10 | Issue #3 Collaborations
| Brief | For Issue #3 of Back of the Yards, we're taking a closer look at Dex Coleman - one of the neighborhood Elders whose sharp wit and colorful past may conceal more than anyone realizes. Dex has lived through decades of neighborhood history, including his connections to Darius King and Chicago's criminal underworld. As the past begins to intersect with the present, we're inviting collaborators to explore what Dex might recognize, who he might see, and what those encounters could reveal about the larger story unfolding around him. |
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| Core Personality Traits & Values | Dex is a wisecracker, a sharp dresser and a straight talker. Even though his moral compass has evolved over the years into that of a respectable citizen of Back of the Yards, he’s still known to indulge in a few vices. |
| Primary Archetype | The Rebel |
| Motto | “I ain’t got time for dreamin’. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” |
| Collaboration Background | Dex was developed by Jimmy Briseno and Len Kody as part of the initial Issue 1 scripting process. |
| Debut | Issue #1 of the Back of the Yards comic series |
Quick Introduction
The Funky Finger of Fate
Three wisecracking neighborhood veterans hold court around a pickle barrel outside Kozlow’s General Store: Peaches, Dex, and Big Earl. Known collectively as the Elders, these longtime friends have largely retired from the colorful ventures of their younger days—but they haven’t stopped keeping an eye on the neighborhood.
Like the Fates of ancient mythology, the Elders observe the lives unfolding around them, offering commentary, perspective, and the occasional bit of unsolicited wisdom. Their sharp humor and firsthand knowledge of the neighborhood’s history remind the younger generation that today’s troubles often have roots in yesterday’s stories.
And among the three, few have a more colorful history than Dex Coleman.
Lightning Quick Wit
Dex Coleman has always had a way with words. Quick with a joke, a clever observation, or a perfectly timed wisecrack, Dex can find humor in just about any situation – even when the circumstances aren’t particularly funny.
But there’s more to his sharp tongue than comic relief. Years spent navigating Chicago’s streets taught Dex how to read people, think on his feet, and occasionally talk his way out of trouble. His humor can be disarming, but beneath it lies the street smarts of someone who’s seen – and survived – quite a bit.
These days, Dex puts those talents to use alongside Peaches and Big Earl, offering the younger generation a mixture of humor, hard-earned wisdom, and the occasional questionable advice.
Old Habits Die Hard
Long before Dex Coleman became one of the neighborhood Elders, he made his living navigating Chicago’s underground policy racket—an illegal numbers game that once flourished throughout the city’s neighborhoods.
It was a world of hustlers, bookmakers, neighborhood operators, and larger-than-life personalities, where knowing the right people could be just as valuable as knowing the right numbers. Dex learned to survive through quick thinking, street smarts, and an uncanny ability to talk himself out of trouble.
Although those days are largely behind him, Dex’s past hasn’t entirely disappeared. Old acquaintances, unfinished business, and stories he’d rather leave untold still linger beneath his easygoing exterior.
And that raises an interesting question: What kinds of adventures – and misadventures – might Dex have experienced along the way?
Whose Hustling Who?
Long before state lotteries became commonplace, illegal numbers games—often called the policy racket—were a fixture of Chicago neighborhood life. Players wagered small amounts on combinations of numbers, hoping for a big payout, while an underground network of runners, bookmakers, and operators kept the business moving.
The racket created opportunities for neighborhood hustlers, but it also attracted powerful criminal organizations looking to control its profits. Behind the everyday transactions was a complicated world of alliances, rivalries, shifting loyalties, and occasional violence.
For someone like Dex Coleman, navigating that world required more than luck. It took street smarts, quick thinking, and knowing when to talk—and when to keep quiet.
But what really happened during Dex’s years in the racket? That’s a part of his history we’re leaving open for collaborators to help imagine.
Dream Logic
In Chicago’s old policy racket, numbers weren’t always chosen at random. Some players looked to dreams, superstitions, and everyday experiences for clues about which numbers might bring them luck.
Dream books offered interpretations of common images and events, assigning numbers to everything from animals and familiar objects to unusual encounters. For some players, a vivid dream or chance occurrence could become the inspiration for their next wager.
For a neighborhood hustler like Dex Coleman, these beliefs were simply another part of the world he navigated — a world where luck, intuition, and a little imagination could sometimes seem just as important as knowing the right people.
And perhaps Dex had a few unusual experiences of his own. After all, in a world built around numbers and chance, sometimes the strangest stories begin with something that seems completely ordinary.
