Could Comic Books Become A Family Affair?

When I was doing my research about the comic book industry the thing that broke my heart the most was hearing the stories of Dads who desperately wanted to share their love of comic books with their children. Dads who couldn’t share their love of reading with their children because the comics today don’t feature the same all-ages content they grew up with as a child.

I have read and heard countless stories from fathers who said they were willing to introduce comic books to their children. But because the content in comics today features extremely graphic violence nudity, (full frontal in some cases) sexual situations and characters using profanity, they can’t share the joy of comic books and the gateway to reading with them.

Due to the extreme and graphic content in today’s comics, many a father has said they had to give their kids Independent reader fiction or young adult fiction. While the Independent Reader and Young Adult fiction markets have exploded over the last two decades with million-selling franchises like Harry Potter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Twilight, the comic book industry has been mired in a slump it can’t seem to shake itself out of.

From the 1930s up until the late 1990s, the primary readers of comic books were children. The low price was cheap enough for a child to pay for out of their allowances, and the material featured characters in fantastic adventures they could relate to. Today a comic book costs $4 and features characters in stories no one but the most diehard comic book fan can understand.

I believe the key to reversing the two decade slump the comic book industry will be getting kids reading comic books again. This is the biggest baby boom since the 1940’s and not a single comic book publisher has made a serious effort to capitalize on it. Over twenty million kids are growing up with chapter books and passing comic books by.

Today, there are two generations of fathers who grew up with comics. They’re eager to share their experiences with their children. These customers want to turn comic books into a family affair. The only thing stopping them are comic book publishers who continue to cater to an over 35 crowd instead of the growing audience of younger readers.

Most American publishers are still trying to produce “dark” type comics featuring brooding heroes and ultra-violent adventures. While these types of comics were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, it’s clear their time has passed. No one wants to share death, violence, sex and coarse language with their young children in 2013.

Fathers trying to introduce comics to their kids want the kinds of characters they grew up with, heroes that taught right-and-wrong in a Black and white way. Worlds of clear good and evil and clear moral messages. Comics that are fun to read and fun to share. Books that are so enjoyable that people read them until the covers fall off.

But they can’t find those comics on the shelves at comic shops or at the bookstores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Outside of Archie Comics and Manga, there aren’t many comic options for young readers in the comic book sections. Most of the comics today are targeted towards older readers. Most publishers today think 18 is the age kids should start reading comic books.

I’d like to bring that age back down to 13. 10 if possible. And create easy-to-read content for kids 4-7. Writing for younger readers doesn’t mean dumbed down. A good writer can write the same types of rich complex stories, but tailor the content where it’s tastefully appropriate for younger readers and their parents too.

I’d love to see comics become a family affair. When I hear the stories of Dads (and some moms) who desperately want to share comics with their children I wish I was the editor-in-chief at Marvel or DC Comics or had the resources to start-up my own comic book company. I’d make every effort to produce comics so those parents could share comic books with their kids and pass their love of comic books down to their children. I believe there can be comic books for everyone. There’s nothing that makes me happier than seeing a child with a comic book. Because that child has just entered the gateway to reading.

Robin The Boy Wonder is Dead Again…*YAWN*

All the media outlets are reporting the death of Damian Wayne, the fourth Robin the Boy Wonder. It’s supposed to be a big national event.

Whatever.

Another meaningless death of a fictional character. It’s like they happen every couple of months these days in comics.

Didn’t we just have the funeral for Professor X for the third time a couple of months ago? I guess Shawn should have his black suit pressed to go to the funeral of this imaginary character.

But he’ll be staying home and watching the game that day. As I’ve stated before, comic book character deaths are not news. They’re just a last desperate grab for attention by comic book publishers when sales are low.

This isn’t the first time a Robin has died. Way back in 1988 when Shawn was in high school, Jason Todd, the second Robin died after he came out on the losing end of a 900 number poll. Beaten to death with a crowbar and blown up in the Middle East. We all thought that was going to stick when fans embraced Tim Drake in the Robin role in 1989.

But when DC Comics got desperate for a story in 2004, they brought his lame ass back through Superboy Prime punching reality. A cop-out explanation for bringing back a loser ass character no one liked 20 years ago. And most people still don’t like now.

But on hearing about this allegedly sad news of the Boy Wonder’s demise the speculators are out trying to capitalize on the national frenzy. These thirsty Simps are hurrying to the comic shop hoping to buy up all the issues in the hopes they’ll turn into a huge payoff. Some are trying to make it look like people are going to pay $20 for this big event comic.

Don’t believe the hype. And don’t fall for the game.

Shawn’s here to tell you to keep your money in your wallet. There’s no gold at the end of that Yellow Brick Road. Just Dan Didio, Jim Lee, Bob Harrass, and all of DC Comics Editorial laughing at you. That’s right the joke is on YOU.

You plunk down your $4 and buy multiple copies of a comic think you’re going to get a big return for your investment a few years later.

Only to find out the very comics you paid $4 today for are now worth a quarter or less. Shawn has a crate full of comics from the Death of Superman era that are worth about that much now. How long has Superman been back to life? Twenty years now and counting.

Death in comics used to mean something 40 years ago. But today it’s just a gimmick to get a short-term sales spike for a comic book publisher. When all the fanfare of the “death” of a popular character is over and sales are at an all-time low again, they bring them back like they did with Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash.

