Welcome to BlackArachknight

This web site represents my personal comic book collection. Comic book collecting is a hobby that treats comic books and related items as collectibles or artwork to be sought after, displayed and preserved as well as works of literature, to be appreciated and critiqued like other genres of science fiction. Though considerably more recent than the collecting of postage stamps (philately), books (bibliophilia) or coins (numismatism), it has a major following around the world today.

The renewed interest in this hobby is partially responsible for both the increased interest in comic books/graphic novels after the temporary slump experienced during the 1980s as well as today's multi billion dollar Hollywood Super Hero movie genre

Among comics fandom, the study of comics as a medium and an art form are sometimes referred to (individually or collectively) as Panelology and people who collect comic books are known as Panna-picta-graphists a more common term used is a "Completist" someone who is committed to having the complete set or volume(s) of a particular character or group You cannot be a coin or stamp collector with just pictures of the coins and stamps

Nor can you be a comic book collector with just scans of the comics You must have the REAL THING!

Origins of DONALD "SPIDERMAN" THOMAS

When I was 5 years of age, my parents moved from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn to purchase a home on Amboy Street, Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York. It was there on that street that I first learned to run, jump and play a variety of games, which for the most part would all be considered aerobic activities today. Most of the games that the boys back in those days played were in the streets, and my mother forbade me to play in the street. At the age of 3, I ran away from her and was nearly injured by an oncoming automobile.

Needless to say, I got punished very often for disobeying my mother's wishes. Her concern for my safety, however, was no match for my desire to fit in with the rest of my peers. I roller skated, ice skated, bicycled, played punch ball, handball, softball (The Amboy St. Tigers), Crack Top, Skelly, Two-Hand Touch, street tackle football, Hot Peas and Butter, Hide (anywhere on the block) and Seek, Ace-King-Queen (Chinese Handball). I swam at the then Betsy Head Pool, now Marcus Garvey Pool, which is what made Amboy St. a dead-end street) and was known as Spider-Man!

AT TWELVE YEARS OF AGE, MY LIFE TOOK A GREAT TURN

One day while playing in the street, I squatted down to rest . . .

Suddenly a sharp pain went through my left knee. I shook it off after a while and continued to play. Being young, I just figured it to be something minor.

As the weeks went by, I noticed pain in my right knee as well. At no time was this pain so great that it caused me to stop doing all of my running and jumping; I would just have constant pain in my knees the day after. Can you imagine being thirteen years old and taking children's aspirin for pain? Can you imagine rubbing down with liniment throughout your teenage years?

I would tell people that I had "bad knees," but due to all of the running and jumping that I was still doing, no one really believed my problem was that serious.

At the age of 18, I consulted an orthopedic surgeon by the name of Dr. Joel Teicher. Upon examination, he diagnosed my problem as Osgood-Schlatter disease with boney patellar fragments. In layperson's terms, I had a knee disease that required the removal of more than twelve bone chips from each knee!

While convalescing, I read a runners magazine article that highlighted the benefits of rope jumping. It seemed to have everything that I was looking for. It was low impact, low cost, taught you how to be light on your feet and didn't hurt your knees when done properly.

OH, HAPPY DAY!

I'd found the healthy way to jump, not off of roofs, but, with a rope.

Although I began my research into rope jumping in 1972, I did not pick up a jump rope until 1975. I spent those three years developing my nutritional and motivational psychology program, The Philosophy of Diving Nutrition (PDN).

I knew that if DONALD "Spiderman" THOMAS was ever going to jump again, it would have to be a new kind of jumping and swinging!

In my life, I've been medically diagnosed with acute rhinitis, bronchitis, Osgood-Schlatter disease, acute sprains of the left side of the shoulder, elbow and lower back. Through the practice of New Jump Swing, as well as PDN Vegetarianism, I've been able to overcome these ailments and live a relatively healthy life.

A healthy lifestyle is what will allow people to overcome low life expectancy statistics. A healthy lifestyle is what will reduce heart disease, cancer, adult onset diabetes, childhood obesity and AIDS!

As a nation, if we are to curtail skyrocketing medical care costs, we must begin by teaching our citizens how to reduce their chances of developing diseases that have been proven to be lifestyle-related. By no means am I suggesting that these lifestyle changes require you to live a cloistered life, merely that these changes are for the improvement of your health and that you the individual have the power to make these changes.

Many people cannot afford the cost of membership to a gym, health club or spa. Many cannot access a swimming pool for swimming or a snowy mountain for cross-country skiing. The reality of violence in the streets and parks of urban America have made some people fearful of running alone or with someone. New Jump Swing was designed with those realities in mind!