My "artist" son recently drew three pictures of larger-than-life characters. Two of them were of a baseball coach, and the third was of a person seated on what looked like an elevated chair of some sort. I easily recognized the coach in pictures 1 and 2, but not the person in picture 3.
So, I asked him who it was, and he didn't answer, just smiled wickedly. I kept asking and kept getting the same smile, until finally one of his brothers gave the picture a quick glance and said (with a distinct "duh uh" in his tone), "It's a person on a toilet seat."
With my newly gained knowledge, I examined the picture, and noticed (gasp!) the person had an afro and an expression probably similar to the one he would see if he opened the bathroom door and found me on the said elevated seat....
I can't find the appropriate words to finish this story, so I'm gonna switch kinda awkwardly to Naif Al-Mutawa's TED talk on superheroes inspired by Islam. (God forbid my little artist chooses "woman on elevated seat"--as I prefer to call it--as the inspiration for a comic strip!!)
___________
In "THE 99," Naif Al-Mutawa's new generation of comic book heroes fight more than crime -- they smash stereotypes and battle extremism. Named after the 99 attributes of Allah, his characters reinforce positive messages of Islam and cross cultures to create a new moral framework for confronting evil, even teaming up with the Justice League of America.