Comic book characters die and come back to life like Wile. E. Coyote in a Looney Tunes cartoon these days. Death is the one thing that doesn’t stick in a Marvel or DC Comic anymore. Captain America died five years ago. Batman has died twice in the last couple of years. And twenty years ago the death of Superman was one of the events that triggered the collapse of the comic book industry.

As a long time comic reader and former comic collector I’m urging everyone not to go running down to the comic shop to buy that issue where the fourth Robin the Boy Wonder Dies for the first time. This comic isn’t going to be worth anything. In six months it’ll be reprinted in a trade paperback. Six months later it’ll be reprinted in a hardcover omnibus. And in a year or two when sales of comics hit an all-time low or when writers paint themselves into a corner Damian Wayne will be back in the land of living comic book characters.

And the only thing you’ll be out is $4. Don’t be a sucker. Save your money and don’t waste your time. Maybe if enough people stopped spending money on these “Events” comic book writers would actually take the time to write a real story that means something for once.

Shawn's thoughts on the show Scandal

I’ve never watched the show Scandal. I never will watch the show Scandal. And I never plan to watch the show Scandal in my life.

Scandal may be made by an African American and feature an African-American actress in the lead. But it promotes the same old White Supremacy to the masses.

As a Black man who believes in Black pride and supports Black-on-Black love, I cannot endorse or support the TV show Scandal. I don’t care if the show was created by a Black woman and stars a Black actress in the lead. I cannot stand behind this show for the same reason I cannot endorse Lee Daniels films like Monster’s Ball, and Precious. I do not support the values promoted by this program or the negative misrepresentation of Black people in it.

There’s nothing scandalous about Scandal. What transpires in every episode of Scandal is something that’s been going on since the earliest days of United States history. Black women like Sally Hemmings have been Negro Bed Wenches for White Slave masters since slavery. There’s nothing special about this program for Black women to take time out of their lives to watch it every Thursday night.

An educated Black woman having an affair with the President? As I see it, it seems she’s not too educated if she doesn’t understand her history enough to know the history of the Negro Bed Wench. And if she’s not smart enough to know her history then she deserves to experience the same fate as those women.

Which was abandoned by their White Masters once another younger prettier piece of Black ass came along. Once he abandoned her, she just became a prostitute selling her body for any man that would have her.

If anything, Scandal is just the sexual fantasy of a Handkerchief headed Sista broadcast for the world to see. Someone deluded into believing that White men see Black women as attractive.

When this has never been true. The Black woman has ALWAYS been at the BOTTOM in terms of desirability when it comes to White Men. If anything this show drives the image of the Black woman deeper into the ground.

The irony is that in the attempts to present a Black woman as desirable to a White Man, Scandal shows me that Black women sell themselves short. Why can’t we get a show depicting Black-on-Black love? In an age where we have a Black man in the White House married to a Black woman, why present this coonery as entertainment? Why can’t we get a show featuring a Black man and a Black woman loving and caring about each other like I grew up with? Why can’t the brothers and sisters of this generation have their own Cosby Show? Why do they have to see their Black woman as a WHORE?

Is the best ABC TV can do is present a Black woman as the President’s mistress? Why not give us a show featuring a Black woman as a supreme Court justice? Why not give us a show about a Black female Secretary of State? Why not give us a show about a Black female president of the United States?

Back in 2003 ABC gave us a show about a White Female President called Commander in Chief. Geena Davis was allowed to play the President of the United States on TV. And last year Julia Louis-Dreyfus currently plays the Vice president on the cable show Veep.

But all a Black woman sees another Black woman on TV is as the President’s mistress. The White man’s whore. The Strong independent Black woman dependent on Uncle Sam to take care of her.

*FACEPALM*

At the end of the day, Scandal isn’t scandalous. It just promotes the racist stereotype of Black woman as the Jezebel, a sexually promiscuous woman with no morals or values who will fuck anyone just to get ahead. Another program in the long line of American media mainstreaming this racist stereotype for another generation of little Black girls as a norm.

I am deeply disappointed in Kerry Washington. She’s following in the footsteps of Halle Berry as the White man’s whore. Thinking starring in this show and debasing and degrading herself by starring in Django Unchained is going to get her career moving forward and get Hollywood executives to take her seriously.

Only she doesn’t understand that her career will fall into the same ditch Halle Berry’s is in currently. After degrading herself by starring in Lee Daniels’ Monsters’ Ball and participating in that graphic sex scene that legitimized and mainstreamed the image of the Black Jezebel for a new generation of Black girls, her career went downhill. After starring in a series of roles where her sexuality was at the forefront she’s faded to the background. And all over the world laughingstock people now see Halle Berry as a joke. She’s now known more for being a minstrel Baby Mama in some ghetto drama with her Baby Daddy than as a serious actress.

Sure Halle Berry won the Oscar. She got a handful of accolades from White America for a moment or two. But at the end of the day Halle Berry lost her soul. In the bigger picture, that gold statue and fifteen minutes of fame weren’t worth the loss of her dignity and self-respect.

And I’m deeply disgusted in the show’s creator Shondra Rhimes. As an executive producer, Rhimes knows how hard it is to get anything featuring Black actresses greenlit. So she creates a show perpetuating the worst stereotypes about Black women for a fellow Sista to star in?

This bitch needs to be slapped in the face.

