 So, how many of you are familiar with Brother Man? How many of you aren't familiar with Brother Man? Wow, so you will be spending your money today because this is probably one of the most important comics in the entire quote-unquote, we need diverse comics movement. So first off, I really wanna introduce a brother, I do, Dawoud Nyabwile, the Emmy award-winning Dawoud Abwile, the artist of Brother Man. You wanna come out, bro? And brother, I think, brother Brian McGee, you hear? Come on out, colorist. Yeah, come on out. You are not the father. So, first off, I wanna thank you for being the artistic face of VCAF 2016. I mean, everything you've seen, all of the posters, all of the, any of the POP, everything on the internet, that's those brothers right there, so that's their work. And so thank you for doing that, it's absolutely amazing. I appreciate that. So, I don't know if you saw the hands that were raised or not, but there's quite a few people in here who aren't familiar with Brother Man. So if you have to give the Brother Man origin story, what would it be? Okay, well, the Brother Man was first introduced on the market in 1990. So the book's actually been around for 25 years. For those who may not know about it, the actual premise of the story is, it's about a lawyer named Antonio Valar, who is pretty much, it started on that whole concept of, the superhero concept, he has this occupation by day, crime fighter by night. And when we came out with this in 89, my brother's nine, we had the idea of, okay, this guy doesn't have any superpowers. But he's determined to make a change within his city, which we call Big City, because the whole thing was this was gonna be a metaphor. It's really all metaphoric. It wasn't really us trying to do like a Black Batman, Superman, that wasn't in our psyche. It was really telling a story about who we are, ourselves through this medium of comics. So the story actually evolved over the years and it's actually a lot more refined where the city is kind of like a character within itself. Each of the characters all represent different types of attributes, different types of people that you may know. And but the main premise I would say is consciousness versus apathy, because since he doesn't have superpowers, he can't do it all himself. But when you think of like Superman, Superman, that's who you call on. He can fix problems on the East Coast and five minutes later, fix problems on the West Coast. You know what I mean? Brother Man, he's not that character that can do that. His powers are innate. It's like we all have these powers within ourselves, but who actually taps into it to help their community. So, and also Brother Man is some, you look at the Brother Man attributes as something where anybody can possess, but everybody won't take on this opportunity. So when you think of Spider-Man, Peter Parker owns Spider-Man, Clark Kent owns Superman. Thor, Iron Man, you've just run it down. Each, I can't be Iron Man, I can't be Spider-Man, but Brother Man is that character that Antonio Valet, who is Brother Man, he, it's like he doesn't own the title. He just proclaimed the ideas of what Brother Man personified. And he wanted to make this hero icon. So he stepped into the real world to combat crime. However, he knows he can die. So how many people you're on the sub and something goes down? How many people actually stand up and do something? Sometimes you can't blame them. I got kids at home. I don't know if I can get involved in this, but you have some people that say, no, this is not right. I'm gonna get up and do something. I could die, but this has to happen. So that's really what the story metaphorically represents. But anybody who reads the comic book, they'll probably say it's hard to explain because there's so many levels to it than that, that that's just kind of the underlying theme. So I remember when it first came out and it's legendary how you first came out. I mean, you did it at the Black Expo. It was almost like a mixtape. And so why that route, as opposed to traditional diamond distributor or direct to market? So why would that route, as opposed to any other routes? Well, it was actually birthed out of the Black Expo. The Black Expo USA started in 1989. And one of my brother Jason and I had a custom airbrush shop in East Orange, New Jersey. So we were right across the river from Manhattan. So after going to the Expo in 89, we said, hey, nobody has a comic book. So let's do that. Prior to that, I was airbrushing. All throughout the 80s, I had a rep and Philly for airbrushing shirts. That's my hometown. So I had the airbrush shop in East Orange, but we wanted to do something different because with the airbrushing, you gotta do like $25 shirt, $30 a shirt, but you gotta do all these custom shirts. With a comic book, okay, I put all my effort into one book, sell for $2. So that way I did all the work. You just mass marketing. It had nothing to do with Marvel. It had nothing to do with DC. It just had to do with commerce. Let's make a product that can make money fast and sell it to our people. And that's what the Black Expo did. It provided the atmosphere where you got thousands of your people looking for product. So we said, oh, we gotta be here in 90. And let's make this comic book. So we made the comic book and we did a print run of 10,000 