Meet Duo: Earth-M’s Debut Superhero is of Two Minds

By Alex Jaffe | DC Comics

Last year, the world of Milestone Media made its long-awaited return to comic shelves. Static, Icon, Rocket and Hardware live again in a shared universe of their own, living the kinds of stories they were created to tell. In 2022, Milestone is only getting bigger. Make way for Earth-M.

The “Earth-M” line is a collection of new concepts and characters created by original Milestone cofounder Denys Cowan and current Milestone relaunch shepherd Reginald Hudlin, both inspired by and nestled within the Milestone universe. In time, these new heroes may meet their Milestone forebears, but now is the time for Milestone to do what it was always meant to through Earth-M: broaden perspectives on the superhero genre as a whole with ideas you’ve never seen before.

One of the first titles in the Earth-M line will be the six-issue limited series Duo, the story of two lovers, both alike in scientific accomplishment, merged into one body through a nanotechnology experiment. While this has granted them extraordinary powers, it has also erased the boundaries between them. Can a love survive when all things must be shared and independence lost? We spoke with author Greg Pak (Action Comics, Batman/Superman), penciler Khoi Pham (Teen Titans) and inker Scott Hanna (too many credits to list) to learn everything we can about this exciting new title.

Duo is the story of doctors Kelly Vu and David Kim, who are fused into one being by nanotechnology overnight. What was Kelly and David’s relationship like before their fusion? Who were they as individuals before they became one person?

Greg Pak: I think the fun part of this story is that it’s asking the question of “What if you were privy to every single thought, feeling and impulse of the person you most love in the world?”

We talk about people finishing each other’s sentences when they really know each other, and that’s exactly what Dr. Kelly Vu and Dr. David Kim do in some of the opening pages of this. They work together, they live together, they love together. They are in that fairly early stage of a relationship where everything makes sense with the other person perfectly. But what happens when you literally can’t escape the other person? When the other person is literally in your mind? That’s what hooked me into the project when Reggie first talked to me about it and pitched it to me.

So, who are they? They are brilliant scientists, they are engaged, and they have slightly different impulses. As you go along in the book, you realize Kelly is a bigger risk-taker and David’s a little more cautious, in life and in everything else. But they complement each other, and they have these huge ambitions together. The challenge is to see what happens when people who seem so similar are suddenly, entirely connected, and whether they actually are so similar after all. And whether being similar is even the objective!

Scott Hanna: I’ve been happily married for a long time, but my wife and I are basically polar opposites in a lot of ways. But that helps. We work well together because we’re not the same. And like any relationship, you’re going to have arguments, you’re going to have fights. So, this way of dealing with relationships is really cool. How that really functions, and dysfunctions as well.

Khoi Pham: Yeah, and on the visual side of things, Greg and I were talking about this way, way at the beginning, which was like a hundred years ago at this point.

GP: Yeah, literally five years ago!

KP: So, casting these characters, right? It was a Vietnamese-American and a Korean-American, but it was a really great opportunity for reinventing in the image what we would like. One of the things I really wanted to do, and Greg was completely on board with it, was depicting a dark-skinned Asian. That’s not very frequent (in comics). Unfortunately, it’s kind of an issue in Asian culture. So, we made Kelly darker.

These were the intentions we brought to it, and I’m glad we were able to not just have Asian-Americans, but darker-skinned Asian-Americans. It’s really fun just taking Greg’s ideas and how he fleshes these characters out and visually represent them. Subtle stuff. Dave’s wearing a baseball tee in Giants colors, so he’s like the Stats Guy, right? And Kelly’s got a Wonder Woman t-shirt. So, little hints and visual cues that way. She really takes the superhero approach, like, “Let’s go knock some heads around!” And Dave’s more, “Let’s plan it out!

Speaking of that representation, a big part of the reason Milestone Media was founded, and a mission the Earth-M comics will continue, was to present heroes representing more marginalized communities, as created and told by writers and artists from those backgrounds themselves. How does Duo attempt to represent the Asian-American experience?