Enter the Workshop
Dex’s Untold Adventures — What Happened Back Then?
Before he became one of the neighborhood Elders, Dex Coleman spent years navigating Chicago’s underground policy racket. Along the way, he undoubtedly encountered colorful characters, questionable opportunities, and situations that required every bit of his quick wit and street smarts.
But much of that history remains unwritten.
That’s where you come in.
Help us imagine an untold adventure from Dex’s past. It could be a close call with a rival hustler, an unexpected encounter with someone powerful, a scheme that went hilariously wrong, or an experience that changed the way Dex viewed the world.
Consider these questions:
What kind of trouble did Dex find himself in?
Who else was involved, and what did they want?
How did Dex use his humor, intelligence, or street smarts to navigate the situation?
Did the experience leave Dex with a valuable lesson—or an unfinished piece of business?
You don’t need to write a complete story. A short scene, a character idea, or a few sentences describing an interesting encounter are all welcome.
Your contribution could help expand Dex’s backstory and inspire future storytelling within the Back of the Yards universe.
Imagine that it's 30 years ago. It's the mid-1980s. Dex is a slightly younger man, in his early 40s. He's misspent his entire youth by crossing people and double-crossing them.
Table of Contents
Continue to Explore the World of the Back of the Yards!
02 | Issue #3 Collaborations
03 | Issue #3 Collaborations
07 | Issue #3 Collaborations
01 | Issue #3 Collaborations
11 | Issue #3 Collaborations
06 | Issue #3 Collaborations
05 | Issue #3 Collaborations
09 | Issue #3 Collaborations
12 | Issue #3 Collaborations
12 | Issue #3 Collaborations
| Brief | For our second Issue #3 collaboration centered on Tamia Parker - and the final collaboration in this series - we're returning to a transformation that began much earlier in the Studio. Tamia has spent Issue #3 questioning her dreams, her perceptions and what is happening to her. Now we're inviting you to help us explore what she has become, what she finally understands - and what Tamia might say when she is given the final word. |
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| Core Personality Traits & Values | Tamia is extremely bright, curious, introspective and creative. She is an artist at heart, with empathy that forms connections with others in ways that she even doesn’t fully understand yet… |
| Archetype | The Creator |
| Motto | “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen |
| Collaboration Background | Tamia’s character was initially developed during the original Made Collaborative in-person classroom collaborations with youth in the fall and winter of 2013, as part of an after school program in the West-Side of Chicago. |
| Debut | Issue #1 of the Back of the Yards comic series |
Quick Introduction
Tamia Parker was a character inspired from the first round of youth collaborations in the West Side of Chicago. During those initial collaborations, Jimmy Briseno met with a number of youth who shared initial ideas for comic characters and storylines. One of those youth was a young African American girl from that West-Side neighborhood.
The young woman’s initial question to Jimmy was whether the comic stories could be based on be based on real life, and more specifically, relationships? When Jimmy affirmed that the characters and stories could be about whatever she wanted, she would go on to describe a recent relationship experience which was characterized by drama, deception and ultimately, heartbreak.
But as she explained her experience and her story premise, the young woman also emphasized to Jimmy that she didn’t want to tell this story to focus on a broken heart and the related drama from her relationship, but rather, she wanted to emphasize how that experience ultimately helped her grow as a person and look within herself to find her value as a woman.
And from there, the inspiration for the comic character of Tamia Parker was born, which we hope will in turn inspire many more collaborations to come.
Tamia's Story - First Love
The dizzying highs and lows have long inspired song and verse. Tamia Parker, like so many young girls her age, confides her deepest thoughts and feelings to a well-worn journal that she always carries with her.
For Tamia, her poems and drawings are both an escape and an inward journey of exploration to the potent and turbulent depths within herself. Adolescence is a time of profound inner and outer change, after all—a metamorphosis. In the rough waters of constant change, it can be difficult for some teens to find their place of centeredness—their axis mundi.
Young girls, especially, are often discouraged from developing their own voice and speaking their truth. This leads to a sense of inferiority and “smallness” among many young women. They don’t think their words and actions matter as much.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We present Tamia’s self-esteem struggles visually by depicting her dreamworld avatar as a Fairie that has not yet blossomed into the full flowering of maturity. In Tamia’s dreams, she takes on the appearance and abilities of the Fairie. And, as the Fairie grows and evolves, so too will Tamia’s own sense of centeredness within herself.
An Unforgettable Chicago Summer
Perhaps it is a lack of centeredness that leaves so many teens vulnerable to manipulation by others. For Tamia, naive to the often treacherous ways of young love, she simply trusted too much.