Shondra Rhimes has the money and the power to create any television show and promote any image of Black people to the masses. But instead of wielding the great power given to her in a responsible manner, she uses it to further oppress her people by promoting the very racist stereotypes her ancestors fought against.

Shondra Rhimes may think she has it made right now. She may think she’s on top of the world with her millions, studio contracts, top-rated shows, and her White husband. But like The Negro Bed Wench who serves her White Masters, soon very soon, she will find out those White Supremacists she’s colluded with will betray her.

And when her husband takes her to court to divorce her, she’ll suffer the same fate as Tonya Pinkins. Google her and learn what happens to Negro Bed Wenches in the 21st Century.

If anything, the show Scandal Shows me how much Black Hollywood has sold out. How disconnected it is from Black America. With all this Black money financing films and television shows, we should be in a second golden age like that of the mid 1980’s through the 1990’s when we saw numerous positive images of Black people in Television and film. But in between sellouts like Lee Daniels, Shondra Rhimes, and Tyler Perry, Black entertainment is regressing instead of progressing. The films and television shows produced by these three feature stereotypical racist images that would be more acceptable in the 1930’s than in 2013.

Moreover, the response to Scandal shows me how out of touch and disconnected Black people are to their own condition as human beings. In 1998, UPN tried to put on a show called The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer, featuring Chi McBride As a shuffling servant of President Abraham Lincoln. The Black community at the time spoke out and protested against the show. After four episodes aired, it was cancelled due to low ratings.

But today the same Black audience some 15 years later has become so brainwashed by racist movies like Monster’s Ball, Precious, and The Help that it’s become indifferent and apathetic to degrading images of Black people, especially degrading images of Black women.. The saddest part about the popularity of Scandal is that some Black women even schedule their weeks around watching a program which perpetuates the very racist stereotypes used to oppress them.

Brothers and sisters, Shawn urges you to skip the show Scandal. It’s just more of the same racist nonsense White Supremacists have been selling about Black people for the past 400 years in a brand new wrapper with designer clothes.

If you want to read a movie script about a Black woman who is strong, proud and stands on her own two feet, read All About Marilyn. In that story I show you what happens to Black actresses in Hollywood at the end of the day. Especially the ones who have the pride, dignity and respect to be their own woman instead of the White Man’s whore.

And if you want to read a TV script featuring a positive pretty Black teenager in Beverly Hills, Check out the First Season of All About Nikki. If we had more shows like Nikki on the air, maybe more little Black girls would aspire to be something other than a sex object.

Calling on All African-Americans! Take Back Your Children or Suffer the Consequences-Guest Blog By Lawrence Cherry

Our children are killing each other in episodes of gun violence, precipitated by their participation in gangs, the drug game, and/or thug life. Our children are becoming parents when they should be thinking about graduating from high school. A good number of our children are being processed through the criminal justice system as offenders from tender ages and come out even more hardened and jaded than when they went in. When I speak to them or overhear their conversations as I travel throughout the city, I can’t help but feel sorrow.

 They look up to pop stars and athletes, many of which are known for behaving badly. Our twenty-something sisters and brothers don’t even want to date each other anymore. Young black men are trashing sistas and praising white women. Young black women are trashing brothas and looking for white guys. (If I were white I wouldn’t want anything to do with someone who wants me solely for my color, and I definitely wouldn’t want someone who hated him/herself.) They get their information from the media and the Madison Avenue advertising machine. Our children are being duped by the glitz of Hollywood, and the music machine that only wants to use them to buy consumer products, keep them trapped in their self-hate and despair to continue the legacy of violence and physical and spiritual poverty.

I hear our children say they don’t care about school – that doing well in school is “acting white”, and it makes me wonder, “do they know that many of their ancestors risked their lives to learn how to read and write? Do they know about the lies that were perpetrated against their people?  We were slandered and libeled: people saying that we were akin to monkeys and that we could not learn. Do they know about the men and women of color who sacrificed themselves so their generation could go to school, let alone one of their choice? I hear our young women talk about how they degrade themselves for the pleasure of someone who could care less about them.

I keep hearing about Beyonce, Rihanna, Nikki Minaj, Lady Gaga and the like being ‘cool’. They admire them because as I heard one girl say, “they don’t care about what people think”. It makes me curious to know if they know anything about Ida B. Wells Barnett who stood up to speak out about how our black men were being lynched during a time when she could have been lynched herself for her crusades. Ida didn’t care about what people thought, either. I wonder if they understand that it takes a lot more courage to stand up for what is right, than to dance naked on stage. When Biggie Smalls died, I heard a young man say that he was “our generation’s Martin Luther King”. While his death was sad and tragic, I could not understand the analogy. What had Biggie sacrificed for him? When did Biggie go to jail for fighting injustice? What had he ever written or said publicly to defend or promote our issues? Who did he stand up to? It certainly wasn’t the record companies that were using him to advertise the “thug life” that eventually led to his demise.

 I hear kids say “black people ain’t never did nothin’”, and I want to tell them about the Ancient Egyptian kings who innovated mathematics who were black, I want to tell them that the first university was in Timbuktu (Africa). I want to tell them about Garret A. Morgan who invented the traffic light. I want to tell them about Louis Lattimer who created the filament for the light bulb. I want to tell them about George Washington Carver, Charles Richard Drew and the long list of African-American pioneers and inventors that helped to make this country what it is. It saddens me to hear our children speak.


