wandering around in the library today I happened upon the most awesome thing I have seen in a while; a dad reading comic books with his kid.

in itself that probably nothing special, but note that i didn't say "nerd" reading comic books with his kid, I said "Dad."

Black man, early forties, well dressed; not trying to pull the Race stereo type but it adds in to the fact that there was nothing about this guy that even remotely announced him as naturally sitting down with a comic book ... it was a crappy, overcast day so he took his kid to the library and when his kid wanted to read comic books he grabbed one for himself and plopped down too.

I just found that incredibly awesome to see that instead of giving his kid shit about not doing something "manly" or being a piss head and making the kid take it home instead of hanging out. typically the best you see with this sort of thing is some pushy nerd dad trying to push his own nerdity onto his kid and hounding him about bending the spine is bad handling and reduces the resale value.

my dad usually just called what I liked stupid, bitched about how overpriced it was, then spent twice as much on booze on the way home before making me go play with sticks and rocks outside while he got drunk watching TV.

Well then this will further warm the cockles of your heart ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU-Uwl7AZ7o

That is EXACTLY the type of Dad want to be. Though with me it ends up being a whole lot of "My Little Pony" instead of Spiderman.

*hug*

Cockles has got to be one of the best words in the English language, it's so damn funny sounding when you say it out loud! I watch MLP: FIM and I was ordered to select my favorite pony. I guess I am a geek dad, but other than my t-shirts you probably wouldn't know it just by looking.

Do you have custom orc shirts?

Yeah, they're all ripped up and show my huge, green biceps:)

Whoops, just realised what I said meant. :-|

Apology to OP - sorry for going offtopic.

I wish more parents realized that reading is reading. Now, there are some comic books which are clearly not appropriate for young kids. But at the end of the day, anything which gets a kid hooked on reading is positive.

Now, depending upon the series the language may not be sophisticated enough to be ideal, but it's far better than spending that time watching TV.

Same goes for story intensive computer games. It may not be quite ideal, but it will get kids interested in reading.

On a similar note, schools need to have a librarian, a librarian's assistant and a huge stock of books. Kids get interested in reading, by reading interesting things. I may happen to have liked Moby Dick, but that's no reason to expect everybody to be interested in it.

This. +1

That's super cute. It makes me happy to read stuff like this where parent's are reading to their kids.

As long as it wasn't Samuel L. Jackson secretly training his kid to be a superhero, I'm totally cool with it. Fun times for everyone!

Personally though I find the obsession with superhero comics to be a little weird. I mean, superheroes are fine sometimes, but it's an incredible format for telling stories and I'd like to see more branching out. There are a lot of great non-superhero graphic novels, of course, but they usually don't seem to gain a lot of traction with the public unless someone makes a TV show or movie out of them.

Well, I don't see how it's related to (not) being a nerd or being black or any other stereotypes (as far as I know there are a lot of black comic and movie geeks, too, and not all nerds or geeks are pushy towards their kids). But yeah, it's heartwarming to see a dad respect his kid's interests without prejudice.

Heh, overall we're a lucky generation imho: we have felt the bite of humiliation for our passions, but our kids (or at least a good part of them) will be free to read/enjoy comics, fantasy, sci-fi, horror books and other "childish" stuff without being molested for this...

And video games, lots and lots of video games....

Whenever I sit down with comic books, my mind gets trapped and has extreme trouble registering anything that's happening on the outside, if the pile of comics is big enough, I can stay stuck for a few hours before I manage to shake my mind loose again. And, with only the rare exception, I have no idea whatsoever what the time is when I get free ("wasn't it noon just recently? it's dark out").

I'm not sure if this trait would be good or bad in a similar situation.

Then again, before I can get into a similar situation, I need to get a kid, or borrow someone else's.