books. So our mathematics was, hmm, if we get more than 10,000 people here, all we need is 10,000 to buy one comic and we'll go home with $20,000. So the first Expo, we didn't sell out, but we sold a lot of books. That sparked us doing the next show. Before the end of the year, we had 40,000 books by the end of the year. We were up to working on the third book, but we were reprinting the first and second book. And that's when the media press jumped on like Arsenio Hall, America's Most Wanted, John Walsh, they did a big story on it. And actually that's historical because it was America's Most Wanted only story, basically where we're not the criminals. You know what I mean? So I can proudly say that. So there was so much of a snowball of media and people were asking us, how are y'all selling all these books? Because by the first, but the second year, I think we had 150,000. Then we had 350,000, then we had 500,000. And by 1994, we had 750,000 books. So we were closing on a million. So during that time, my mother died. My mother died right when issue number 10 came out. The day 10 came out, my mother died. So, and we were at the Black Expo, New York, at the Javits Center on the first day. So we lost all sales that weekend and the New York was like the biggest show. So everything kind of like stopped. Brother Man never fell off. It stopped in demand. So the following year I worked on number 11, then my dad died. So when he died, it was like number 11 sat in a box for a year. And then I used money from a job that I got when I started working in New York doing like game animation. So I just saved my money, put out number 11 for big city comics as an entity stopped. But I always thought I would bring it back. And here it is now. We have the Brother Man, Brother Man Revelation. If anybody reads the original series in 94, no, 96, when my father died, this is the compilation. We have these available. These are compilation of the original series from 19 years ago. And on the last page, that's yours. The last page, it said next issue, Revelation. So we think it's gonna come out like next year. You know, two years ago, okay, I'll get out next year. And it's like, next year, no, it's 2005, 2010. And then I met this brother, Brian, when I was working a cartoon network in Atlanta. And then he said, well, he has a story to tell his own, but it was really a spiritual journey that led to Revelation. And this is the first full color Brother Man book. It's 108 pages. This is like, we were proud to say, man, we can't come back with a black and white page after 20 years. We gotta give him full color, like a masterpiece. You know what I mean? And we literally, literally last year, I got laid off from my job, turning studios. I was doing like storyboarding, all types of stuff for like Cartoon Network, TNT, TNT sports, prior to that I was working on the show Wild Thornberries and Rugrats when I was in LA. So basically after Brother Man, I started working on my own, you know, just working in studios, experience I never had. Cause I was really more like a street artist when I was coming up in Philly. And then I met this brother here. So this is really like a combination of us now gaining our studio experience. Cause Brian, he'll tell you about his background of Disney and all these places. And it's like, we always understood working at those studios, the purpose wasn't necessarily to just uphold what they're doing, it's kind of like to get that knowledge. You know, so then our kids can have things that look like them, but it stands up, the quality stands up to everything else that they're looking at. Or better. Or better, you know what I'm saying? So that's the gist of it. So Brother Brian, I mean, cause you look at that and it pops. I mean, there's a vibrancy in a life to that book. I mean, there's color combinations I've never seen. And I've, you know, been collecting comics for 40 years. I mean, so, I mean, what was your palette? What were you thinking about? Like what did you want to bring to that particular book that you didn't see maybe before? Cause you're kind of new to it. Cause like shout out to Guy, who's back East, who brother couldn't come out. They were in New York yesterday. And they came out here today. So shout out to brother Guy Sims. But what was it that you wanted to bring and fuse in that book? That because I mean, if you look at the book, it's absolutely astonishing. So I'm kind of curious like, what was your palette for that? I mean, I didn't, I didn't start out as a colorist. I was, I was into comic books. And I was into storyboarding film and music videos. And I was the penciler. I was one of, when I worked at Disney, I just was a pencil guy. But I had this curiosity about color that I wanted to kind of push myself towards. And there's a lot of adversity with that. But anyway, I studied color theory. I studied classical art. And all the things that I saw and I learned from the studio experience, I wanted to take and transform it within and then push it into something like a project like Brother Man. I love comic books, but I never really wanted to be a comic book artist until I saw Brother Man. That was in 93. And it was like an aha moment. Like this is what's, where it's at for me. This is, this is, I call it hip hop on paper. