Parade (with Fireworks)
Encyclopedia
Parade is a two-issue comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 mini-series
Limited series
A limited series is a comic book series with a set number of installments. A limited series differs from an ongoing series in that the number of issues is determined before production and it differs from a one shot in that it is composed of multiple issues....

 by Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

 based writer-artist Mike Cavallaro. It was published by Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...

 in Fall 2007
2007 in comics
-January:*January 10: Superman & Batman vs. Aliens & Predator released.*January 24: The Boys is canceled with issue #6.-February:*February 2: Newsarama reports that The Boys has been picked up by Dynamite Entertainment....

.

Publication history

Parade (with Fireworks) was originally a webcomic
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

 published one page at a time, for free, on the Livejournal
LiveJournal
LiveJournal is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal is also the name of the free and open source server software that was designed to run the LiveJournal virtual community....

 community Act-i-vate, but proved popular enough to interest a traditional print-comic publisher, Image Comics
Image Comics
Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...

' ShadowLine
ShadowLine
Shadowline is a partner studio of Image Comics established by Image co-founder Jim Valentino. The name is an homage to Valentino's character, ShadowHawk.-History:...

 imprint, in releasing an edition (with only slight alterations from the original).

According to Cavallaro, the plot is based on the true stories of his own family's history, specifically an event that occurred in his father's home town Maropati
Maropati
Maropati is a comune in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 70 km southwest of Catanzaro and about 50 km northeast of Reggio Calabria...

 in 1923. The character of Paolo is modeled after Cavallaro's paternal grandfather.

The story is part of a projected larger arc titled "Seven Years without the Sun", meant to chronicle a whole host of Cavallaro's family stories passed down by oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...

.

Plot

The story is set in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 between the two world wars. A local man, Paolo, travels to Chicago to open an olive oil business, but returns to his Italian home town due to the violence of the then-gang-infested
Organized crime in Chicago
The following is a timeline of Organized Crime in Chicago.-1910s:*1910 - Chicago police arrest over 200 known Italian gangsters and known Black Hand members in a raid in Little Italy...

 Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

.

Returning home, Paolo gets involved in the conflict between local members of Italy's fascist
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

 NFP
National Fascist Party
The National Fascist Party was an Italian political party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of fascism...

 and his family, which supports the socialist cause. He winds up in hiding after killing one of the belligerent fascists during their violent confrontation with his family on the evening of the Feast of the Epiphany. Paolo later goes on trial for the murder.
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