Chester Comix - Comic books and graphic novels that bring history to life!

Welcome to Chester Comix! Inside this site you'll find fun samples of the way Bentley Boyd uses comix to spark interest in history for reluctant readers! Check what he's drawing now, go with him to weird historical sites across the country, or download a coloring page and put your own words into his drawings! This home page features my most recent news/blog entries. Learn more about my blog. Have fun! --Bentley Boyd

LIBERTY OR DEATH

March 12th, 2025

A few days from now will be the 250^th anniversary of the speech that explained the reason for the American Revolution—15 months before Thomas Jefferson wrote on paper the more formal and legal arguments for the war.

Have you heard anything about this anniversary?

My interest in history was sparked by the national celebration of the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. In 1975 and 1976, the celebration was everywhere across pop culture and media! But now, for the 250^th, I don’t see commemorative plates or big budget TV shows or clothing or toys or any big investment in historic sites from the beginning of our nation.

Perhaps today we are too busy re-fighting the war.

In 2025, social media has little discussion of the anniversary but a lot of debate about the principles of self-government. We are reliving the Revolution, not remembering it. There is little space for memorials when you are consumed by struggles in the present tense. Commemorative concerts and T-shirts happen when there is a safe distance from the fire and danger of revolution.

The Revolution didn’t start with a sudden event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. A lot of economic and social issues grew over many years; some Americans pointed to the growing danger, but others ignored the politics and went about their daily lives. As more American colonists became anxious and fearful that their freedoms were in danger, some tried to argue with the king through existing institutions; other Americans took to the streets for protests, and some of those public protests became violent.

After the resistance had a tea party in Boston in December 1773, Britain’s government passed the Coercive Acts in the spring of 1774. “Coercive” things are meant to control—the opposite of freedom. The king sent warships and Redcoat soldiers to close the port of Boston—a kind of control that is bad for business. (Americans love freedom in business!) Early in 1775, Virginia’s royal governor imitated King George III by posting a British warship in the York River, a few miles from where colonial lawmakers met in Williamsburg.

So the rowdy lawmakers met in Richmond, 60 miles west of the warship and the governor’s royal control. It was time to decide the price of freedom they were willing to pay. Patrick Henry stood to speak on March 23, 1775, and made one of the most accurate predictions an American politician has ever voiced:

“There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable, and let it come. I repeat it, sir: LET IT COME …

“Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace! Peace!’ but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here, idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

“FORBID IT, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!”

Patrick Henry was right. Just four weeks later, colonists fought with Redcoat soldiers in the Battle of Lexington and Concord outside of Boston. The shooting war was on.

250 years ago, Patrick Henry demanded that Americans pay attention. He demanded that freedom lovers prepare to fight for those freedoms.

Now, 250 years later, will we re-enact the choices that brave American patriots made? Or will we side this time with the Loyalists who were their neighbors? About a third of the Americans in 1775 were Loyalists—happy to let a king control their lives. The Revolution became a nasty civil war, neighbor against neighbor, over the ideas of self-government, freedom and justice.

I won’t live to see the 300^th anniversary of the American Revolution. But what we decide during the 250^th will shape all of human history for generations to come.

Posted in History Today | Comments Off on LIBERTY OR DEATH

CIVIL or WAR?

August 25th, 2024

American democracy is not made out of the marble pillars in Washington, D.C.

American democracy is not measured by the strength of our No. 1 economy or our No. 1 military.

And it’s not guaranteed by what the Founders wrote 250 years ago on pieces of paper.

Our self-government is nothing more solid than an idea.

It’s like Tinker Bell: if we believe in our representative government, then it lives on. If we stop believing in it, it fades away among our personal daily distractions of shopping for groceries, answering e-mails and getting the kids to practice.

Many Americans have felt this fragility in the most recent 10 years of American history. I hope it’s some comfort to say: we’ve been here before. History records that our self-government has failed twice since the Declaration of Independence. The first form of our democracy outlined by the Continental Congress failed within 10 years, which caused the redo in Philadelphia in 1787 that gave us the U.S. Constitution. Then our government and society fell apart in the 1850s, and it took a civil war to rededicate what our self-government meant.

Since 1999, I’ve tried to tell historical stories as if the reader is living through them in the present tense. Because no tomorrow is guaranteed. No success is guaranteed. We all have choices to make today that will lead to other choices tomorrow. And then someone else later will look back and call our choices “history.” In 2023 and 2024, it felt time to take a closer look at the choices Americans made in the 1850s that chipped away at our representative democracy until finally someone chose to fire artillery at a U.S. Army fort in South Carolina.

My new “CIVIL or WAR?” is my third Choice Comic and is meant for readers a bit older than my “Civil War, vol. 1” and “Civil War, vol. 2” books speak to. Here is where a middle school or high school student can consider the hard questions that we all still grapple with today: What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States? How big or small should a group of voters be to feel like self-government really answers to what we want? How do we balance the wants of the majority of citizens with the civil rights of the minority of citizens?

I hope you enjoy the storytelling. Because “history” never ends . . .

Posted in Author's Purpose | Comments Off on CIVIL or WAR?

Buckeye Blitz!

December 13th, 2023

I am closing the 20^th anniversary year of Chester Comix LLC with a gift to myself.

In 20 years and 38 books, I’ve covered the big stuff that kids need to know in school. The Civil War! George Washington! World War II! The Civil Rights Movement! Harriet Tubman! I am now free to draw quirkier things and fill in the odd and the less well-known stories between the big stuff. It’s a delicious freedom to draw whatever history interests me the most.

Chester began as a Virginia history storyteller. As I grew the business, the blue crab expanded his range and told a local history in Massachusetts and published a North Carolina history comic. The smartest busines right now would be to work on a state history of California or New York—nice, big markets with lots of well-funded public schools full of teachers who could use a comic about their state history!

But at this anniversary moment, I found that my patriotism for my home state was too strong. It was time to tell the story of Ohio and weave my own story into it. Since I moved back in 2015, it’s been a joy to search out the local details of hundreds of years of Ohio history. I’ve enjoyed wandering through Ohio towns that I never set foot in before. History is always informed by what we see and feel today, and I have also been inspired to do this new book by observing new history unfold over these eight years back in the Buckeye land.

I felt this so strongly that I made myself serve as Chester’s companion this time! I’ve never done that before, but this project was too perfectly personal. One example of that: After I moved back, my hometown newspaper was kind enough to do a profile of me and my historical cartooning; the story ran on the same day that the paper’s front page announced that the second-to-last big factory in my hometown was closing.

Now OHIO: Crossroad of the Nation is published. Will this book sell? Over 20 years, I’ve gotten only one Ohio museum to carry Chester Comix. Will this be the book that cracks open this market?

Here’s the secret: I don’t care! Bad business, I know. But I am already happy that the book exists. I’m sending copies to friends and family. It’s a gift back to all the people who contributed to this wonderful life I’ve had. And it’s a gift to myself. Any sales of the book now will be as delicious as putting a chocolate covering over a ball of peanut butter.

— Hey! I just got an order from a museum in New Concord, Ohio! WOOOOOT!!!

Posted in Author's Purpose, Comix Creation | Comments Off on Buckeye Blitz!

Comic books that bring history to life!