#Central Park bird watcher Christian Cooper writes DC Comics graphic novel

The black Central Park bird watcher falsely accused of “threatening” a white woman has created a graphic novel about the racist encounter.

“It’s a Bird” by Christian Cooper follows the story of Jules, a black teenage birder who is gifted a pair of special binoculars once belonging to his grandfather. When he looks through them, he sees faces of black people killed by police, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The 10-page digital-only graphic novel, published by DC Comics, kicks off a series called “Represent!” comprised of work from writers “traditionally underrepresented in the mainstream comic book medium,” DC Executive Editor Marie Javins said in a statement.

Cooper, 57, a former Marvel Comics editor, was bird watching in Central Park’s Ramble on May 25 when he asked a white woman, Amy Cooper, to leash her dog. He filmed the encounter as Amy went berserk, dialing 911 and telling police “an African-American man with a bicycle helmet … is recording me and threatening my dog.”

The video went viral — sparking national outrage.

Amy was criminally charged in July with falsely reporting an incident, but Christian said he wouldn’t cooperate with prosecutors’ investigation.

The same day of the Central Park encounter, George Floyd would go on to die in Minneapolis after being pinned under a police officer’s knee for nearly eight minutes during an arrest.

Christian’s ordeal with Amy is depicted in the comic book — when Jules confronts a white woman named Beth in the park with her unleashed dog and is backed by the images of black people killed by police, including Floyd, Amadou Diallo and Breonna Taylor.

When Jules turns away from Beth, he sees the people with wings, flying away.

Christian told the Times that his graphic novel is “drawn from a whole bunch of experiences and woven together from that — my own and the ones we keep hearing from news reports.”

He added, “What happened to me is minor compared to the fatal consequences for George Floyd later that same day, but it all comes from the same place of racial bias. I am not trying to equate these things. What I am trying to say is: ‘See the pattern.’”

Christian said when he was first approached about doing the comic based off his experience, he was dubious.

“I thought, ‘I don’t know, DC Comics? Superheroes? Not sure how that’s going to work,’” he recalled in an interview with DC.

“We kicked around a couple of ideas. They said they had gotten the title, I’m not sure exactly from who, but somebody pretty high up in the DC food chain: ‘It’s a Bird.’ It took me half a beat. ‘Oh … I get what you did there.’ Once I had the title, the story wrote itself.”

“It’s a Bird!” will be available for free online beginning Wednesday.