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it something like that. When I approached I would, we first met in 2004. After my relocation from Los Angeles, I went from New York to LA to Atlanta, where I am now. We met in 2004. And I explained to him that over my travels, I had many conversations with people who asked and wondered about whatever happened to Brother Man, Brother Man comics. And I didn't know at the time, I didn't know Dawood at the time. But when I got the heads up that I was gonna be traveling to and living in Atlanta, a friend of mine who lives in New Jersey told me, you know that guy that comic book that you like, he lives there. So in my head a light bulb on off, I said, okay, I'm gonna go meet him. And I'm gonna approach him and ask if I could team up with him to bring back Brother Man. Which wasn't a difficult thing at all. It just took time. And I thought this is, there was a spiritual component to the book that ensured that it would be back. To me, there was just never any doubt in my mind that it was going to come to fruition. And when it did, and I explained to him, there's a spiritual current behind it. And that when that wave breaks, we have to be riding it on surfboards, just like hanging ten. And this is it. You're all witnessing that event. But to answer your question, I wanted to bring a new dynamic to the book without hampering what it was that the fans loved about the original books. So basically I wanted to put my stamp on it, but stay out of the way at the same time. That was weird, because it was a, I mean the original Brother Man is a family affair. Right, yeah. And then I'm just curious, how was it for you kind of stepping into, you know, a family business, and then you accepting someone outside of the family into that same business? Is that for him or me? Either one because you're both traveling different directions. But you can answer that first and I'll take a stop. Well, yeah, that's a good one, because like somebody asked me, I think somebody said, this is very personal to you. I say, yeah, man, this came out, I mean, this is my life, man. You know, this came out of like, dating back to third grade, you know what I mean? Like my father, when my father was an activist going up in Philly, and he, I just remember how our basement, you know, we had like, our basement was like the black history library. You go down there, you know, it's just Malcolm X posters, I'm the black child, Isaac Hayes, black Moses, you know, the poster that came out the album, chef, all that stuff. But you know, but my dad was, he wrote a lot of material on the black family. And he used to always emphasize like, don't do anything without, I mean, you should always have ceremony in anything that you do. Always acknowledge your ancestors and everything you do. Always, I understood that since I was a little kid, but I didn't really understand it. You know, you hear it, but you don't really get it. So basically, when I went through that whole experience of my father, like, hipping me to the images and the comics when I was younger, and I burned my collection when I hit seventh grade, when I realized like, I was saving all my lunch money for images that are self-destructive. I was like, wait, I'm starving myself for this. I threw them in the fire. And my dad was like, I didn't tell you to do that, but he just emphasized, it's your decision. But to me, I said, these books, in my mind, they didn't need to even exist. Like, I could have gave them to my neighbor, but I was like, no, they don't even need to exist. That's how I felt. So I burned them. That means a lot to me when I say somebody comes on board, if they're coming aboard a big city entertainment, big city entertainment is not like some old whatever. I said, this is the re-evolution of my people. You see what I'm saying? Through the form of entertainment. I said, when you look around, everything's about self-destruction, especially when it deals with black people. Everything's about the whole debased worst part of our self is projected around the world for everybody to dance to, laugh to, party to. So it's like, well, where's the companies like Pixar DreamWorks, that are of the highest caliber, but it's for kids like me. Kids around the world will love it too, but it is thrusted on the stars. The kids that are going all around, they're traveling different planets. They're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Not crazy, crazy, but the incredible, the fantastic, but they look like me. What company is doing it? That's what big city entertainment is. Big city is us. It's like, big, it's thinking beyond the norm. So when I met Brian, I remember, I saw his work when we were turning, and I was like, oh man, I got to work with that brother. But you know how you're thinking it, but you don't know that he's thinking the same thing? So then when we connected, like one day we sit down, we kind of just bumped into each other. It's not like anybody introduced us. And then once we realized we wanted to connect, it's like the floodgates open. And with us, it wasn't just about, and see the thing, the cool thing about Brian, we don't just talk about, we don't talk about comic books. Hey, did you get the latest issue of, hey, you get the latest issue of Hulk, man. Now I'm putting it down. I'm just saying we don't talk about that. We talk about the plight of our people. We talk about the content in the context of productions that are made. How we represent it in there. Then we talk about technique, studying technique, being excellence. We talk about our birthright. We talk about who are we as a people. We talk about our ancestors. All of that is what is in here through the form of entertainment and fun. And that's why to me, I can't just bring anybody in just because they're dope, they're a dope artist, but their mind is not, their mind is not, it's detrimental. It's detrimental if somebody's good, but they don't understand your mission. You see what I'm saying? So as we started, that's why Brian said it took years because it wasn't like, hey, just come on in and we'll just work on the next book. This book evolved, it was eight years. