The Four Color Media Monitor

First, here's a report on CBS-17 in Raleigh of a comics store proprietor who was arrested for sexual abuse of an underaged girl:

A Wilmington comic book store owner has been sentenced between 16 to 20 years in prison for sexual offenses against a child he first met in 2000 when the child was 10 years old.

Robert Adam Burns, now 58, pleaded guilty in New Hanover County to four counts of statutory sex offenses with a 13-,14-, or 15-year-old and four counts of indecent liberties with a child, according to North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein. All of the counts stem from abuse against one victim in 2004 and 2005.

In 2000, he met the victim at his comic book store and began grooming her by giving her surfing lessons at Wrightsville Beach for some years, Stein said in a Monday news release.

Burns began sexually assaulting the victim when she was 14 years old. She came forward in early 2020 to disclose the abuse.

Very chilling. So this monster committed a serious offense against a minor, and disgraced the profession, doing a terrible disservice to industry and audience alike. Sadly, as realists recognize, this is not a shock a man in the comics sales profession could commit sexual abuse.

Next, in the Hickory Daily Record, word of a specialty store manager who acted heroically by saving a fellow worker at his shopping arcade from a rapist:

A man was arrested on an attempted rape charge thanks to the quick action of a local businessman and his friend.

Hickory police charged 22-year-old Hickory resident Justin Bradley Johnson with one felony count of attempted second-degree rape in connection to an assault in a downtown Hickory shopping center.

Jacob Edwards, owner of Time Tunnel Comics, said he had closed his store and was in his car about to turn out of the strip mall parking lot, when he saw Prism coffee shop owner Nestaseya Baadani banging on the door of his store. Edwards said he knew something was wrong when he saw Baadani running.

“Apparently, she had beaten on all the (shop) doors, all the way down until she got to mine,” Edwards said.

Baadani informed Edwards and his friend Mark Ball that someone was being attacked at the store next to her coffee shop. Edwards said the moment he opened his car door he heard someone screaming for help.

Edwards said he subdued Johnson with a chokehold. Edwards said he and Ball held the suspect on the ground until police arrived.

“Once I let go of the choke, he started to come to. But by that point we had him on the ground. I’m a man of heroic girth, so I’m just on top of him and he ain’t going anywhere,” Edwards said.

This guy, in sharp contrast to the first example, has done a good service for the medium and its audience, by selflessly defending a local woman from a sexually violent predator. So congratulations to Mr. Edwards for helping to stop a crime. Thank goodness for folks like these.

Labels: misogyny and racism, sales, violence