How to Be a Good Chicken: A Comic

A tall figure in a fine overcoat shakes a hen's wing in a sunlit small-town square of chickens; below his coat hem, a fox tail

Written by Milad Ghobadibeygvand, BScN (Western University, 2014)
Zeus Media Comics · Issue #2 · Free to read · About 15 minutes

What this is. A fable in eight chapters, free to read in full, with twenty-two illustrations. The world is chickens and roosters, living like anybody else — shops, schools, bylaws, a brass band on the holidays. Five fox families, in chicken costume, own the newspaper, the television, the history books and the government. Nothing in it is true. Every word of it is invented.

It is about a morning that gets cancelled — not banned, never banned, just organised — one reasonable amendment at a time, until there is nobody left who remembers there was anything there to cancel.

A WORK OF FICTION. The chickens, the roosters, the five houses, the Registry, the Dawn Act, the Deep Warmth Project and the Master Chickens of every country are invented. Any resemblance to any real bird, family, company, office or nation is coincidental. No part of this comic is a prediction. The star is not real.

A flat grey plain covered in fine pale ash, empty to the horizon, with one scorched wooden fence post standing upright

Chapter One

The Morning Arrives at 4:41

Virtue One: A good chicken sleeps soundly, and wakes when the coop wakes.

A small town asleep before dawn seen from a hill, one bare fence post in the foreground and a cold blue-white glow on the eastern horizon

The morning arrived at 4:41, as it does.

No one was awake to receive it.

Close view of the top of an old fence post, with an oval patch worn smooth and pale by long use

The wood on top of that post is worn smooth in one place.

Nobody in the coop can tell you why.

A young rooster asleep on his back in a modest bedroom, a star visible through the window and a framed photograph on the nightstand

Hesper slept the way a good chicken sleeps. Straight through.

He was a rooster, but this had never come up.

He is thirty-one years old. He has four years, one month and six days.

Chapter Two

Donation Day

Virtue Two: A good chicken lays. It is the most honourable thing a bird can do.

A packed festive town square of chickens with a brass band and a long draped table covered in neat rows of white eggs

Donation Day came twice a year and it was everyone's favourite.

Virtue Three: A good chicken donates. What is given freely cannot be said to have been taken.

A hen in her good coat places a single white egg into the hands of an official wearing a ceremonial sash while her chick watches

HeraThere. That's the honourable thing done.

EosWhere does it go?

HeraSomewhere it can do good.

That is Eos. She is six. She has four years, one month and six days.

The Master Chicken thanked the nation personally, on every television in the country. He did this twice a year and he meant it every time. At the back of the platform, behind the bunting, a long unmarked truck pulled away and went east, and nobody watched it go.

Chapter Three

Tea, and a Very Good Biscuit

He arrived at four, which was civil of him, and he had telephoned first, which was civil of him too.

A well-dressed visitor in a hat and long overcoat sits opposite a frail old rooster in a farmhouse parlour, with tea and biscuits between them

Mr. LetheThe Editions Office. It is the least glamorous work in the country and I would not trade it for anything.

ChanticleerYou collect books.

Mr. LetheI preserve books. There is a difference, and it matters to me, which I accept is nobody else's problem.

· · ·

Mr. LetheMy grandmother had a First. Kept it under the stairs like it was money. Wouldn't let me touch it — I was a heavy-handed child and she was not wrong about that.

Mr. LetheAnd when she went, my aunt sold it to a man with a van for eleven and six. Eleven and six. I think about it more than I would like to.

ChanticleerWhat happened to it?

Mr. LetheNo idea. That's rather the trouble, isn't it. Things go and nobody's minding.

· · ·

Mr. LetheCan I ask you something, and you must say if it's rude.

ChanticleerAsk.

Mr. LetheDo you remember the sound?

·Chanticleer holds his cup very steady.

ChanticleerWhat sound.

Mr. LetheNo. Of course not.

Chanticleer is ninety-one. He has four years, two months and nine days.

The old rooster hands a thick cloth-bound book to the visitor, who receives it with both hands

Mr. LetheYou're certain.

ChanticleerIt's no use to me. My grandson doesn't read.

Mr. LetheThey none of them read. It'll be looked after. That I can promise you.

· · ·

Mr. LetheThat's a very good biscuit, by the way. Is that shop?

