A Public Service Announcement! ;)

A Public Service Announcement! ;)

Friday, October 26, 2007

New Comic Accentuates Diversity/Multicultural Teamwork


Comic Book Resources has posted an interview with Bill Galvin,the creator of "The Scrapyard Detectives," a comic created with the support of The Diversity Foundation to explicitly illustrate examples of ethnic diversity and community teamwork. Here's CBR staffer Rick Offenberger's hook:

Everyone wants to change the world. However, few of us do anything about it. Bill Galvan is trying; he joined the non-profit organization The Diversity Foundation to do just that. Bill has created his own group of teen adventures in the comics "The Scrapyard Detectives," a group who solve mysteries while demonstrating the value of accepting ethnic and cultural differences. But this isn't a comic you'll likely see in your local comic shop. Galvan's creation is given out free to schools and libraries and so far this effort has topped 70,000 copies... Read more here.
Diversity in comics is nothing new. Pick up any copy of X-Men from Giant-Sized #1 on and you'll see a multicultural group of heroes trying to make things work. They're led by a man in a wheelchair. They come from different countries and represent various ethnicities. However, Galvin's comic seems to make the message of cooperation much more overt, which might be what some readers need, so more power to him and his cast of characters. Plus, the series actually has an education professor on board as an active advisor and comes with lesson plans focusing on vocabulary and comprehension.

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