Written by Len Kody Introducing Back of the Yards!  Our Inaugural Comic Series What if your dreams became real? It doesn’t get more real than Back of the Yards, on the South Side of Chicago, when you’re growing up as a teen. It’s where fantasy and the power of story can build resilience, foster healing […]

Written by Len Kody Background – A Boy With Big Ideas All of our initial stories and characters in Back of the Yards aren’t really entirely ours. We are but humble stewards to the exciting new narrative avenues Jimmy Briseno discovered while facilitating the Made Collaborative After School Arts Program with real urban youth in […]

Character Background 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 story lines.  One of those youth was a young African American girl from that […]

Written by Len Kody and Jimmy Briseno The Elders: Three Wise Guys The Funky Finger of Fate  Three wise-cracking wise guys man a permanent post around a pickle barrel in front of Kozlow’s General Store. They are Peaches, Dex and Big Earl. Although these distinguished gentlemen of the neighborhood are officially retired from whatever eclectic […]

Written by Len Kody Who is Mr. Castañeda? An urban public high school is like a village unto itself. It has all the size and social intricacies of a small town. New City High is attended by some 1,800 students and faculty each day; every year that population changes as kids grow up and teachers […]

Written by Len Kody Russell and Draymond: Closer Than Brothers A Shared Sense of Story There’s a magical time in a young person’s life, before the opposite sex becomes quite so interesting, when the diaphanous membrane between dreams and reality is at its most permeable. It’s a time when dreams can be shared easily between […]