This & That

A collaborative comic book project inspired by Chicago youth — and an invitation to help shape what happens next. Welcome to Made Collaborative! If you’re discovering us for the first time — and unless you’ve been among the small group working on this project over the years, you probably are — we’re glad you’re here. Whether you’re a comic book fan, an aspiring artist, a professional artist, an educator, a student, or simply someone who enjoys a good story, there’s a place for you here. Made Collaborative began with a simple idea: What if young people could work alongside aspiring and established artists to explore and develop their own creativity and imagination? That idea would quickly evolve into in-person after-school workshops in Chicago’s west-side neighborhoods, where students worked alongside writers and

When we first began what would eventually become Made Collaborative, I never imagined that one day we would be assembling a document like this.
Back then, the idea was remarkably simple.
Gather together a few artists at an afterschool program. Invite a group of young people into the same room. Ask them what kinds of stories they wanted to tell. Then do our very best to help bring those stories to life.
That was it.

Over our first three origin stories, we’ve shared how Made Collaborative began with an idea, how that idea found its way into a Chicago classroom, and how the imaginations of our earliest youth collaborators quickly transformed it into something much bigger. But one important question remained. How do you turn an extraordinary collection of unrelated ideas into an actual comic book? For our fourth and final entry in this introductory series, we’re turning things over to Made Collaborative Studio Director and co-creator Len Kody, who helped us begin answering that question. Here’s his perspective on how the early collaborative process gave rise to the fictional world of Back of the Yards. When the Story Behind the Stories Became a Story of Its Own By Len Kody The magic of

So, I had a dream. And this is the honest-to-God truth. The other night, I dreamed that Paul Simon – you know, Paul Simon from Simon & Garfunkel? – was trying to fight me. Paul who, some of you may ask? Fair question. Paul Simon is one of America’s most celebrated singer-songwriters. His career has spanned more than six decades and includes classics such as Bridge Over Troubled Water, Mrs. Robinson, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover. And not some young version of Paul Simon. No. The current nearly 80-year-old, 5’3″, 140-pound version of Paul Simon. Yeah. And I mean an actual fight. There he was, taunting me as a crowd of onlookers gathered around us like some bizarre elementary school playground

In our first origin story, Sparks From a Bus, we shared how a series of ordinary bus rides through Chicago eventually inspired the idea behind Made Collaborative. But having an idea is one thing.  Actually putting it into practice is something else entirely. Our next entry takes us back to one of the earliest classroom sessions, when a handful of young people on Chicago’s West Side were invited to help create comic stories of their own. Among them was a young man named Andre, whose imagination would help lay the foundation for much of the fictional world we’re still developing today. Here’s how that first creative spark began to take shape. The Classroom: Day Zero By Jimmy Briseno The room looks like any other ordinary high school classroom. A

Before the Workshop: How It All Began

As we prepare to launch our weekly virtual workshops, we thought it might be worth taking a little trip back to where this whole thing started.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be revisiting some of the original blog entries from the early days of Made Collaborative — back when this was little more than an idea, a handful of participating artists, and a willingness to see what might happen if we brought some young people into the creative process.