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it was an eight year process, but you know. Like David said, we've met extremely talented people that wanted to apply their talents to what we're doing, but it's not just talent. It's understanding the mythos, the history of big city, the type of thinking that we've created. We've created a sort of a micro culture in this book. So when you open the pages, it's a real place. It's like your mind is transported to a different place, different world, but it's not. One of the things about this book is that it's a fantasy, but you'll be able to see yourself in it. You're not gonna see any characters wearing Jordans. You'll see characters wearing something else that's similar to what they, you know, familiar to them, but it's very specific. The style of the drawings, the style of the homes, the, I mean, they're all, they're all, they all reflect some part of our reality, but they're not our reality. A lot of people will ask questions like, well, like what was that? The costume you're saying? Just anything that has to do with what they already think they understand about it. A lot of people just look at the cover and they assume so many things about it, but no, it's not that. You gotta read it. You gotta look into it. You gotta find out what it's all about. It's very easy to talk to someone and understand where their mind is as far as if they understand it. I think that might be part of it. Also, yeah, because when you look at pop culture, pop culture tells us who we are. Pop culture tells us how other people should see us. So then when this comes along, brother man, oh, isn't that like, you know, and you just name something out there? You know, it's just kind of like some nonsense, whatever there, because we've come up in so much of that people can't process or, or what do you call it? They wouldn't imagine it to be something else. And I tell people, I said, man, this is kind of borderline science fiction. You know, they think, oh, is this a hood comic? I said, nope. I said, I mean, it could fall into that category if you want, if you want to, you know, it falls in the category of hip hop. It falls in the category of, I put it like this, when Brother Man came out, it was one of the few books, well, actually it was the first book that could sit on the shelf next to Superman and was also in the black bookstore next to autobiography of Malcolm X. Barbershop. Exactly, it was in the barbershop. It was written up in Source Magazine, Vibe Magazine, but it was also in parenting. And USA Today. You see what I mean? So we had, so we'd be at a black bookstore, you could have like, you know, like the, you know, like the conscious community, you know, coming all out, line going out the door. After that, we're in the suburbs. I don't even see a black face, line going out the door. Because what we, even what we talk about now, it's about excellence. When you have excellence, it transcends, it transcends color barrier. It takes people, like we're taking people to another world. We're pulling them into this universe, this microcosm. So that's the thing about it is that, cause you know, when you look at like a lot of other productions and things of that nature, I may not see myself in it, but I appreciate it because it's done so well. And the characters I can identify with because they represent heroism. So that's what we're doing in here. We said, well, let's create this character who will inspire others. I think also like popular culture, I've always assumed, you know, I just kind of thought that popular culture was the B side of religion, right? Because it really, you know, all of the dogma without the, you know, the inquisitions, right? But the thing is though, but there's a default mechanism in popular culture and religion where the default is white. You know, you think of superhero, you think of big super, you know, big blue Boy Scout Superman, you think of rich white guy, Batman, rich white guy, Iron Man, rich white guy, Green Out. There's a lot of rich white guys in superheroism. But that's the default, right? You read Science Fishing, people are quoting Asimov and everything, but they're not seeing that. They're like, you know, yeah, George Schuyler in the 20s doing black, you know, things that are happening, right? So the thing is like, how do we, I know Brother John Jennings, Marjorie Luke, key child couple folks on a panel a couple days ago about, you know, hashtag was redefined the default, right? So how do we do that with our students? Because like you have like, you know, say you