Billings: Behind the Scenes
by Greg Thelen

Billings, Montana, U.S.A., is known as the Magic City so named for its rapid growth after its founding in 1882 as a railroad town. Today, it is the largest city in the state of Montana and sits as a center for commerce for thousands of people in Southern Montana and Northern Wyoming. Now that I have the book report aspect completed, I can be more personal about Billings.

I moved to Billings in 1997 with my family when I was still in high school. I had only been to Billings a few times before, and its size always thrilled me. One thing you should know about Montana is that we consider any place with a population in five digits to be a "city." We're used to small towns and great distances between them. I had grown accustomed to cities like Great Falls and Butte, but both are much smaller than Billings. So Billings was a "big city" to me.

Now, I've grown into it, and it doesn't seem so "big" anymore. For a while, I was exactly like Chad in the first story, "James Murphy Is My Hero." In fact, a part of Chad still resides in me and many people in Billings. I've seen many close friends leave Billings for the opportunities and culture of real big cities, and every so often, that lure latches onto me. So what made me want to create a webcomic about Billings?

It started back in 2006 with a series of articles by Dirk Manning on Newsarama.com called "Write or Wrong." Like me, he was a writer trying to break into the comic book industry. He started his own webcomic and, more or less, spelled out how to do it. Write an anthology series of short, self-contained stories, and work with many artists to bring them to life. Manning's webcomic, Nightmare World, was a horror anthology, but horror is not a genre I care for. Most anthologies revolve around a central theme or genre (shows like The Twilight Show are perfect examples), and I never like to stay within one theme or genre for very long. After much contemplation, it was apparent to me. It was staring me right in the face. I would create an anthology centered around a place.

That place would obviously be Billings, MT, U.S.A. I could use the Magic City as the backdrop for my stories, sometimes making them the focal point of the stories. This freed me to write in any genre and any theme I could want. One story could be dramatic, another could be funny, another could be just plain weird. You would never know what story would come next, and that created a spark in me.

Of course, the problem with this is that most people in the internets have never been to Billings nor could find it on a map--including my artists! We're not instantly recognizable like New York or London, so that's where this page comes in handy. This page will show side by side pictures of the comics and the city.

I will update this with each story that requires it. Enjoy!

James Murphy Is My Hero
Art by Nick Palazzo