Comics

Top Ten Moments in Comics

	10. DARK REIGN I liked it. A natural continuation of the events of CIVIL WAR. Currently enjoying SIEGE, and looking forward to the AGE OF HEROES.
	9. BLACKEST NIGHT  So good I’m reading DC Comics!
	8. WALKING DEAD The consistency is amazing. Can’t wait for the TV show.
	7. DWAYNE MCDUFFIE It started like a good year for Dwayne – writing the FANTASTIC FOUR and THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and the revival of the MILESTONE characters. But it all went wrong. Why is Dwayne treated so badly at DC while writing one, then the other number one show on Cartoon Network and writing a straight to DVD movie that debuted at number two on the charts? See the interview below: Race, Sci-Fi, and Comics: A Talk with Dwayne McDuffie
	6. SLEEPER and INCOGNITO The grit of a crime book with super powers. Love ‘em.
	5. SUPERGOD First two issues have been fantastic.
	4. CROSSED I’ve never had such a conflicted relationship with a comic before. I dread it, yet I read it. Glad and sad it’s over.
	3. INCOGNEGRO Brilliant graphic novel. Now in paperback. Step up, people.
	2. WEDNESDAY COMICS They didn’t all work, but I appreciated the freshness of the format.
	1. KICK ASS A kick ass book with a genius title that will change the comic business model.

Race, Sci-Fi, and Comics: A Talk with Dwayne McDuffie

Your run on Deathlok seemed to be full of allusions to the black experience. The lead character’s trapped in a cyborg construct and has his body stolen from him. His fear and shame at how his family would see his new form keeps him from them. He’s literally separated from his own humanity. And the dialogues between the cyborg’s computer AI and Michael Collins riffs on the twoness that W.E.B. DuBois spoke about. How much of this was explicitly in your and Greg Wright’s pitch and how much did you slip under the radar?

None of it was in the pitch, but all of it was intentional. Invisible Man was, and still is, my favorite novel. I’d just read The Souls of Black Folk and was explicitly thinking about Skip Gates’ The Signifying Monkey. Godel, Esher, Bach and Derrick Bell’s dialogues about race and law sort of crashed in my head. Deathlok was a way of sharing some of my thoughts about all of this.

Foremost, though, Deathlok was supposed to be a modern-day take on Marvel’s The Thing (a man alienated by his surface appearance), as well as my own commentary on the “grim and gritty” trend in comic book heroes. Contrary to the fashion at the time, I wanted to do a superhero who was more moral than I, not less.

You’ve talked about how the character of Buck Wild came about as a commentary on the complicated love/hate relationship you had with Luke Cage. Do you still feel the need to address that relationship today? Did doing those issues with Buck help work that stuff out?

I’d worked those issues out even before I started Milestone. I just wanted to share those ideas with the comic book readership in an entertaining matter. Interestingly, those stories are about to be reprinted this summer as Icon: Mothership Connection. The excesses of Blaxploitation comics characters like Cage is the past, though. I’m much more interested in dealing with the stuff that’s going on now: more green characters with their own monthlies than black characters, a criminal lack of people of color in writing and editorial positions on mainstream books, et cetera… The last time I tried to write about that stuff in a mainstream book, my story was bounced (by the same people who asked me to write about it, mind you), and my editors wanted to replace it with clichés from twenty years ago, clichés that not coincidentally shielded mainstream readers and comicbook creators from any responsibility for the current state of affairs. I passed on that. I’ll write about those issues again when I have more control over the content.

You can see hints of Song of Solomon in Icon and maybe a little bit of The Autobiography of Malcolm X in Hardware (where Curtis starts off operating from a vengeful drive but eventually matures to a justice-for-all mindset)? Is there any literature or a writer who’s influencing you now? Like, where you read something and think, I wonder if there’s something I can play with there?

I’m in a very strange reading phase right now. I’m obsessed with paperback original crime novels from the ’50s through the ’70s or so. It’s people writing very quickly, for money, with very little filter on their world view, so as long as their entertaining, they can talk about whatever they like. Comics used to be like that, I guess I’m just nostalgic.

I’m currently reading a lot of Ed Lacy, whose 1957 Toussaint Moore novel, Room To Swing, is still one of the best, most human portrayals of a black character ever in detective fiction. I imagine him hanging out on the porch with Easy Rollins, and talking about life. Let’s see, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day really knocked me out. I also just discovered Percival Everett, how the hell did I not know about this guy? I’m reading a lot of Steven Pinker, surely that stuff will come out somewhere, sometime.

Really though, my major writing influences right now are from television. The Wire is a work of art on par with the best in any field of human endeavor. I’ve not tried anything on that scale in comics, and I don’t know if I’m up to the challenge, but I’d sure like to try.

On another level, I loved Sports Night and Arrested Development. I should mention something on the air now, shouldn’t I? I love House and the main character reminds me of my take on Hardware -my family has accused me of being like very much like both characters. I can’t decide if that’s a compliment. Probably not.

Complete interview here