What really hurts is to hear them talk about God. They have no respect for God. They think God is white or that Christianity is a “white religion” or a “slave religion”. I don’t understand how they can say that. Don’t they know how God worked through the church to deliver our people? It was our faith in God that gave us the courage and the strength to endure slavery.  The abolitionist movement came about because God enlightened some people to understand that all people were made in his image and deserved the dignity and right to be free. It was God working through people in the church that brought literacy to the ex-slaves. Many of our churches helped to build and house schools for our people. Most of our power came from our faith in God and from our assembling ourselves together in the church. Men and women of the church played a huge part in organizing the civil rights movement (SCLC = Southern Christian Leadership Conference and it was headed by Martin Luther King, Jr.). Our children do not understand the deliverance that was brought to us as African Americans. Our God heard our cry and delivered us from slavery and the social apartheid called ‘segregation’.


Our children are ignorant of our history. If they don’t know their history, they can’t possibly know who they are. Instead the have the Madison Avenue machine, the media, and Hollywood telling them who they are. These machines enlist unwitting recording artists, athletes, actors, and the like to send the message to our young people that “black is whack.”  This is why our children put themselves down and they put each other down. Every young man is a ‘nigga’, nowadays. Every young girl is a "h**" or a "b****". I’m not even going to mention the other names I’ve heard young people calling each other. When you call them on it, they always say ‘it’s not serious. That’s just the way we talk. It’s friendly’.  That’s like saying words like ‘jerk’ and ‘moron’ are pet names that we give our friends. When I was a teen it was ‘hey, man!’ or ‘catch you later, girlfriend’. Men were called ‘brothas’ and women were ‘sistas’. We gave each other respect. Now there is no respect. There is only self-hate.


Why don’t our children know our history? Why do they not know who they are in Christ? What happened to those church mothers and church fathers that participated in the civil rights movement? What happened to Big Momma and Big Poppa who kept vanguard over the family Bible that had everyone’s birth date and kept the record of the family tree? What happened to the old griots that wouldn’t let you forget what happened? What happened to the family reunions? What happened to our people?


I think there were a number of things that happened. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, we thought we had arrived and got lazy. We stopped cultivating our culture and started working on accumulating money. All of a sudden black businessmen just wanted to be businessmen, black artists just wanted to be artists. We went from working together to not wanting to be seen with each other. We stopped networking with each other. When we got money, we didn’t use it to build the culture and capital, we used it for conspicuous consumption. Just go to the library and look through an archived 1980’s Ebony magazine and you’ll see what I mean.

Instead of building black industry, black entrepreneurs sold their lucrative businesses to corporate giants so they could live the high life and live in a mansion. Forget about leaving something for the next generation to build on. Everything became about the dollar and showcasing how many of them you had. We thought money alone could buy our children a better life than we had. Black women began drinking the poisoned kool-aid of the women’s right’s movement, buying into the false notion that freedom from male hegemony lay in sexual promiscuity. Being a single mother became a symbol of empowerment, rather than a circumstance to be avoided or overcome.


Black men drank the white man’s poisoned kool-aid of shallow materialism in which success is measured by how much is in your bank account. Our men (and some of our women) also got caught up in the liberal intelligensia cult in which intellectual knowledge is not utilized for the good of society, but worshiped for its own sake. This bred a new breed of civil rights activism, which I like to call ‘arm chair’ activism. Arm chair activists tour the university circuit, displaying their erudition with the hope that they can get money from the mainstream to write books in which they complain about the state of Afro-America. The arm chair activist has little to no intention to change things because he likes being a part of a “talented tenth”.

Finally a lot of us thought we had achieved full parity with whites and started copying their vices as well as their virtues believing the repercussions would be the same. I know of black people who started thinking, “Well, if white people do drugs and can be productive, so can I.” They foolishly didn’t get that this country still holds a double standard when it comes to African-Americans. A white drug addict can be rehabbed and re-integrated into society. A black drug addict will be demonized and targeted for incarceration. Proof came when crack exploded in our community and the Rockefeller Drug Laws were enacted. So much for parity.


In our quest for material wealth, we lost who we were and we lost our children. Instead of giving them our time, we gave them to daycare, or to some stranger who abused them. They wanted our love and we gave them the x-box, sneakers, cell phones, computers, designer jeans and the like. They wanted to know who they were and we left them in front of a screen with a half-naked black woman dancing on a stage or we took them to a movie that showed a black man killing another black man. We never thought about taking them to the library. They came to us to learn about the meaning of life and instead of leading them to the Bible, we lead them nowhere. Instead of a father, we gave them a ‘baby daddy’. The world beats them down, tells them they can’t do anything and they’re nothing, and instead of encourage our children, we agree with those that discourage them. Instead of a foundation of a strong African-American identity, we gave them self-hatred. The Bible says that “he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11:29). We have destroyed our own house and are committing a genocide against our own. If we don’t stop what we are doing, there won’t be an African-American people.


We can turn this around and it has to start now. This second. Don’t put off what you need to do. Start now.  It starts with putting our children first.

