Indovia Field Division • Storycraft Mission Kit

Comic Cadet Training Box

Enter the world of Ladybird Jenkins and the Time Thieves, where knowledge is fragile, records can be altered, and the only real defense is what you can preserve with your own hands. This box is a story you can read, and a mission you can complete.

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A Hive inspired, Indovia powered creative mission kit.

What’s inside The missing chapter mission Made for Geeks by Geeks Transparency

Built in collaboration with The Hive, a nonprofit community supporting autistic adults through connection, learning, and creative skill building.

Why this exists

“Imagination is not play. It is power.” Ladybird Jenkins

The real origin

Ladybird Jenkins and the Time Thieves is not a concept, it is a world that kept insisting on being built. It grew from years of storywork, art, and research, and then sharpened into something more grounded when I partnered with The Hive.

What I’m teaching

This box teaches storycraft the way real creators use it, but in a form kids can actually finish. Character construction, narrative clarity, scene design, and visual storytelling. The goal is confidence through completion.

Why the mission format matters

Kids do not need another worksheet. They need a reason to care. Indovia gives them one, and the skills attach to the story.

What’s inside the box

The two book system

This is a two book system: one book you read, one book you complete. Together they form a single experience inside the world of Ladybird Jenkins and the Time Thieves.

1) The Story Zine

Ladybird Jenkins and the Time Thieves, a lightly illustrated storybook zine written from my time and inspiration at The Hive. One of the main characters is Ben, a Hive member, and we will be proudly showcasing him as part of the story.

2) The Companion Manual

The Comic Cadet Training Manual, an activity based companion book. This is where the mission happens: prompts, training steps, and all the creative fun that pairs directly with the zine.

The core experience

A chapter of the zine has gone missing. The cadet’s job is to reconstruct it by creating a single scene as a comic page. One scene becomes a real piece of the archive.

Finish line built in

Designed so completion is achievable. Cadets finish with a constructed character, a designed scene, and a finished comic page they can be proud of.

Storycraft tools

Character identity building, story shaping, scene planning, panel design, and visual clarity, taught in a way that feels like an Indovian field assignment.

Made with The Hive

Built with real community collaboration. Not a theme, a practice: meaningful creative work, fair participation, and visible credit.

Artifact styling

Archive artifact styling. Evidence, marks, and the feeling that the story has fingerprints.

Contact April Join Updates

The Missing Chapter Mission

What the cadet does

In the companion manual, the cadet discovers that a chapter of Ladybird Jenkins and the Time Thieves is missing. The cadet does not have to write an entire comic book. The goal is more focused and more teachable: create one scene as a comic page, built with real story structure.

1) Construct the character

Name, codename, role, strengths, weaknesses, and the why behind the character.

2) Shape the scene

Where are we, what’s at stake, what changes by the end, and why this moment matters.

3) Write the beat

A clear, simple story beat that can be translated into panels.

4) Design the panels

Turn the beat into images. What does the reader see, in what order, and how does it read.

5) Complete the reconstruction

Finish the scene and file it back into the archive as the cadet’s recovered chapter page.

Important clarification: when I say one page, I mean one scene. The mission is scene clarity, not page counting.

The Companion Manual

The Companion Manual is where the missing chapter mission lives.

This started as a labor of love, and it still is. The difference now is that it is being built with long term sustainability in mind. Clear credit, clear collaboration, and a commitment to making the work real and finishable for kids.

Made for Geeks by Geeks

The Hive game club crew

This box was built with The Hive’s game club crew, a group of makers who love worlds, systems, stories, and builds. Their fingerprints are all over this project, and they deserve to be visible.

Nathan Taulbee

Core Crew • Writer and Illustrator • Game Club

Noah Thomas

Core Crew • Graphic Designer (Canva) • Game Club

Mitchel Gentry

Core Crew • Build Support • Game Club

Ben Harris

Hive Member • Indovia Contributor • Game Club

Learn about The Hive Contact April

Transparency

What’s true about this project

This project is built with care, collaboration, and visible credit. It is designed to be real, finishable, and worthy of the kids who open it. I’m not interested in performative inclusion. I want creative work that is collaborative, dignified, and built with the people it celebrates.