GP: No single project can represent the experiences of a whole community, so I’m not going to make any sweeping statements like that. But I’m thrilled about the project because so many Asian-Americans live in Pan-Asian families, where you have people of multiple backgrounds in the same family. And here, we’ve got a Korean-American man and a Vietnamese-American woman. Those kinds of relationships are everywhere, but they’re seldom represented, you know? And so, there’s something nice about normalizing that kind of experience.

There’s also a thing where sometimes by having one Asian character in a story, that one Asian bears all this weight of representing Asian-America. It’s impossible! So, having this be just one more story among many, many Asian and Asian-American stories that are out there, with more coming out every day, it’s a thrill to have another angle. To be another project with another window to another experience. I like that it shows some older characters and a couple. It’s a mature love story. And I think that kind of thing is still sort of rare.

Especially in superhero comics.

GP: Yeah! So that feels special. A chance to dig into that kind of stuff. It is ridiculous, but having an Asian-American romantic lead is still rare in American media. I’ve been doing this in one form or another for thirty years now. Making films, writing comics. Specifically doing Asian-American storytelling. And there’s never been a better time than now, in terms of the diversity and breadth of Asian-American storytelling that’s getting funded and distributed.

One of the nice things about having so many things coming out is that you can have some projects that are explicitly about Asian-American history, or family dynamics. And you can also have projects which aren’t, on the surface, directly about that at all. The characters aren’t necessarily struggling with immigrant experiences, or family trauma, or whatever typical Asian-American story you often see, like second-generation kids not doing what their first-generation parents want them to do. I love all those stories. I think those stories are great. But I think there’s also room for totally loopy sci-fi stuff with Asian-American characters in it.

KP: That’s what I love about this story and stories that are told this way in terms of representation through just being in it, but not talking about it in the story. It just happens to be Asian-Americans. I think it’s important to put representation out there and just see it, see it, see it. They’re just in a sci-fi superhero book. The costume was deliberately a classic superhero costume. Yeah, they’re Asian-Americans, but this is a science fiction superhero story, and this is just how they happen to look. But we’re not going to talk about it, it’s just what it is.

GP: There are subtleties to the whole story that may resonate with Asian-American readers in a specific way. I think there’s something to these second or third generation characters who are much more open about their feelings than their immigrant parents or grandparents might be. That’s where our characters start off. They’re very honest and open and intimate with each other. But then we kind of challenge that. Like, how open are you really? To me, that resonates, coming from Korean and German-English stock. My grandparents were very reticent. They hardly ever spoke about their emotional states, and I’ll ramble on about all my feelings at the drop of a hat, because it’s a different world. But at the same time, there’s a part of me that’s very private. So, is that an Asian-American story? It might be. It’s up to readers to get what they want out of it.

Nanotechnology is also a big part of this story. There’s a visual challenge with nanotech sci-fi stories where it ends up falling into this category of “gray goo.” How do you keep nanotech interesting visually in a comic book?

GP: Instead of gray goo, we went with gold mist. (laughter)

And that makes all the difference.

SH: It’s more sparkly, yeah.

GP: There’s a big swirling tank of gold mist and it’s kind of romantic and beautiful. Chris Sotomayor is the colorist.

KP: I was going to say, huge credit to him on that.

You’re talking about the romantic symbology of the gold mist, which makes me wonder how much is the nanotechnology meant to be a narrative device, and how much is this meant to be a hard sci-fi story?

GP: Well, everything is a narrative device, in every story. Literally every single choice you make in a story is a narrative device. The premise is that you’ve got this character—and I don’t know how much we should spill—but they become ridiculously powerful. So, you’re not only finding yourself with your lover’s mind as sort of a permanent part of your own mind, you’re not only experiencing everything your partner’s experiencing, but you’re in this body that is virtually impervious to damage. You’ve got this ridiculous amount of power, and the nanotechnology sets that up.

