Devin Hughes - A Comic Book To Fight Bullying

Devin Hughes is the light-skinned son of a black father and white mother. Growing up in a primarily black neighborhood, he was often bullied which just got worse when he was diagnosed with dyslexia and pulled from regular classes. But he has now taken his experiences and turned them into a positive that others can learn from as well. 

Hughes created a comic book called "Self Talk" dealing with his childhood and how he got through. And no it's not the spandex superhero type comic book. The heroes in this book are in the form of positive self-affirmations, or “self talk,” which he said can protect children from foes like bullies.

The cover of "Self Talk" by Devin Hughes, with children wearing "symbolic" shields.

On top of the comic book, there is also a 54-page curriculum with activities related to the book. In recent months he's been talking to several college and schools about the project. 

The comic begins with a young Hughes discovering his mother’s car on fire outside his home one night. Instead of dwelling on what had happened, Hughes’ father turned the incident into a lesson about keeping a positive attitude. “People fall,” his father says to him in one panel. “They get hurt. But you’ve got to get up. Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”

Hughes' aim with the comic book is to teach young kids how to protect and defend themselves from the emotional harm that often comes with bullying, instead of focusing the aim on the bully him/herself which is what most anti-bullying programs do.


“I had points where I was crying,” he said about writing the book. “When you go through a lot of trauma like I did, you kind of compartmentalize it. You bury it.”

Hughes said he found himself speaking to his father about things in his childhood that they had never discussed.

Along the way, he also found many remarkable lessons from his father, who used to introduce him to prostitutes and drug users as a way of teaching him the consequences of poor choices in life.

Hughes is still speaking at schools about his anti-bullying comic, and is planning another comic book to teach tolerance.





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