ChanticleerIt's shop.

Mr. LetheWell, there we are.

The visitor walks to his car with the book under his arm, a fox tail below his coat hem, having stopped to look at a lone fence post

Three paces short of the car he stopped, and turned his head, and looked for a while at the flat top of the post in the long grass, where the wood was worn smooth and pale.

He was the fourth-nicest person Chanticleer had ever met, and Chanticleer thought about the visit warmly for a long time afterwards.

Chapter Four · Thirty Years Earlier

How the Morning Was Ended

Virtue Five: A good chicken is grateful for the quiet.

It began, as these things do, with someone who was genuinely tired.

The Clarion

Mothers ask: must the mornings be so loud?

A drab municipal office where a hen clerk stamps a form while a patient queue of roosters waits with paperwork

The Dawn Act did not forbid anything. It organised it.

Dawn Announcement — Permit Application · Form 1-A

Permitted window: 05:00–05:04
Renewable annually · Fee payable on application
Applications considered on their merits.

Amendment Three

Permits will no longer be issued in residential districts.
Existing permits remain valid until expiry.

Nobody's permit was taken. They expired, and were not renewed, and this was not a decision anybody had to make.

A kindly rooster doctor in a white coat leans forward reassuringly across his desk toward a younger rooster holding his cap in his lap

Virtue Six: A good chicken brings its discomfort to a professional.

And in the eleventh year the urge itself was recognised as a condition, which meant that for the first time, help was available.

HesperIt's not every night. But I come up out of sleep and there's a pressure. Here. Like I've forgotten to do something.

Dr. AsclepiusAny idea what?

HesperNo. That's the stupid part.

Dr. AsclepiusIt isn't stupid at all. It's very common in your build. Your grandfather's generation carried this and got nothing for it.

HesperAnd now?

Dr. AsclepiusNow you'll sleep through by the end of the month.

He felt better immediately, and that was not a lie either.

Virtue Seven: A good chicken does not stand on posts.

A municipal crew calmly loads a row of tall wooden posts onto a flatbed truck while passers-by ignore them and a chick waves

The posts came down that autumn, on grounds of clutter.

One was missed.

Chapter Five

The Quiet Age

A sunny residential street of chickens watering gardens and cycling, while a figure in a fine coat with a fox tail walks away unnoticed

There were more of them in the streets that year than the year before.

They were very well dressed and everybody liked them.

· · ·

NeighbourFewer chicks in the class photo this year.

HeraIs there?

NeighbourMight be the light.

HeraMight be.

~~Virtue Nine: A good chicken does not count.~~Virtue Nine has been withdrawn from the Fourth Edition.

Virtue Four: A good chicken does not repeat what is not in the current edition.

The Quiet Age — A History for Young Birds · Third Edition

rooster (n., archaic) — a folk term, formerly applied to certain male birds. Now understood to have described a temperament rather than a kind. There is no evidence that any bird ever made a sound at dawn. The idea appears to have been a rural story.

EosMy grandfather's book has a picture of a bird standing on a post with his head back.

ClioWhich edition, dear?

EosIt doesn't say.

ClioThen it isn't one.

Clio taught the Third Edition faithfully and well, and she was a good teacher. After class she tidied, and her hand rested for a moment on a much older book at the bottom of the shelf, behind the new ones, and she did not take it out. Her face was not guilty. It was tired.

She had read the First. She is fifty-four, and she has two years and a season.

Virtue Eight: A good chicken trusts the Master Chicken of its country, who is chosen from among us.

Four panels showing national leaders addressing adoring crowds in four different countries, each wearing the identical charcoal overcoat

The Master Chicken was a chicken. This mattered enormously, and was said often.

Every country had a Master Chicken.

Every Master Chicken had the same tailor.

· · ·

Basileus— and I'd want to see the eastern figures myself before I sign, you understand, it's my name on it —

The visitorOf course.

·The folder is set down on a side table by the door on the way out. It is not opened.

A civic ribbon-cutting before the mouth of an enormous sloped concrete shaft driven into a hillside, with a delighted crowd and a brass band

The Deep Warmth Project

Warm winters for every coop.

The largest public work in the history of the coop. It employed forty thousand birds and everybody was grateful.

First workerHow deep is it going?