have, you have an anime manga culture that's worldwide. People are learning Japanese, they're learning how to sew, just to be a part of that culture. So my question is, where's like the African diaspora, quote unquote, manga, anime? Like where's our default in that, or is it like, because we had milestone, a lot of things were coming up, but then milestone went away, and then, you know, you guys came up, but y'all made us hold our breath for 20-some-odd years, and now we can breathe again. Yeah, I'm not saying you can breathe now, brother. You can breathe. But I mean like question is like, so how do we become, how do we institute that default? Or is it even a worthy goal to do that? No, no, you can, you can redefine it, and that's what we're working on. That's why I say, I tell people, what I do is not about me. I said, this is about a movement. This is about that redefinition of what you're saying. You're welcome. I mean, look at, I mean, if you look at, how many people, you know, you got a lot of artists walking around and they're about ego. Oh man, look, yo, look what I can draw. You know, oh man, I'll blow that out. You know what I'm saying? Everything's about blowing somebody out. You know what I'm saying? Now on a personal level of excellence, that's good because you're building up yourself esteem. But in terms of, well, what's the bigger picture? All right, you're making these dope paintings and stuff. What's that doing for those babies coming up? What are you building for the next generation? And those babies, when you get past, all right, you're dope, but how does this benefit my child? How does this benefit them? We see them, our kids getting shot on the streets and all this stuff. And if they're not getting shot by their own, they're getting shot by others because of how the people sees them and how they have a lack of security. You see what I'm saying? So as the artists, we need to go back to how the ancients, the art and the scribes, like my brother Guy said, he's the writer of Brother Man. And he told me a long time ago, he said he don't remember saying that. I said, yo, you said this, man. He said, yo, man, I'm the writer. I'm like the scribe. And he said, you're the artist, man. You don't want to chisel us on the walls. He says, so I'm the eyes of God. You're the mouth of God. I mean, I'm the mouth of God. You're the eyes of God. And I always remembered that. And that's how you redefine things when you start speaking, when your work is a representation of you understanding that, it's gonna redefine because it comes out through your work. But if you see yourself as I ain't nothing or you just buy into what pop culture says that you are and you propagate that just so you can get a dollar, so you're living good, but you're creating an environment that cannot, a toxic environment that your children and their children, they will not be able to survive in that. And that's what the significance of the arts. Yeah, yeah, I was like, cosine. Did you get that? No, because up here, you don't see it. All of a sudden, like this little like one single crystal and it's all up here. And I had like, give it to you guys and buy us aura real quick. Sorry about that. I was gonna mention that we also make music. And a lot of the music that we make is influenced and inspired by our ideas of the story. I've had friends, you know, cousin family members or rappers that want to put something down on it and they'll write some lyrics like, brother man in your hood, no. Because he's not in your hood. He's in your mind. He's in your heart. He's not clapping guns. They don't clap guns in big city. They don't do that. And I mean, it's not. The whole point is to break away from the paradigm and create a new one. Don't drag that stuff into here. I think one thing, especially at the time when it happened because this came out quote unquote in the golden age of hip hop. It came out at the same time where there was a diversity of black experience. And so when it came out, it fit into that. It was, you could be, you could go high row native tongues and appreciate that. You could go in WA, appreciate that. But there's a continuum. I think I'm seeing that. I'm seeing it kind of come back now with how we're approaching art. There's a continuum that started back in those, 89, 99, 192, let's say 96. So now, and so how do you place brothermen in that continuum? Like not just in comics, but in the scope of black popular culture that's coming at the time. Oh, how would I place it in the, you're saying in the... Like that black artistic continuum, like say that from like 89 to 96 when we had a lot of stuff on TV. We had a lot of stuff, multiple magazines, British magazines, something from the Jamaica coming out. And we had, there was a more palpable black pen, diaspora, cultural aesthetic that was happening. It's not as so narrow as it is now, right? So how would you place brothermen in that? Well, that's just it. I don't really place it anywhere. It's like, it's like it is. You know what I mean? It is what it is. And think about like, everybody in here has an individual self. We can say, how do I fit into the, how do I fit into this world? How do I fit into 2016? Cause you exist. You're here. You know, like what category am I in? You know, it's like you can put yourself in a category, but I might just always see you