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Kelowna  

Payday for comic strip kid

Nine-year-old Jonah Cooke's comic the “Ballistic Bully” won first place overall in the national Telus Wise Footprint comic contest.

The contest encourages all kids aged six through 18 to create a comic about keeping your digital footprint clean and understanding that your actions online can have a negative effect on others.

A special assembly was held at Cooke's school on Monday, South Kelowna Elementary, with the entire school, a Telus representative, mom, dad and grandma and grandpa on hand to watch the cheque ceremony. The $3,000 will go towards the school's digital literacy programs.

Jonah's winning comic was inspired by a particular night of playing video games with his dad.

“It is interesting because he got the idea from a real life event,” explains Jonah's dad Mike Cooke. “We were playing video games at home, online, between our devices. I am not very good at video games and he kept destroying me. I told him I wasn't really having very much fun, and eventually I didn't want to play anymore.”

Mike says Jonah wanted to understand why he no longer wanted to play and he told his son that it is not fun to play if your character is immediately killed at the start of every game.

“So he thought of that when he did the comic strip,” adds Mike.

Jonah's comic was chosen as one of the best three out of more than 500 entries across the country. Once he made the shortlist, Telus hooked him up with a graphic designer to help bring his comic strip vision to life.

The completed comics hit the net and were voted on from east to west with Jonah's getting the most votes nationally.

Jonah tells Castanet the comic idea came to him easily and he had a blast working with the Telus graphic designer to bring it to life.

“Just being in the top three was just amazing, we couldn't believe that out of all of Canada he got selected so it was pretty cool,” says Mike. “He had an idea, he drew from a real life experience and put that forward to see if he could win the contest.”

When Jonah's mom told him he had won the national prize, he could hardly believe the news.

“I was very surprised, I thought my mom was joking,” explains Jonah. “My classmates are surprised, but think it is cool.”

“He was so happy, he couldn't believe it,” adds Mike. “He thought he would be really popular at school and he would need bodyguards and the paparazzi would be around.”

Mike says they talk to their kids about online safety and bullying and both of their kids are smart online.

Jonah says he is going to split the $500 with his older brother as he helped with the comic and that he hasn't yet decided what he will spend the money on.

To check out the top three comics, including Jonah's click here.



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