This technology doesn’t exist. It is science fiction, but there are internal rules to it all and they connect all the threads here. David and Kelly are scientists who want to use this nanotechnology to cure diseases and ease human suffering. So, this is a fictional narrative device that also makes sense given the fictional science we’re dealing with here, but it serves this emotional story of these people who want to do good. They’re do-gooders. But what happens when you have so much power is that you can throw things out of balance. That’s one of these classic superhero themes, and this whole nanotech concept lets us dig at that from interesting places. It’s also significant because it’s created by humans. It’s something they have gone out and gotten. So, it’s not like—

SH: Flash getting hit by a lightning bolt.

GP: Exactly. They went out and got this. So, there’s an increased sense of personal responsibility to this whole thing that I think is interesting.

KP: With the nanos, they created it. I always sort of imagined it as being like a baby. It has a personality, and looking back, there’s this one scene where David and Kelly are being affectionate and the nanos create, like, heart shapes. Its shape and texture changes based on how it feels about its creators. It’s very subtle.

GP: And they nurture it, too. You have these kind of flashback scenes where they treat it like their baby. They’re staying up all night with it.

SH: One of the cool things too, is that at the very beginning, it doesn’t do what they want it to do. The intent is not what the result is. That’s also like a child—you can’t control it. Once it’s there, it’s got a life of its own.

KP: Absolutely.

So, this is a story about parenthood, as well as partnership.

GP: (Laughs) That’s sort of more of a buried theme, but… yeah.

Duo #1 is written by Greg Pak and drawn by Khoi Pham and Scott Hanna. Cover art is by Dike Ruan, with a variant cover by Denys Cowan and a 1:25 variant cover by Nimit Malavia. Look for it at comic shops and digital retailers on May 17, 2022

Reginald Hudlin Joins C Street’s Board of Advisors

C Street Advisory Group | C Street, a strategic advisory firm helping CEOs meet the moment, today announced the appointment of Reginald Hudlin to its Board of Advisors.

Reginald Hudlin is an accomplished entertainment executive and Oscar and Emmy-nominated producer and director. He is the second African American to produce the Oscars, the first African American to produce the Emmys, and a ten-time producer of the NAACP Image Awards. 

In his venerable career, Reginald has directed popular feature films, including House Party, Boomerang, Marshall, The Black Godfather, and Safety and produced Django Unchained, as well as television shows like Phat Tuesday, Friday Night Vibes with Tiffany Haddish, the Boondocks, and the Black Panther animated series. 

Reginald is a co-owner of Milestone Media, which develops multi-ethnic superhero properties in partnership with Warner Media. Milestone is currently publishing five different comic series and developing live-action and animated feature films and television series. As a comic book writer, Reginald has created award-winning runs on The Black Panther and Spider-Man. 

Reginald served as Black Entertainment Television’s first President of Entertainment from 2005-2009, shepherding some of the network’s biggest hits, including Sunday Best and The BET Hip Hop Awards. He built BET’s profitable home entertainment division and revamped its news division, which went on to win more than a dozen awards during his tenure.

“Over the course of his legendary career, Reggie has brought Black American stories to screens across the world,” said C Street Founder and CEO Jon Henes. “When Reggie spoke to our team about his work at one of our meetings during Black History Month, he left us feeling incredibly inspired by his passion for showcasing the Black experience through authentic, multifaceted, and relatable characters. We’re honored to welcome him to our Board of Advisors as C Street continues advancing DEI in Corporate America.” 

Reginald serves on the Executive Board of the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild. He has served on the Board of Governors for the Motion Picture Academy and been a Vice President of the Producers Guild. Reginald graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies. 

Blood Syndicate Season One #1 Preview: Because U Demanded It

Jude Terror | Bleeding Cool

Blood Syndicate returns thanks to alleged popular demand in this preview of Blood Syndicate Season One #1. Is it everything you hoped it would be? It better be, you ungrateful pricks! Jeeze! Comic book readers are never satisfied! Check out the preview below.

