Chicago-born artist Hebru Brantley is back for a massive, new installation in Pilsen

The first time Hebru Brantley breathed life into his iconic characters “Flyboy” and “Lil Mama,” he did it on the back of a legal pad.

The Chicago-born artist was back home visiting from Atlanta, where he was studying at Clark Atlanta University. He didn’t have his sketchbook, so he used the cardboard flap of the legal pad to pour out the contents of his imagination.

“They were big, bug-eyed boys,” Brantley says. “They were more reminiscent of traditional graffiti characters.”

Flyboy and Lil Mama were born of Brantley’s idea of a cartoon that history forgot, inspired by the Tuskegee Airmen. Over the years these aviator goggle-wearing characters, who can fly, began to reflect what kids today would look like who embody the spirit and essence of those African American heroes.

A Hebru Brantley mural at 1407 N. Milwaukee Ave. Annie Costabile / Sun-Times

Brantley, who started out as a graffiti artist in Chicago, has kept evolving over the course of a career that carries multiple hyphenates, including owner-founder of the production company Angry Hero Entertainment.

Flyboy and Lil Mama’s Instagram and Twitter pages — @FlyBoyUniverse — which have been up since June, together have massed more than 10,000 followers.

The characters took flight when Brantley started sharing them throughout Chicago more than a decade ago. The first public wall where they existed was inside the Chicago streetwear boutique Leaders 1354.

Since then, Brantley has painted murals featuring Flyboy and Lil Mama across the city, from Rogers Park to Wicker Park - and beyond. His characters also have accompanied him for solo shows, public works and exhibitions in London, Switzerland, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle. Collectors of his work include Beyonce and Jay-Z, LeBron James, Chance the Rapper and Rahm Emanuel.

Brantley says the characters were inspired by his consumption of comics growing up. Flipping through the pages of his favorite comic books as a kid on the South Side, Brantley, who is African American, says he didn’t see himself in the faces of the heroes whose stories he fell in love with. And he didn’t find representation in their creators either.

“All of this is very personal to me,” Brantley says. “I do take into account the little me’s. I say this all the time, but I never had a ‘me’ growing up. I didn’t have a compass to direct me towards a person to say, ‘Well, they did this thing; I can do this thing.’”

Chicago will get the first glimpse inside the world that’s existed in Brantley’s mind for some time in his latest installation, the 6,000-square-foot “Nevermore Park,” opening Oct. 24 at 949 W. 16th St. in Pilsen.

A sculpture of Lil Mama’s head fills the center room in Nevermore Park. Annie Costabile / Sun-Times

The space will hold 60 to 80 people at a time and should take about an hour to walk through.

Brantley, now living in Los Angeles, says it was important to him that Chicago was where Nevermore Park debuts because of how the city has been overlooked and passed up by the art and creative world in the past. He wanted to bring Nevermore Park to life in the city responsible for its creation.

The immersive experience takes people through a tunnel that connects the real world to the fictional world of Nevermore, an interactive space that accentuates marginalized cultures and heroes.

Nevermore Park submerges guests in the loose narrative of Flyboy and Lil Mama. It’s a world that highlights bits of U.S. history, especially a nod to the Tuskegee Airmen. And people will notice the Chicago history attached to Nevermore, too, Brantley says.

“Black, brown and otherwise have had interesting stories, tales and parts of their culture that have been constant,” he says. “This has not been something that’s just now here. We’re in a space now where we’re actually allowed to stand on the stage and tell those stories.”

Work on Nevermore Park began June 24, and the installation was finished Oct. 13.

The cloud room is one of Hebru Brantley’s favorite spaces in Nevermore Park. Amy Lombard

Brantley hopes to take these characters and their world into television, film and print, too. He signed a script deal with Sony Pictures a year ago. Though he won’t say exactly what he plans, he does say: “I would hope that Nevermore would be a preview or precursor to something else. I’m always really cautious about saying what that thing is. I definitely have hopes and intention for what that thing could be.”