Putting our children first
Some people want to bandy about a phrase I heard on a talk show one time. It was said that the mother should put her needs ahead of her child. If mom isn’t happy, no one else will be. I don’t know who was the first one to say this, but whoever it was, they were wrong. If we go to the Bible, we learn that God put his children first when he sent his only begotten Son to die for our sins, so that we could receive eternal life. So if God put us first, why shouldn’t we put our children’s needs ahead of ours. This doesn’t mean the mother shouldn’t take care of herself. It means that she puts the welfare of her child before her own selfish desires.


A lot of us are doing whatever we want to do and we’re not thinking about how it impacts our children. Our ladies want a man so they’re not lonely, but if that man is abusing you or your child he needs to go. A lot of people want nice things, but if those nice things mean you have to work 14-16 hours a week and you never see your child but for an hour a day, you need to change your priorities. A lot of our men like to complain, “I don’t like my baby momma”. I say “Well, you certainly liked her before the child came, so suck it up and be there for your child” Remember, they didn’t ask to come into this world. You brought them here so now you owe them a decent life. If you put children first, you don’t go out and engage in promiscuous behaviors that could result in a “baby daddy” or “baby momma” situation. Children deserve better than that.

Bring up Children in a Godly Home
Children need more than food, shelter, clothing, and the latest trendy items to survive. Let’s face it folks, we live in a fallen world. No matter where you go on this planet, you will find a fair share of greed, narcissism, violence, lust, and dishonesty. The Bible warns us that things will not get better, but worse as Jesus return draws nearer. It is imperative, now more than ever that we equip our children with the means to withstand the negative influences that are presented to them everyday. We do this by inoculating them spiritually with the Word of God. God sent his Son, Jesus to die on the cross and thereby redeem us from death unto life. It is only through faith in him that we will be able to overcome the influence of the world. We have to actively teach our children from the Word of God and be an example to them of how to live out the Word. Once you do this, even if your children stray away for a while, they will come back to their roots eventually. Remember, they have to have roots to come back to or they won’t come back.

Quantity of time creates quality time
Another myth I want to bust is the whole quality of time is more important than the quantity of time. I say, you can’t have quality without some kind of quantity. If the only time you get to spend with your children is early in the morning, when all of you are rushing to get to work/school, or at night when everyone is tired, what kind of ‘quality’ interaction can you be having? Do you spend that precious time barking out orders (brush your teeth, put this on, eat your breakfast) or are you really having a conversation? Are you busy checking your phone or ipad during this time? Are you watching TV? If you are lucky enough not to take work home on weekends, do you engage in any activities with your child? When you are with them, do you really tune in to listen to them or are you trying to multi-task at the same time? Real conversation takes time and it can’t happen if you’re not around or not paying attention when you are. Remember, you can’t say you know your child if you’ve never spent much time with them.

Children Learn by Watching: Be an Example
You can’t expect your child to want to read, if they never see you reading anything. You can’t expect your son to do right by women if he sees you getting your head bashed in by your man. You can’t expect your daughter to be a respectable young lady if you entertain a different male in your home everyday of the week. Men: you can’t expect your son to have a positive image of black males if you’re not around. Kids don’t give a rat’s narrow behind about what you say. They are paying more attention to what you do. So if you want your children to be the best they can be, you need to set the example.


Stop Saying Father’s Don’t Matter
Although feminists would like to have us believe that father’s don’t really matter, it doesn’t change the fact that they do matter. Again, let’s go back to the Bible where it says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”(Genesis 1:27). It has always been his intention that men and women work together to make a home for children. Men and women are different, and though in the sight of man different=inequality, it is not so in the sight of God. Just because two people are different, it doesn’t mean one is inherently superior or inferior to the other. Men and women are different in ways that compliment each other and allow each other to balance each other out. Both are necessary to raise children. Fathers influence their sons and daughters differently than mothers do. Fathers model to young girls what they can expect from their husbands and boyfriends in the future. They model to young boys how to treat women and how interact in different spaces. When fathers are absent, children are impacted in a negative way that has lasting consequences. I believe it is the main reason for the growing division between black men and women in dating circles. When black men and women do the “baby daddy/babby momma” thing, our children learn that our people aren’t supposed to love and marry each other. Instead they learn to be disrespectful of each other and view each other as disposable sex tools. Not the way to nation build. Enough with the “living together” nonsense. Put a ring on it!

Turn the TV and the Radio off!!!
Some of the worst influences on our children come from the TV, movies and radio. I think it’s best to try to live life with out any of them as all they do is tell us we’re less than and  then inundate us with ads for things we don’t need. But if it’s that important to you, we have to monitor what our children are watching. We also have to monitor what we ourselves are watching. If all you ever watch are the semi-pornographic ‘booty-shake’ music videos, violent gangsta and horror films, mindless reality tv and broadcast news, I would suggest you try something different. Think of it this way, we all know that if we eat junk food, we’ll get fat and then the extra weight leads to health problems and diseases that can kill us. Think of trash TV as junk food for your mind. It feeds your mind and your spirit. When we watch things that are violent, negative, sexually suggestive and the like, we are exposing ourselves to things that will reinforce the negative conceptions of who we are (and it doesn’t matter if you are white or black when it comes to this). Then if our minds are negative it will translate into negative behaviors. Instead of watching ‘Set It Off,’ try watching “Pride”. Instead of listening to Lil Wayne or Beyonce, try Israel, Donnie McClurkin, or Fred Hammond. If you can’t live without TV or radio, at least try to find things that are positive.


