this Back of the Yards comic series would be a living collaborative project.

And that remains the creative goal of this project, and that’s where we will pick up on Part III of these Project Chronicles. But first we have included the full Issue 1 here for what we hope to be your reading pleasure.

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