The Chicago:1968 webcomic returns!

[Len Kody]

PAGE SIXTY-TWO


Even Christ fell three times. And he had superpowers.
 
And just what is a fall, really, if not an opportunity for epic redemption!
 
[video] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD24MkbHQrc
 
The point I'm obviously driving at here is... Chicago:1968 is back!
 
I'd be absolutely flattered if you noticed that Tony and I took an unexpected hiatus from the webcomic back at the beginning of the Fall. (Hmmm... "beginning of the Fall." Didn't even mean to do that but I couldn't have put it better if I tried.)
 
Seems misfortune befell both Tony and me in roughly the same span of months, which is an awfully efficient, and suspicious, way for misfortune to conduct its business.
 
Did cosmic forces indeed conspire to take Chicago:1968 "off the air."
 
Perhaps other webcomic writer/artist teams should be wary?
 
Gird your loins, Carbonneau!
 
And the rest of you, reading this now, after you've caught up on your Chicago:1968, I'd go check out some great webcomics by fellow writer and fellow traveler, R.S.Carbonneau - The Marvel: A Biography of Jack Parsons and Zoroaster In Aethiopia - before reptilian aliens from the next dimension turn our beloved Internet into the Library of Alexandria, and our high civilization into just another mythical lost continent in the coming dark age.
 
Besides, The Marvel will be seeing print in the new year via Cellar Door Publishing, so, at the very least, read it now for free online before you'll have to buy it at your local comics retailer and read it the old fashioned way.  Of course, the old fashioned way still works best.  And interdimensional reptilian alchemist hackers can't touch our paper and ink comic books.  Not when we've protected them with bags and boards!   

Actually, Tony and I have been quietly uploading new pages since last month, but I held off announcing Chicago:1968's triumphant return for a couple of weeks because I wanted to build up a bit of momentum first.  We just had to shake off a few tweety birds before climbing back into the ring for round 2, is all.
 
PAGE SIXTY and PAGE SIXTY-ONE went up at the end of November, after the Fall, but before we were quite ready to engage the reptiles in hand-to-hand combat.
 
[video] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCSu3h_spls
 
If you're inclined to be skeptical of reptilian agendas and grand conspiracies (as well you should!), how about we just suffice it to say that your favorite creative duo forgot to bring their umbrellas when a sudden shit storm hit; a downpour.
 
But we dealt with it, and now we're back.
 
And glad to be back, too.  We hope our old friends and readers will hop back aboard for the final 1/3rd of our historical epic about a time in our society when passions boiled and the tension was so palpable that the only way to understand it today would be to turn on your TV, right now, flip to a cable news station, and watch it all unfold again in high definition.
 
Excelsior!

[Len Kody]

PAGE SIXTY-FOUR


Haymarket Synchronicity

Classic dramatic device: the ticking clock.  Like a lit fuse on a bomb about to explode, 2010 approaches.
 
In this week's episode we return to a recurring dream that has plagued one of our dramatis personae since page one of this epic.  Inexplicably, for the time being at least, Clark Zomski is haunted by images of the Haymarket Affair.
 
I can think of no better way to introduce the Haymarket Affair to those who may be unfamiliar than a photo montage accompanied by some good old fashioned American puck rock music...
 
Click the image below for Against all Authority and their hit single that rules the top of the anarchist charts, "Haymarket Square" --
 

 
The bloody conflict that erupted on the streets of Chicago between police and the socialists, anarchists and labor leaders in May of 1886 captured the attention and stoked the anxieties of the entire world at the time.  And even today its significance echoes in the May Day celebrations of the international workers' movement.   
 
Indeed, the first of such May Day celebrations was held to commemorate the eight men who were tried and executed by the state for allegedly instigating the deadly riots that fateful spring evening in Haymarket Square (who were utterly innocent, by the way, as some of them weren't even present at the scene of the crime, and the man who actually tossed the bomb "heard 'round the world" to this day remains mysterious and unknown).  All eight were martyred for the cause of the eight hour work day and the two day weekend.  So every wage earner, unionized or not, is currently the beneficiary of the very real peril these men put themselves in to guarantee something so simple as leisure time for American workers who can now connect more deeply with friends and family or engage in personal pursuits.
 
Never take Friday night for granted again.
 
For a little background on the first May Day, here's a great youtube'd Democracy Now! interview of James Green, the author of Death in the Haymarket, from May 1st of 2008 - the video comes in three parts (pt.1)(pt.2)(pt.3)
 
Click the cover for a googlebooks preview --
 

 
It's a pretty good read.  As dramatic, novel-ized history books about late 19th century Chicago go, I liked it better than Devil in the White City.
 
If your thirst for background info on Haymarket Square is not yet slaked, then I encourage you to check out this short, three part PBS doc on the subject, youtube'd for your convenience - (pt.1)(pt.2)(pt.3)
 
Gotta love PBS.  They do everything right.
 
And sharp-eyed Chicago history buffs will notice recently passed icons Leon Despres and Studs Terkel among the documentary's commentators.  Despres, bitter rival of Mayor Richard J. Daley, champion for civil rights and alderman from Obama's own 5th ward, saw his last May Day in 2009, as a matter of fact.  He died this past May 6th, at the age of 101.  No kidding.  And the wound is still raw from Studs' death, too, in October of 2008.  He was a storyteller, oral historian and the very voice of Chicago; he lived here nearly all of his 96 years.  At least they didn't leave the party early.  But big shoulders and towering skylines aside, Chicago is diminished with the loss of these men. 
 
I might hope you're asking yourself by now "so why does Clark keep having these dreams about Haymarket?" or "what are you getting at, connecting 1886 and 1968 like that?"  If so, I can only encourage you to read on, my friends, and enjoy, for all will eventually be revealed.  I assure you.
 
Synchronicities are better experienced than explained, anyhow.  That's how you know they're for real.  And the physics of them are such that they can be neither created nor destroyed.  Take this recent youtube find, for instance, that I stumbled upon earlier this week while preparing to write this blog - it's the first track, Elevator, off an ultra rare LP by a Chicago-based underground band called Haymarket Square.
 
The record, Magic Lantern, was released in 1968.
 
Far out!
 
And the video was posted on youtube in 2008, the year we launched the Chicago:1968 webcomic.
 
Trippy!
 
Posted on December 13, to be exact.  My birthday.
 
Synchronicities abound!
 
I couldn't possibly take credit for making this stuff up, or planning it out ahead of time.  I can only hope to harness its power to make some incredibly radical comics.
 
Stay tuned for 2010.  It's gonna start with a bang!