During one unforgettable summer, she developed very strong feelings for an older boy in her Southside Chicago neighborhood. Wilson no longer attends New City High, where Tamia is currently a sophomore. He used to play basketball there. Wilson represented for Tamia an intoxicating mix of male athletic ability and a whiff of mature confidence she’d only seen in adults. Being a somewhat shy and serious girl for her age, his attentions were more than she could resist—not that she was all that interested in resisting.
And Wilson certainly appreciated the 10 fold attention she reciprocated. Wilson is good at cultivating attention for himself. He certainly enjoys receiving it from pretty young girls. Wilson basked in the warm glow of Tamia’s constant attention all summer long.
Autumn and the End of Innocence
The sharp, cold winds of autumn also reveal long-hidden truths. When the neighborhood kids go back to school, and the recent grads go off to the working world, higher education or to any number of adult endeavors, Wilson stays home, eschewing responsibility. He falls in with a group of troublemaking neighborhood boys who keep similarly idle agendas: no job, no educational ambitions and no other interests besides a hedonistic pursuit of the diversions of the moment.
As the leaves fall from the knotted old oaks, Back of the Yards, Tamia begins to sense the imbalance in her relationship. Was she just another of Wilson’s diversions? He walks her to school every morning, but then what does he do all day? And why has the boy who basked in her attention all summer long begun to respond sharply to her probing questions? Tamia is a mature young woman. Wilson’s age was once something that drew her to him. His potential and potency were why she fell in love with him. But in the same way that the falling leaves expose a great tree’s spindly branches, Wilson’s true nature is slowly revealed to Tamia.
She unwittingly becomes entangled in a love triangle of sorts with Wilson and another girl at her school named Natalie.
Tamia begins to hear rumors that her boyfriend, Wilson, was already seeing Natalie when the young lovers met. The revelation tests her sense of self as everything she believes (and wants to believe) is called into question.T
The Transformative Power of Creativity
When the real world seems like a dream, Tamia turns to creativity to map her inner reality. The after school arts program in Room 23 and its kind, clever, though peculiar facilitator, Mr. Castaneda, encourage her to develop her art and writing.
Tamia’s creativity enhances her resilience but also her intuition as her dreams begin revealing exactly what Wilson has been hiding from her (and the truths she’s hidden from herself).
Issue #1 of Back of the Yards ends in a shocking revelation: Tamia learns that Natalie is pregnant with Wilson’s child. This fact is confirmed to Tamia when she finally confronts her ex-boyfriend after hearing the rumors from other kids at her school. To overcome the heartbreak and betrayal, Tamia will have to summon vast reservoirs of strength. Though she may be in for a surprise when she learns the extent of all that she is capable of.
In the after school arts program, Tamia strikes up an immediate friendship with Russell. Even though he is younger, the pair seem to resonate on a similar frequency. Both have deep and complex inner lives. Also, Tamia may envy Russell’s sense of wonder and innocence. As we go through periods of growth in our lives, as Tamia is, the exchange we often make for greater power and self-mastery often comes at the expense of our innocence.
Summoning the Fairie
Tamia and Russell share more than a budding, though innocent friendship. The two appear to be linked in an as-yet inexplicable way in their dreams.
Both Russell (as Teshue) and his cousin, Draymond (as Shiro) are capable of summoning familiars to their aid. Shiro’s brutish and assertive personality is matched by his pet, Enyo, a feral war-hound with a pair of curving horns atop her head. She is a loyal and ferocious wolf that obeys Shiro’s every command.
Teshue has a more difficult time summoning his familiar, the Fairie, who seems to have a will all her own. Russell is not yet aware that the Fairie does, indeed, have a will of her own because she is Tamia’s dreamworld avatar.
The difficulty that Tamia—and, by extension, Russell—have in harnessing the power of the Fairie is indicative of the extent of her power. As the Fairie continues to evolve, more powers and abilities will be revealed. But until then, both Tamia and Russell will struggle greatly to truly know themselves.
Perhaps it is some intuitive knowledge of this great yet deeply hidden power still locked within both Tamia and Russell that draws them together as allies in the seen and unseen worlds.
Their heroic journeys are quite different than that of Andre, who experiences his power in a sudden, almost uncontrollable rush. Even so, Andre is linked to the other two in ways he’s only beginning to figure out for himself.
The Call to Adventure Beyond Time and Space
When Andre is called to the craft of the Secret Chiefs, it is by a sound that resonates beyond this dimension. It is a single note from the music of the spheres, a tone that can only be heard by those chosen to hear it.