Learn Your History and Teach it to Your Child
Our history is important. Stop allowing some of these racist people to shame you into thinking our history is irrelevant. Nowadays, I see African-Americans who don’t even want to talk about our history in any shape or form, especially if they are in mixed company. I’m sick of people telling us to stop bringing up the past, especially since it still affects us today. The Jewish people tell their children to “Never Forget” about the holocaust. In school, they make sure to cover the founding fathers and what they believed and how it still impacts us. Well if everyone else can talk about their history, I’m going to talk about mine, too. I’m not just going to talk about the good, I’m going to talk about the painful stuff as well. No one is going to shame me into being quiet about slavery. It happened folks – get over it! It is not a symbol of shame for us as some would have us think. Some slaves did great things in spite of the challenges they faced. Some fought against and resisted slavery despite the fact that the “system” seemed so entrenched. They believed there could be change and trusted God to move on their behalf. And guess what? Change came. That’s the stuff that we’re made of! This is what our children need to know. Our ancestors didn’t allow racism or racists to cause them to put a limit on what they aspired to be, and neither should we. We must teach our children this history because it’s not being taught in schools. In the rare cases when it is taught it is watered down and adulterated. In fact, it is being taught to elementary students in NYC public schools that during the Civil Rights Movement, white supremacists were “bullying” African-Americans. Medgar Evers was shot in cold-blood outside his home. Four little girls were blown up in a church. Chainey, Schwerner, and Goodman were lynched. Non-violent demonstrators were being attacked by dogs and had hoses turned on them. I find it insulting to our people and to our ancestors to call such things “bullying”. This ‘sanitizing’ of our history only serves to absolve the perpetrators of such injustices of their responsibility and keeps their descendants from feeling guilty. I for one prefer truth.


We have to reclaim our current generation, so they can build the next. We cannot afford to allow them to be eaten alive by the negative forces that are destroying this nation among others. Enough of the apathy and waiting for the government to do something. Why should Obama or anyone else on Capitol Hill do anything for us if we aren’t willing to do anything for ourselves? We have no right to ask for jobs if we haven’t been preparing our children with the knowledge and skills to operate competently in the job. We have no right to ask for better schools if we send the message to our kids that school doesn’t matter. We have no right to ask for more rights and opportunities if we’ve squandered the ones our ancestors struggled and died for. Change in our community doesn’t start with the President, it doesn’t start with the governor, or the mayor, or your school’s teachers. Change begins when you take control of what you have to begin to make things better. Start with your children. Reclaim them or future generations will have no choice but to reclaim our history of slavery. Peace.

Thoughts On Forest Whitaker Getting Racially Profiled at a New York Deli

Last week Academy Award Winning actor Forest Whitaker was racially profiled by an overzealous clerk as he walked in and out of a deli.

Shawn knows his pain. I was racially profiled at my local Associated Supermarket on December 29, 2012. And even after contacting their corporate offices I still haven’t received a response from Associated Supermarkets corporate management. Shows how much that chain cares about its customers. And why I’ll never shop there again.

Anyway, Forest Whitaker was patted down by this zealous dumbass who decided he was going to show how great an employee he was by overstepping his bounds and violating the laws of the State of New York.

Now Forest is saying it wasn’t racial profiling But Shawn knows it was another case of Shopping While Black. He’s experienced this situation too many times in his life. The message those businesses want to send to a Black man to never come back there.

Cool. Let’s not spend our money there. Send a message to them that we Black people value our dignity more than the products on their shelves.

Forest was very graceful in trying to keep this idiot’s job. Now Shawn would have wanted his head and would have sued his bosses for damages, but Mr. Whitaker tried to help keep this moron employed. Unfortunately, in spite of Mr. Whitaker’s impassioned plea he still got fired.

And he deserved it. No smart owner is going to keep a cowboy on their payroll who could cost them millions in a civil lawsuit.

Here’s some advice for you cowboy grocery clerks who want to play security guards:

You’re only being paid $8-$12 an hour. That ain’t enough money to pay the rent in most local municipalities here in the United States. And it’s definitely not enough money to play hero.

If you get hurt trying to apprehend this shoplifter who is going to pay your medical bills? Most of these minimum wage jobs aren’t union. They don’t offer healthcare. You have to pay those bills YOURSELF.

And who is going to pay your disability when you can’t work from those injuries or in the time you’re recovering from them? Not your employer. When you call yourself busting employees and you get hurt they’re gonna turn the tables on you the same way they turned them on Rayon McIntosh and Artis Hughes.

What you’re going to find out is that minimum wage employer is going to hide behind HR and HR Policy. And their official stance will be “You violated company policy” and “You were acting on your own.”

Leaving you with a heroes reward of JACK SHIT. All while the medical bills pile up.

Chances are just to get disability you’ll have to sue your employer. And you’ll still lose. Because you were violating their company policy and state law.

So stopping that alleged shoplifter doesn’t seem so smart after all. It’s just cheaper and safer for you to let the guy walk out of the store. Don’t you know they have insurance to cover every item in that store? Even if it burned down to the ground the owner would still get paid for everything in it.

But if you approach that shoplifter and he hurts you, you’ll be drowning in debt from medical bills. Spending over a year fighting for social security disability benefits (which will possibly be denied). Struggling to pay your bills. Eventually winding up on welfare to make ends meet.
Don’t you know the average person only stays six to eight months on a retail job? In between the low pay and no benefits, it’s just not worth risking your life to play hero.