as the, you know what I'm saying? It's like you are, but whatever you become. And I think a lot of times we create things with the intent of, as opposed to let your creativity drive itself, I'm trying to make something that'll fit on this shelf. I'm trying to make something, well everybody's got iPhones now. So I think brothermen should have an iPhone. But it wasn't even about that. In what book did brothermen have an iPhone? You see what I'm saying? So I don't think about current events. I think now one thing I'll just say is brotherman is, if I was to describe it, I'd say it's the confluence or the fusion of classic soul fantasy family, community, ancestral energy. What else would you say? Because people say, I remember somebody say, brotherman is funny. It was never a funny book to us. It was never like, you know, we were young when we first, I mean I was 24 at the time. I'm 50 now. So that's a 25 year gap. So at the time we first came out, it had to evolve. But it was never a comedy. It was like the humor was really in the way that people actually are, but we wanted to put them into this realm. So I think of big city like a microcosm. Like when people say, where is big city? Where is brotherman? It has its own map. It has its own universe. They have their own currency. But think of it as. So the map is on the interior. Yeah, we have a map of the book. And it goes to the back as well. Yeah, it's a subway map. And these are all parts of the city that. Show them the currency. They refer to stories in the original. Yeah, and they have their own money too. So right there. There we go. All that. Yeah. And each of the people on the money has a back story. Right, it's an astonishing feat of world building. I mean, absolutely incredible world building. Because every story will be able to rent a route off into another section. And that world building, like I'm saying, it's not like, it's not modeled after, you know, I saw a Lord of the Rings. Let me go black, Lord of the Rings. You know what I mean? Because what you're doing is, you're not creating from the Asili, which is the sea, your core. You're creating from, like cultures, the purpose of culture is to project. You're supposed to practice a certain way and you project it to the world. And then what we do is we receive. So anime comes out. And I'm impacted, I'm affected by it. But I'm not supposed to be absorbed by it while I lose myself. I'm supposed to look into my culture, my history, and project it out the same way that Japan projects theirs, their culture. I should be projecting my ancestral energy and my stories and my people of the same quality and caliber. And see, and what makes that when you talk about people working together globally, to work globally together is to appreciate what each culture has to offer. It's not that, well, how come I'm not in, all the age in movies I used to watch coming up? I wasn't worried about not having my image. We all wanted to be Bruce Lee. He didn't look like me, but he had the attributes of a hero. So you do the same thing. So if Antonio Valla has the attribute of the hero, there's gonna be people of all nationalities who wanna be like him because of what he personifies. You see what I'm saying? So that's why I said there's so many levels to this in the opening because I really can't put that in once. I'm working on it. But you know. No, I appreciate it. First of all, I wanna thank you both for your time. This has been enlightening and amazing. Please support the book. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. What I wanna do now is open it up for questions. So those of you who have questions, please pass your questions to your left. And we'll collect them and we'll answer the questions. If you have questions, actually, did you write one down? So we've written one down, pass them to your left. Thank you. Appreciate that. So this one question comes out from initials DH. What about the times we are living in that compelled you to bring back big city and also how long until the next installment? The time was self, how do I say it? The time wasn't planned. The time just was. I mean, if it was really up to me, the book would have been out, what, 18 years ago. But I didn't, like I said, this has been a spiritual journey. If I really ran down all the things that happened within the time of that book coming out, the death in the family of my parents. And actually when I met Brian in like 2009, when we first relaunched the Brother Man book and we came out with the tray of paperback, you know, that's the collected books. And me and Brian first started on the graphic novel. We thought it was gonna come out in 2010. So we started the Brother Man art exhibitions where I put the original artwork on display. So there've been six shows so far. And it was unique because it was like the first black, like solo black superhero art show that had the original artwork. I mean, it was, it went over really well from Atlanta, we did one in Harlem, one at Virginia Tech. And the thing is, right during that time when we were working on the book, then my brother died, my oldest brother died. And I was saying like my last conversation with my brother, I wanted to tell him what was gonna happen in Revelation because at the time, you know, because Revelation, this is just the first part of a three-part trilogy