You asked, and we delivered…the Blood Syndicate is back! Wise Son and Tech-9 have returned from their military tours in Afghanistan—and life in Dakota City could not be more different. While Icon and Rocket have been busy cleaning up the streets, Bang Babies have been forming rival gang factions. With Holocaust’s influence—and super-powered army—growing, who will look out for the people of Paris Island when the capes aren’t watching? What secrets do Wise and Tech hide from their time overseas? As the struggle for power on the chaotic streets spills into war…who will emerge victorious as the new kingpin of Paris Island? Original Blood Syndicate series artist ChrisCross teams up with rising-star writer Geoffrey Thorne in this reimagining of the fan-favorite Milestone series, which blows open the next wild chapter in the Milestone Universe!
In Shops: 5/10/2022
SRP: $3.99

Talking ‘Duo’, new Milestone stories with Greg Pak, Khoi Pham, and Scott Hanna

The tales of Earth-M kick off this May.

David Brooke | AIPT

On May 17, the Milestone Comics universe expands with Duo by Greg Pak, Khoi Pham, Scott Hanna, Chris Sotomayor, and Janice Chiang. The new six-issue series is set in a brand-new version of Earth called, conveniently enough, Earth-M. This earth will feature an entire roster of all-new superheroes, and it all starts with Duo.

The story follows two nanotech engineers, Dr. Kelly Vu and Dr. David Kim, who also happen to be lovers. After a terrible accident, the pair are fused together (think sort of like Firestorm), at which point they use their superhero abilities to save the world. It actually harkens back to Milestone’s early days and a character called Xombi originally created by John Rozum and Denys Cowan.

Before issue #1 arrives (and just in time for the FOC of April 24), we caught up with Pak, Pham, and Hanna about the project. We also dug into how the story began some five years ago, the value of Asian American representation in comics, and much, much more.

AIPT: Greg, Reggie Hudlin pitched the idea for Duo to you. When you first heard about this project, where did your mind wander surrounding the idea of having this romantic partner duo forever inside one mind?

Greg Pak: Yeah, it was immediately interesting. Reggie and Denys [Cowan] had come up with this updating and re-imagining of the Xombi concept from back in the day. The big idea was through this nanobot technology that saves one person, you end up getting both people in one person’s mind. Which was just great. Kind of what I do is the big loopy genre, storytelling. And that’s just fun because sci-fi fantasy genres, all kinds, I just love. But in order to tell a story that matters, I need to have an emotional hook, and this was a huge emotional hook that was gonna be endlessly fun to explore.

AIPT: What’s it like working with Denys Cowen and Reggie Hudlin?

GP: It was great. They came in with the big high concept ideas and then kind of cut us loose to build what we could build. So then those outlines and ideas got tossed in and we’d have some discussions and then they gave the thumbs up. I mean I think they brought us all on board because they like what we do. That’s the best position to be in, to be with people who wanna work with you cause of what you do. And then what they’re giving you to work with is the kind of stuff you like to do.

AIPT: What was your relationship with Milestone Comics when it was launched in the ’90s?

Scott Hanna: It was actually a really cool project that we’re getting. Anytime for me, when you can start creating brand new characters, the universe of DC or whatever is just fun. I’ve only done it a couple of times. Duo is actually pretty much only the second time I’ve been in from the ground floor of new characters, new series, you get to invent new bad guys. Milestone took that in a wonderful direction. I worked with Denys Cowen before, not on any of the mainstream Milestone books at that time, and that was a nice breath of fresh air. It’s great to see 20 years later that these characters are on TV, they’re integrated into all the other stuff that’s out there. So I’m hoping that our stuff on Duo will be at some point in the not-to-distant future integrated into, you know, what we see in other media or just part of the universe. I think of us as being kind of self-sustained in our original story, but it allows for a lot of integration with everything else.

Khoi Pham: Now that you’re asking this question David, it actually triggered an emotional memory. When given the opportunity to join Milestone, that was a hard yes. Now that you’ve jogged my memory I remember now I was in high school and I was introducing comics to my younger cousins. They were all excited and Milestone came out and they went to the comic store and just bought all the Milestone books to share with me. So that’s a really great memory of spending time with my cousins and getting them to get into comics. So Milestone was how they said, “Hey, this is something new have you seen this?” And I hadn’t. So that was kind of neat for them to share back with me.