And it’s not worth the lives of your fellow co-workers or customers. You don’t know if this person is armed. If they’re carrying a gun and it goes off, someone could DIE as the result of your reckless behavior.

Most smart Business owners don’t want employees like sales clerks stopping shoplifters or alleged shoplifters. It leaves them liable to be sued.

And the stigma of being a place that profiles customer isn’t good for customer relations either. Most people don’t want to shop in a place where they’re not trusted.

The law in New York State says that a clerk has to see the individual take the item off the shelf. And they have to follow them around the store and see them actually leave the premises with the item to constitute a crime being committed.

And if a clerk does see a theft happen, they are to contact loss prevention who will contact law enforcement. Salespeople are NOT to engage a customer on the sales floor. There is no telling if that person is carrying a weapon. If that person is armed with a blade they could injure the clerk struggling with them. If they have a firearm, the clerk could be shot and killed. Worse, a shot could go the wrong way and harm an innocent bystander.

Now in the case of Forrest Whitaker this clerk put the lives of everyone in that store in danger with his overzealous “stop and frisk”. In worst-case scenario of a store that’s packed 50 deep and Mr. Whitaker was carrying a firearm and used it to defend himself, it could have caused a riot or stampede for the doors.

And the store owner would have been liable for all the injuries and deaths as a result of that stampede.

All because a clerk decided to not do their job. Sales people are hired to stock shelves and help customers. They don’t have the skills or the training to deal with retail crime. Nor are they paid to do so. Security specialists are licensed and certified by the State of New York to do security work and deal with retail crime. If a store owner is too cheap to hire a proper loss prevention specialist, then they deserve to pay for the lawsuits that come from their greed.

If this Deli owner was smart, they’d fix their cameras to work properly. Then hire a proper loss prevention specialist to secure the store. Smart security specialists would know the law regarding shoplifting and use of force. Moreover, they’d know what to look for in shoplifter activity. Those professionals would be looking at the majority of middle-aged WHITE WOMEN who do most of the shoplifting in the U.S., not the Black man who walked in and out quickly.

Retailers need to train their employees on how to deal with shoplifters. It’s not the job of salespeople and stock clerks to be security guards. If they see something, they’re to tell management or Loss prevention. They will call law enforcement and make efforts to apprehend the shoplifter. No store clerk ever needs to play hero and put their lives and the lives of others in danger.

The 20th Anniversary of the Comic Book Industry Collapse- Celebrating Two Decades of Doing the Exact Same Thing & Expecting a Different Result

Twenty years ago the comic book industry collapsed. And sadly in those two decades that have passed, no one has learned anything.

They say insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. If one follows the pattern of the major comic book publishers since 1996 the approach to business has been the same cycle of events:

Sales decline. Big event storyline. Series cancellation. Series Reboot.

And the cycle repeats itself again and again. Worse, the cycles are getting shorter. Back in 1996, reboots of a series cycled every seven to ten years. But by the mid 2000s, they were cycling through title restarts every three years.

Comic book series went from going hundreds of issues in the 1980s to barely a hundred issues in the early 2000s before a sales decline. Now barely going 24-36 issues before sales declined to numbers that led to the vicious cycle of events, cancellations and series reboots starting all over again.

What’s even worse is even as these vicious cycles repeat themselves is that comic book readership continues to decline. While many books start off with somewhat strong sales with their new number one issue, they soon quickly decline to the low numbers of the original series or even lower than the original series.

Unfortunately, instead of trying new business approaches, comic book publishers still continue to produce gimmick items suited towards the peak of the speculator market of the mid 1980’s and early 1990s.  Along with the new number one issues, publishers like DC Comics continue to publish titles with features like variant covers and gatefold covers. Items that led to the collapse of the comic book industry 20 years ago.

Doing more of the same hasn’t worked for the comic book industry since 1993. But comic book publishers continue applying archaic and obsolete business approaches to selling comics in 2013. Seriously, who are they selling these gimmick items to?

The collectability of comics is nonexistent. The only reason why old comics had value back in the 1980s and early 1990s was because they were rare. Paper Drives of World War II and parents throwing them in the trash in the 1950’s and 1960’s and 1970’s led to a limited supply of back issues of old comic books. And  it was the high demand for the limited supply of back issues that drove up prices.

While the back issue market limped along since the collapse of 1993, it’s all but dead now in the aftermath of the multiple reboots of the Marvel Universe in 1996 and the DC Universe in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2011.

Since the early 1990’s millions of back issues sit in warehouses and comic shops not in collectors’ homes.

And why should the consumer buy them? The books are worthless. And with every universe reboot or series restart, they lose value as the earlier stories have no connection to newer continuities like DC Comics’ New 52.

Then there’s the sentimental value of that number one issue. Why collect a number one issue anymore in a world where there will be another number one issue in another 24-36 months?

What value does a back issue of a comic book have to a reader when they can buy that exact same story in a trade paperback 6 months later at half the retail price of the print run of 32 page comics?

In addition to this madness is the continued obsession with maintaining a large catalog of titles. In 1993 publishers produced over 500 different titles and printed six million comics every month.