telling his origin. So it's really epic, like a cinematic film. And my brother said on the phone, he said, man, don't tell me what happens. He said, make it. And I was like, Mike, it's like 300 pages. He said, make it. And then he died like about a week or so later. And so for me, I was, sorry about that, y'all. No, don't be sorry, don't have your moment, brother. I'm sorry. Because he's here, Michael's here. When we finished this book, it meant more to me than a comic book. It was my life and the life of our children. So, I'm good, y'all. I'm good, man. This is real, man. That's what I'm feeling. I mean, I think it kind of leads into, I'm sorry to you. No, it's deep because it's all connected to the family. This question here is, how does the lack of black characters in most superhero comics affect self-esteem for young African-Americans? And do Africans-African-Americans need different comics? The fact that we call it ourselves African-Americans is part of the, I mean, I know I hear some reactions already, like we don't really have our own culture. We're basically recreating our culture from the loss of so much. We're still rebuilding. And part of that is seeing ourselves in a positive light. And rather than waiting for other people to show us who we are, we feel that we need to take the reins and do it ourselves. I love black comics. I love the fact that there's so many young and talented people who are creating in this new genre. I would like to see more people creating it within their own paradigm rather than taking what exists and just putting a black face on it. Aw. My whole heart just stopped. I don't know what happened. Can you hear me back there? Okay. Yeah, so I mean, I think it's critical. I think if you don't see yourself in the imagery, you don't see yourself in films and representing who you are, the way you are, then that does something to your psychology. We're coming up on our last little bit, so this will be the last question because we're at 201 right now. We'll make sure to have time for the panel to set up. So the question I wanna ask is, we'll go through this one. What is your process for world building? Easy question for last. Oh, actually, oh, when I was talking about the arts, I mean, the world revolves around the arts. You know, artists really should be held up much higher than they are, you know. People should celebrate artists. If you're dating an artist, you gotta give them extra love. You know what I'm saying? Extra space. Yeah, you gotta just, you gotta cultivate them. Think of it, it's like, come on, you got a flower bed, right? And you're not watering it. Right, there you go. And you're wondering why you don't have any flowers. We'll talk. You see what I'm saying? Yes, sir. So that's what the artist is, the artist is that flower that you're not watering. But if you water it, then you get this garden. And what's the garden do? It provides life, sustenance. Oxygen. Oxygen. Right, so that, because artists, the thing is when you think about a lot of people who complain about what's going on, what's the problem, oh man, they always see us. Every time I walk in the store, I got a hoodie on. And they always talk about me, because how I look. And I said, you know why? It's because of how, I mean, it's very complex. But part of it is because of how media has created that look of the brother with the hoodie on. Powerful. But if you see the brother with the hoodie, where he's like, like I said, like a Bruce Lee character. If you have a character who represents all those things, but the world sees him as greatness, it would redefine seeing a brother on the street. You'd want to be, I want to be down with you when you see him. So all that comes from image. It all starts with image, it all starts with how we project ourselves. Because if we look at the images in the media of young black men and women, we don't see families. We don't see loving of families. Or that's considered what, weak? If you're loving, or if a brother likes a girl, oh man, you soft, man. You see what I'm saying? Where did that come from? When did we become like robots and machines that we don't love? You see what I'm saying? So that has to be projected in the music. It has to be projected in the art. And that shifts the world. That's paradigm shifting. So the kids, they come up repeating that which they absorb. So if you're sitting in the car and you blast and all the stuff that's talk about take, take this blankety blank out. And they're not talking about take out their oppressor, they're not talking about take out those people who are destroying our community. They're talking about take out somebody who looks like me. That's teaching that young mind, hmm, when I see somebody look like me, I'm taking them out. You see what I mean? So that that's right, it's conditioning and art can redefine that condition. So thank you both, Brother Dawood. Ryan. Ryan. Oh, first, I mean, you're launching, right? So I wanted this, I mean, we had to say like we, like BCAF 2016 San Francisco is launching Brother Man Revelations today on the West Coast. Please support and thank you all for coming out. We'll have about a 10 minute break. Please go into the exhibit room and thank you for all for showing up. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yo, give a name. See if Nate can get a good name. Nate.