Last fall, a group of local comic artists and art curators from Central Ohio introduced Columbus to Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (abbreviated as CXC), a new kind of comics convention that mixed fandom with academia and treated the medium as more than just a breeding ground for the next big-budget superhero movie. The event was enough of a success that it’s now been planned through 2019, running this year from Wednesday, October 12 through Sunday the 16th.

Once again the event will be held throughout the city, with the majority of events at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum on OSU’s campus and the Columbus Metropolitan Library and Columbus College of Art & Design in Downtown Columbus.

Winston Hightower is releasing “Exploration Date” on Super Dreamer records towards the end of October. “Exploration Date” is a follow-up to “Too Close to Home.”  Winston plays drums in Minority Threat. He was in Hardcore bands Yuze Boys and Puberty Wounds. Winston recently received some press that put him on experimental music innovators R. Stevie Moore and Gary Wilson’s radar.

“Exploration Date” sounds as if R. Stevie Moore filtered through the experimental narrative of Columbus Rock. Winton's solo stuff isn’t hardcore. Imagine Ariel Pink with ghostly Krylon Terracotta fingernail overspray from the Calumet Bridge.

Winston said of his contact with the influential Nashville musician, “I think R. Stevie Moore is at the point where he is so annoyed with me. That’s like my goal. That’s how I feel he operates.”

While we were conducting the interview it was difficult not to discuss our climate as this swing state that is reeling from the shooting of Ty’re King.

As most of the world ignores or hypocritically celebrates the 147th birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the International Day of Nonviolence on 2 October, some of us will quietly acknowledge his life by continuing to build the world that he envisioned. When asked for his message for the world, Gandhi responded with the now famous line 'My life is my message' reflecting his lifelong struggle against violence.

Gandhi's life was dotted with many memorable quotes but one that is less well known is this: 'You may never know what results come of your actions but if you do nothing there will be no results'.

This past September many America citizens were hit back-to-back with the realization that Black boys and men are “moving targets” for some police officers in America. In Columbus a thirteen-year old was shot and killed. Why? According to the Columbus Police Department (CPD) he pulled a gun on them during a chase. The “gun” turned out to be a toy gun. King is the third young Black man killed by the CPD this past year in Columbus. The police-officer appears to have fallen under the misbelief that the teenage boy, who happens to be Black, wanted to harm him, and thus his lawyers defense that the white man who is a trained police officer was “in fear for his life.” And now Tyre King’s mother buries her son and cries “no peace until justice.”

On the tragic evening of September 14, 2016, Tyre King, aged 13, was shot and killed by Columbus Police Department (CPD) officer Bryan Mason. Around the city, people are mourning the death of this child. The scars are still new, and will never fade.

We mourn for Tyre and his family, and hope they can find some solace in the vigils and protests that have started to emerge around this atrocity.

While Tyre's story is unique and individual, the violence against him is also part of a larger pattern. So far this year, at the time of this writing, the police have killed 788 people (and counting), and a disproportionate number of them--almost 25 percent--were African American.

In terms of police killings that have received a great deal of media attention, Ohio stands out, with the deaths of Tyre King; Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old killed by police in November 2014, while he was holding a BB gun in a Cleveland public park; and John Crawford III, a 22 year old who police shot in August 2014, while he was in the aisle of a Walmart store near Dayton holding an air gun he was considering buying.