Today publishers like DC Comics continue to offer large catalogs of 52 plus unique titles and are on their way to printing close to a million comics a month. In 1993 at the then affordable price of $1.25-$1.50 per copy it was next to impossible for comic readers and speculators to buy all the comics that saturated the market. Today At $4 a copy it’s become economically impossible for the new customer to even consider buying two or three 32-page comics let alone even consider trying new titles in a publishers’ catalog.

This is why the value of a four dollar 32-page comic book is only worth a quarter these days in a few years. And why people can buy boxes of over a thousand comics from the past four decades for just under $50 on eBay.

What’s the readers’ incentive to start buying a series and getting invested in it if the publisher will cancel it in 24-36 months? Why should they commit to collecting comic books when the publisher doesn’t have the fortitude or the finances to hang in there and commit to the series? Why should readers start buying a new series when it’ll abruptly stop in 6-8 issues?

Comic publishers say they’ve made all these efforts were supposed to make the industry more open to new readers. Ironically, it’s actually become HARDER for new readers, especially independent readers, tweens and teens to enter the world of comics than it was 20 years ago. All the events, reboots, have led to multiple volumes of a series, multiple titles of a series and multiple numbers, and renumbers are enough to give anyone but a diehard comic fan a headache. It’s so confusing that a young reader or a casual reader just can’t access the world of comics.

And the industry grows more insular with each passing year. Comic books have gone from a product every man, woman and child could enjoy back in the 1980s to a shrinking niche product a handful of older White males enjoy today.

Following a failed pattern of logic, the comic book industry is on the brink of a second collapse that could cripple not just the industry but setback the storytelling medium. If publishers continue to produce gimmick products like variant covers and die-cut covers and continue to focus on inaccessible events it’s going to lead to further readership declines.

Those declines are going to lead to the remaining comic shops being forced to close. As they get stuck with thousands of non-returnable product and as inventory backs up on their shelves like it did in the early late 1980’s 1990’s speculator booms, they’re not going to be able to order new comics.

While the corporate owned conglomerates like Disney’s Marvel and Time Warner’s DC will still have a limited revenue stream from licensing when the print market collapses again, it’ll be the small indie publishers who will take the brunt of the closing of comic shops due to this second wave of product saturation. Outside of Amazon and online retailers, comic shops are the only venues where people know about these small publishers’ products. Moreover, they’re the only venues where people can touch and feel them or know about them to buy them.

Sadly, Comic fans and comic book publishers are so stranded in their own world can’t see the problems plaguing their business objectively. They don’t understand that their approaches to business haven’t worked in two decades and they’ll never work again.


Yet comic book publishers keep trying to do the same things they did twenty years ago hoping, wishing, and praying for that different result. Thinking that the cycle will end with the next big character . Trying to write that one big story will lead to droves of new readers rushing into comic shops to buy comics again. Looking to produce that Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #27, Showcase #4, Amazing Fantasy#15 or Fantastic Four #1 or even the next Giant Sized X-Men 1 which will revive interest in comic books again.

Not understanding that the paradigm for publishing has changed in the last five years. The publishing industry collapse of 2008 has totally changed the landscape of the publishing world. Trade publishers today are shrinking their catalogs and publishing fewer titles.

Only comic book publishers continue to publish large catalogs of books like it’s 1993 when big storylines like Infinity Crusade and Zero Hour dominated the sales charts. While that approached to the launch of a dozen new titles or spurred renewed interest in struggling ones then, It’s a business approach that doesn’t work in 2013.

In the last twenty years it’s clear the event model of storytelling has run its course. In today’s fast paced world where apps, games, and eBooks compete for peoples’ attention no one has the time to sit down and read over 100 comic books to finish a story. Especially when they cost $4 a copy. In these tough economic times who has $400 to spend on comic books when they need that money for rent?

It’s clear to me that today’s reader wants comics in the storytelling medium. But they no longer want 32-page comic books or monthly serialized comic books. And with the way comic book series get cancelled every 24-36 months in a vicious cycle of low sales, events, cancellations and reboots it’s just no longer economically viable to keep publishing them in that format.

Looking at the way customers buy comic books it’s clear that the 21st century readers want their comic stories told in one self-contained volume. eBooks, trade paperbacks and hardcover omnibuses are how people have been buying comic books over the last ten years. And they’re how comics are sold all over the world. It’s cheaper for the consumer. And buying stories in these single volumes allows readers young and old to access comic book characters in a simple easy-to-follow format where they can read stories they want without the baggage of decades of continuity.

If the industry is to survive it’s clear that the business model for the comic book has to change. With readers preferring trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and single volume self-contained stories I’d like to see more of a focus on those types of original publications than 32-page comic series. With comic series now getting cancelled after only 36 issues it’s just a lot cheaper to do three trade paperback volumes or one hardcover omnibus casual readers can access at a library, bookstore or online bookseller than to print comics only a handful of readers will buy at a comic shop.

And some stories don’t need an ongoing series of 32-page comics. They’d be better told in the graphic novel format. Plus graphic novels would probably sell better with audiences of new readers like kids, tweens, young adults, and other casual buyers who don’t want a commitment to a series.

And these kinds of products allow comic book publishers to compete in the growing market of library sales. Yes, libraries buy comics. And there’s a huge opportunity to reach new readers there.

The opportunity for reaching new readers of all ages in the 21st Century is there. All the comic book industry has to do is adapt to a more profitable business model and stop the insanity of following business strategies that haven’t worked for decades.