Second workerDeeper than that.

First workerFor warmth.

Second workerWarmth's expensive.

Virtue Ten: A good chicken admires the new star.

Dozens of chickens and chicks sit out on their rooftops at night wrapped in blankets, all looking up at one brilliant star

It had arrived three years earlier and it got a little brighter each season, and it was, without argument, the loveliest thing that had ever happened to them.

The Clarion

A gift in the sky — astronomers say: simply enjoy it

EosIs it coming closer?

HeraIt's getting brighter, love. That's not the same thing.

EosHow do you know?

HeraBecause somebody would have said.

Chapter Six

Tomorrow

A very old rooster stands alone at dusk beside a lone fence post with his head tipped back and his beak open in the silent yard

HesperGranddad. It's cold.

ChanticleerI used to get up on that.

HesperI know you did.

ChanticleerEveryone did. The whole line of us, all the way down the valley, one after the other, so it went across the country like a — like a —

HesperCome inside.

· · ·

He remembered the shape of it. Not the sound. The shape.

·A small, dry cluck.

He apologised to nobody in particular and went inside for his tea.

Virtue Eleven: A good chicken does not follow the trucks.

They went east at four in the morning, every morning, and if you were awake you could hear them.

Almost nobody was awake.

· · ·

EosWhere do the eggs go?

HeraTo the Registry.

EosAnd then?

HeraAnd then they do the most honourable thing a bird can do.

EosThat's not an answer, that's the sentence from school.

HeraEat your breakfast.

· · ·

EosIt's a two-hour walk. We'd be back before anyone got up.

A chickWhen?

EosTomorrow.

They agreed on tomorrow, and shook on it, and went home for supper.

Chapter Seven

Thirty-Nine Days

The interior of an immense hatchery, steel racks of thousands of eggs receding under banks of hard blue-white light, two tiny workers on a gantry

Under that light an egg does not take twenty-one days.

It takes nine.

It had taken sixty birds to run, once. Then forty. Then the two on the walkway, who were mostly there in case of a fire.

First attendantYou on Saturday?

Second attendantI'm on Saturday.

First attendantIt's always you on Saturday.

Second attendantIt is.

· · ·

A tray goes in under the light.

Nine days later something small and wet stands up on it, and opens its beak, and finds that the room is already very loud and nobody is listening.

The tray is wiped.

The tray goes back.

· · ·

The trucks went back west before six, loaded, and the loading was quiet work, because nothing in the crates was old enough yet to make a sound.

In a private dining room a long way from any of this, five places are set. Good wood. Warm lamps. Decanters. By the door, on a coat rack, five chicken costumes hang in a neat row at the end of a shift, heads slack, eyes empty.

Five families. Five houses. Lethe, Moloch, Nyx, Kronos, Mammon.

Nobody had voted for any of it and nobody had ever had to stop them, and if you had asked, they would have told you honestly that they did not enjoy it especially.

· · ·

A cover is lifted.

The plates are small. They have to be.

It was simply what the light was for.

A vast finished chamber deep underground with fine rugs, armchairs, a library and provision racks beneath a huge ribbed concrete dome

Projected Surface Conditions

Year 1 · Year 5 · Year 20
Margin: 39 days

A voiceThirty-nine days.

A voiceThirty-nine is fine.

A voiceAnd the Registry? The Donation, the editions, all of it — do we run any of it to the end?

A voiceWhy would we. None of it will be necessary afterwards.

A voiceIt was a great deal of work.

A voiceIt was. And we won't need a single one of them again.

By the door, five chicken costumes hang on a coat rack in a neat row, heads slack, empty eyes. They will not be needed again either.

They had known for three years and eleven months, and they had not been afraid for a single day of it.

They never seriously considered telling anyone. Not because it would have caused a panic — though it would have — but because the coop had only ever been a way of getting through the time before this, and the time before this was nearly over.

Chapter Eight

4:41

Virtue Twelve: A good chicken is not afraid, because there is nothing to be afraid of.

The same sleeping town at dawn, lit by a hard white glare on the horizon that is not the sunrise, every rooftop edged in impossible light

The morning arrived at 4:41, as it does.

Her boots were by the door, laced and set out ready. She was twenty minutes from her alarm. In the yard at the eastern edge of town the old post stood with nothing on it, and the white edge came along the top of the wood. Hesper slept on his back, mouth slightly open, thoroughly comfortable.

