To think that Woody was in any way a father or stepfather to me is laughable.

It's hard for me to grasp that I might somehow be my father's equal in any way.

Both my parents died on the young side. My father was 45, and my mother was 61, so cancer's affected me in a big way.

James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.

I kind of stumbled into comics in a roundabout way. One of the first films my father introduced me to was the 1989 'Batman,' the Tim Burton one.

When a child is small, it is his mother who is mainly responsible for the way he is brought up. So it was with me. I belonged in those days to my mother rather than my father.

In the same way that Egypt and Libya conspired to 'disappear' my father and silence writers such as Idris Ali, they made me, too, to a far lesser extent, feel punished for speaking out.

There were times when gangs would approach me, but my father was way stronger than them. They would come make threats and stuff, and I was like, 'You don't know the opposition I've got upstairs. I'm not scared of you.'

The last thing my father told me was: 'On your way up, take me up. On your way down, don't let me down.' A father telling his son that puts some responsibility on my shoulders. He told me that, and I take it very seriously.

Cyborg was the first superhero that I've ever seen whose parent was around but just was not there for him emotionally, mentally. I related to that in a big way because, growing up, it was my mother and grandmother that raised me and my brother and sisters. I'm the second youngest of five; my father was never in the picture.

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