Andre eagerly answers his call to adventure. But, because of the non-linear nature of higher dimensional travel, it isn’t until a bit later that we learn the source of that call: Tamia in her Fairie-form.
Tamia was, in fact, summoned by Russell (as Teshue), who, at a key moment that would have sent many others into panic, Russell instead becomes calm and focused. His mind quieted by a deep sense of concentration from the still waters within his psyche, Teshue beckons the Fairie to join the battle.
The Fairie cries out her extra-dimensional alarm, back through time and up into the mysterious craft from which Andre incredulously observes the perilous goings-on below. When Andre emerges to save the day in his heightened, lion-form, the paradoxical time loop is closed. The cycle is complete.
Andre makes quick work of the bullies who threaten Teshue and Shiro. It’s at this point when an epiphany strikes Tamia, too. One of the thugs seems to have a connection to her philandering boyfriend, Wilson. Tamia’s intuitive dream senses provide her some glimpse of the truth. Natalie is pregnant with Wilson’s child.
Mr. Castaneda’s Guidance
Mr. Castaneda can see the potential brewing within all the students he’s personally chosen to take part in his after school arts program. Exactly who Mr. Castaneda is and what his connection might be to the bizarre, god-like travelers known as the Secret Chiefs is a story for another day. But whatever his ultimate purpose may be, his current agenda seems focused on pushing his students—like Tamia—to explore the bounds of their creative powers.
Tamia will develop a unique relationship with Mr. Castaneda, who will provide a comforting perspective as she struggles through her relationship troubles, and who will challenge her to become more when he believes she is ready to accept the truth about her power.
As she cries one night, after having had a fight with Wilson, she thinks to herself, between sobs, that art is how one can make their true selves visible to the world. This is more than Mr. Castaneda’s comforting wisdom, and more than a creative conceit of our far-out comic book adventure. It is Made Collaborative’s mission to make visible the hidden power of the project’s participating urban youth.
By helping to give a voice to the real kids in the Made Collaborative Project, we hope to unleash the limitless power within each of them.
A Made Collaborative Production
01 | Issue #3 Collaborations
This Studio Card is part of the Back of the Yards comic series, a Creative Commons project developed by the Made Collaborative Studio. You can learn more about our Creative Commons license by visiting the Explore the Studio page, but in short, what this means is that as a Creative Commons project, you can copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the content for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. And if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license above.
If you’d like to explore the Back of the Yards comic further, you can see and access the Studio Card to your right and/or the related Studio Cards below. Thanks for collaborating with us!
Enter the Workshop
Tamia Parker has a lot on her mind. And like many young artists, she uses creativity to explore her thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
She writes poetry, sketches, and is beginning to experiment with painting. But what might some of those creations actually look like?
That’s where you come in!
We’re inviting collaborators to imagine something Tamia might create in her own notebook or sketchbook. Maybe it’s a poem about something she’s experienced. A drawing inspired by her neighborhood. A painting that captures a particular emotion. Or something entirely unexpected.
You can contribute an original poem, drawing, illustration, or simply describe an idea for something Tamia might create. Selected contributions may help shape Tamia’s creative world as we continue developing Back of the Yards Issue #3.
Ready to collaborate? Share your creation or idea through the workshop form below!
Inside Tamia's Creative World!
A Made Collaborative Creative Workshop
Tamia Parker loves expressing herself through poetry, drawing, and painting. Now we're inviting you to imagine what she might create!
Share an original poem, sketch, illustration, or painting inspired by Tamia's character and experiences. Or simply describe a creative idea you think she might explore.
Your contribution could help bring Tamia's creative world to life in Back of the Yards Issue #3.
Ready? Let's see what you come up with!
Submit Your Artwork
The Made Collaborative Studio is fueled by your artistic contributions. We’re a community of artists and storytellers who want to build something supportive for creatives of all backgrounds and ages.
We encourage you to participate in our collaborative community by showing off some of your work. We may feature your artwork in the future.
Table of Contents
Studio Cards Related to the Back of the Yards Comic Series Project
Who is John Golden?
Beyond the Issue | Bonus Studio Collaboration
08 | Issue #3 Collaborations
02 | Issue #3 Collaborations
10 | Issue #3 Collaborations
Beyond the Issue | Bonus Studio Collaboration
Beyond the Issue | Bonus Studio Collaboration
04 | Issue #3 Collaborations
06 | Issue #3 Collaborations
Who is Jimmy Briseno?