So I guess deep-seated in there was this like, “Yes!” I wanna do Milestone, but, but then when Greg approached about that world creating and character building and we can tell our story. Who would say no to this?

GP: I went through a couple of waves of reading comics and not reading superhero comics. Sadly I was not reading a lot of superhero comics when Milestone first hit. When I found out about it and subsequently met the heroes behind it all, like the real-life heroes, and what those comics did and the fight that they fought and continue to fight for just getting all kinds of people up on the page is near and dear to my heart. So it’s a huge honor to be part of it.

AIPT: Duo is also set in Earth-M which is fascinating. What was the starting material for this world before you kicked it off with your scripting and drawing?

GP: We just started writing and they were like, “okay, good.” So I guess that’s the way that came together.

AIPT: No notes!

GP: <laugh> There are some efforts at one point to tie in more closely to some of the other books, but then the sort of editorial plan changed a little bit and we’re not tying in quite so directly with certain characters.

KP: Which can happen over five years.

GP: Yes, exactly. <laugh>.

KP: It’s been a journey.

AIPT: Since it’s been a five-year journey. Have you guys had the first issue done and completed for a while?

GP: Pretty much. I mean <laugh> It was wild. I don’t know if you guys felt the same way. It was a trip coming back to it because in comics I’m so used to like writing something, turning it in, and then literally sometimes literally like within days I’m getting layouts, you know what I mean? Then it’s out in stores within a couple of months. To have something you wrote, you know, four or five years ago…

AIPT: Pre-pandemic!

GP: Exactly. I had to look at this whole thing again and be like, “What was I saying? And is that still what I wanna say? And what does this mean anymore?” One really kind of cool thing was that we got the chance to sort of look at the whole thing and go back and make some choices about stuff earlier on.

I finagled an extra two pages to better introduce the whole story. There’s a lot of comic book science and stuff to set up in this book. This book is really about these two characters. We need a little more time with them at the very beginning of the book. It was really a gift in a way that the book got delayed for so long that sometimes having that chance to have a little more perspective gives you the opportunity this can make everything better.

SH: The fact that we’ve had this story going on for five years of our creating it, in my mind, it still holds up really well. That means for us, it’s already like dealt with the test of time. It still works five years later. That means, “Hey, we’re doing something right here.” So I’m actually really excited to see what the fan’s reaction is. When I see the pages from Chris [Sotomayor], he’s just doing a phenomenal job with the coloring. When we added those extra couple of pages of issue 1, that just set it up that little bit better, you know? In my entire career, I’ve never had this amount of time on a project. Not even close.

GP: I mean, it’s even longer compared to say traditional book publishing, you know what I mean? Letterer Janice Chiang is also doing amazing work. It is complicated because there are inner voices and figuring out like different balloon styles for different inner voices of different characters and there’s a lot going on. And she’s nailing it.

[To Khoi] Do you feel like your style changed since you drew the first pages of this?

KP: It has. It has, but at the same time, it’s nice to go back to what I did then. Right? Every five-year chunk, five years ago was a little more innocent time, right? It was actually a really fun experience getting back on the book.

AIPT: Duo also has good representation, we’ve got Kelly and David who are Vietnamese-American and Korean American characters. Will there be any exploration with their families in this to further explore?

GP: There’s a very small bit. This is really about the two of them. We don’t really get into the family as much in this particular project. I’m Asian American, I’ve written a ton of Asian American characters and family dynamic actually is a big thing that I do return to a lot in different stories. But this one isn’t really that. I think that’s cool, you know what I mean?

Not every Asian American story needs to be about first-second generation conflicts and all that kind of stuff. There’s a tiny taste of that I think in issue two. But this is really about a mature couple struggling with questions of love. That kind of story is a little rarer for specifically Asian American projects. I’m all for more, more and more and more variety. So the fact that this does something a little different is a thrill to me.