She had laid her boots out the night before.

She was going to go and look.

· · ·

Thirty-nine days was the wrong number.

There had never been a right one.

· · ·

Hesper: four years, one month, six days.

Eos: four years, one month, six days.

Chanticleer: four years, two months, nine days.

Clio: two years and a season.

4:41.

The grey ash plain again, empty to the horizon, with the single scorched fence post still standing upright

Next Issue

On sale —

HOW TO BE A GOOD CHICKEN is a work of fiction. The chickens, the roosters, the five houses, the Registry, the Dawn Act, the Deep Warmth Project and the Master Chickens of every country are invented, and any resemblance to any real bird, family, company, office or nation is coincidental. No part of this comic is a prediction. The star is not real.

Zeus Media Comics · Issue #2 · Printed in Canada

Questions readers ask

What is How to Be a Good Chicken about?

It is a fable told in eight chapters. The world is populated by chickens and roosters who live like ordinary townspeople. Five fox families, dressed in chicken costume, quietly own the newspaper, the television, the history books and the government. Over about thirty years the rooster's crow at dawn is regulated, licensed, restricted and finally treated as a medical condition, until it is cut from the schoolbooks entirely and nobody can remember that roosters ever made a sound at all.

Is How to Be a Good Chicken based on real events?

No. It is entirely fiction. There is no factual appendix, no real country is named anywhere in the story, and none of the characters — the five houses, the Registry, the Dawn Act, the Master Chickens — corresponds to any real person, family, company, office or nation. It is a fable, and it is meant to be read as one.

What does the crow stand for in the story?

The story never says, and that is deliberate. The crow is simply what a rooster is for. Readers have taken it as the free press, as dissent, as memory, as faith, as duty, as the alarm somebody raises when something is wrong. The fable does not choose for you, and it does not explain itself at any point.

How long does it take to read?

About fifteen minutes. It runs to roughly 3,000 words across eight chapters with twenty-two full illustrations. It is free to read in full on this page, with no paywall, no email signup and no account required.

Is it suitable for children?

It is drawn in a warm mid-century storybook style and contains no violence on the page, no gore and no explicit content. But it is written for adults. It is a bleak story with an unhappy ending and no moral stated at the close, and younger readers will likely find it puzzling rather than frightening. Roughly thirteen and up, or read together.

Who wrote and illustrated it?

It was written by Milad Ghobadibeygvand, BScN (Western University, 2014), co-founder of Zeus eBikes Canada, and published on The Bookshelf — the company's fiction and long-form shelf. The illustrations were produced with Playcut.ai. It is the second issue of Zeus Media Comics, following How to Negotiate with the United States.

Why is an e-bike company publishing a fable?

Zeus eBikes Canada runs a civic shelf called The Bookshelf alongside its buying guides, because the company's stated mission is to educate and to tell the truth about the market Canadians actually live in. Pieces on that shelf carry no product recommendations and nothing is for sale inside them. This one mentions no bicycle of any kind.

More from The Bookshelf

How to Negotiate with the United States — Zeus Media Comics, Issue #1. A satirical graphic novella about a negotiation that never ends, with a fully sourced factual appendix.
Beaver Berry: The Ungovernable — a painted graphic novella about occupation, couriers and the people who keep getting through.
Welcome to Earth: Chapter One — the opening chapter of a field guide to the human animal, written for a reader who has never met one.
Welcome to Earth: Chapter Two — The Chassis — why the body keeps a record the mind would rather not.

Written by Milad Ghobadibeygvand, BScN (Western University, 2014) · Co-founder, Zeus eBikes Canada
Visuals created by Playcut.ai
Zeus Media Comics · Issue #2 · First printing: August 11, 2026

How to Be a Good Chicken

The Morning Arrives at 4:41

Donation Day

Tea, and a Very Good Biscuit

How the Morning Was Ended

The Quiet Age

Tomorrow

Thirty-Nine Days

4:41

Questions readers ask

What is How to Be a Good Chicken about?

Is How to Be a Good Chicken based on real events?

What does the crow stand for in the story?

How long does it take to read?

Is it suitable for children?

Who wrote and illustrated it?

Why is an e-bike company publishing a fable?

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