SH: Are we allowed to talk about some of the diversity of the villains that you’re setting up?

GP: <laugh> Well, you get a little tease, in issue one.

KP: To bring this back to Greg’s point on Asianness. I don’t want people to lose the sense that this is a freaking awesome superhero story. Yeah, they’re Asians, but there are cultural vehicles and that’s cool. This is not one of them. You get as much Asian as you get that Ben Grimm is a Jewish American. The extent of it is it’s a cool superior story and it’s visually representative, right?

GP: There are always layers to it. Sometimes stories, which I’ve written and love, are very much grappling right upfront with very specific “Asian American issues.” Here these characters to me are Asian American characters and they’re living Asian American lives. For those with eyes to see, there’s subtext and there’s context and the way they come from, I think that will relate to different people differently. That’s not the forefront of the story, but I think it’s still there as subtext in a way.

I will say one thing that I like too though, is that this is also a rarity in that it’s got a multiethnic couple within the Asian American community. I mean, you’ve got a Korean American and a Vietnamese American who are lovers in this story which is an incredibly common kind of thing that doesn’t get represented a whole lot.

Courtesy of DC Comics.

AIPT: Duo is also a superhero story where he gets his powers from a kind of accident. I wanted to ask you guys, do you have a favorite superhero who got their powers from an accident?

GP: Oh, wow. Well, the Hulk of course is my favorite superhero. It’s perfect. He goes running out to save somebody and then he gets cursed, you know? That sort of bitter irony is a beautiful thing in storytelling.

SH: I could be wrong, but one of the first accidental heroes, as I remember is the Flash and he’s just in the lab and gets hit by lightning and all this stuff spills on him, you know? So yeah, he wasn’t trying to save anybody, but it was definitely an accident.

GP: Kelly’s really the active one in this particular scenario. She’s the one who makes the choice, the heroic choice, that backfires on her.

KP: I personally don’t like the accident stories. They stress me out. <laugh> yeah. So they all stress me out like, oh, man, that stinks for them.

GP: <laugh> Storytelling, man. I don’t know if I can really read these things. It’s really stressful.

AIPT: There are some really creepy creatures in the first issue. There’s a cool superhero suit. What has been the most fun to draw and ink?

KP: The great thing about this is I get where Greg’s coming from in terms of representation. It’s not as simple as let’s just draw this dude with big muscles, whatever, we design characters and Greg was telling me, “Hey let’s keep body dysmorphia issues on our minds.” So we don’t accidentally depict certain bodies as being good and certain bodies as being bad. I like that very cerebral part of designing the characters. It’s fun considering all of those things in terms of how can we do more good in the world? That’s the extent of my enjoyment.

Otherwise, I hand it off to Scott and then to Chris to provide the colors. I don’t come up with the color scheme. That’s a collaboration that I enjoy watching, but from my side, I really wanna make sure it’s responsible characters. Even the villains are responsible. That’s what I like to design. I like simplicity mostly because I gotta keep drawing it over and over. <laugh>

SH: The villains that Khoi has designed are just so cool and again, different shapes, different sizes. I love the fact that he gives me room to play with textures with these characters. One guy’s got a shiny suit, one guy has a very rough and worn outfit. You know, that diversity of texture and look makes my job so much fun. We’re known for doing the main characters, the heroes, but the villains are usually where you get to have the most fun.

AIPT: When the first issue comes out on May 17th what are you hoping fans get out of that first experience?

GP: I just hope they enjoy it, you know? Storytelling in general is weird. You never know how something’s gonna go, you know what I mean? Sometimes your best work, nobody really says much, sometimes the work was okay. You did the best you could under the circumstances you had, but it’s not necessarily the stuff you’re the most proud of. And sometimes that’s the stuff that just shoots through the roof. There’s so much about timing and just hitting the right button at the right time.

SH: I’m actually very proud of the work we’ve done on this. I hope they’re as happy with it as we have been working on it.

For even more on this series, be sure to check out Pak, Khoi, and Scott’s interview about the series on dccomics.com.