Milestone Comics, the diverse and boundary-pushing superhero series, is back after two-decade hiatus
BY TERRENCE SAGE
JUNE 11, 2021 / 12:00 PM / CBS NEWS
The cover of “Milestone Returns: Infinite Edition #0.”MILESTONE MEDIA/DC COMICS
Milestone Comics are finally back. The diverse comic book universe, which built its name by pushing boundaries with a diverse cast of superheroes, returned this year after nearly two decades. Now, the creators want the comic universe to reach its full potential, saying they want the revival to be as “cutting edge” as the originals.
Milestone Media, the company behind the comics, was founded in 1993 by a team of African American artists and writers. The mission: tell the stories of underrepresented communities while tackling big issues like homophobia and racism.
“We were four Black creators who got together and formed a company with the intent of doing multicultural characters from our point of view and the people we wanted to work with — that alone was revolutionary,” Denys Cowan, a co-founder, told CBS News.
That same year, Milestone’s founders signed a distribution contract with the famed DC Comics. But throughout the partnership, DC often became uncomfortable with the progressive storylines and artwork on the pages. The most well-known example: the artwork for an issue of Static, the group’s most popular character and arguably one of the most beloved Black superheroes.
The artwork showed the hero, Virgil Hawkins, and his girlfriend kissing on a couch with condoms nearby. DC refused to print the cover, straining its relationship with the Milestone’s founders. Both parties compromised by printing a close-up of the two kissing. Inside the book, co-founder Dwayne McDuffie wrote a letter addressing the controversy: “Static is a fun comic but it’s never shied away from topics like gang violence, homophobia, and racism. It’s not about to start now.”
In 1997, a downturn in the industry forced Milestone to cease publication of its comics. Over the years, there were short-lived attempts to revive the comic book universe. Static joined the comics “Teen Titans” in the 2000s and later headlined his own comic series, which only lasted eight issues. In 2011, McDuffie died after complications of heart surgery and legal troubles between Milestone and his estate further prolonged attempts to bring back the universe to fans.
“It was a series of unfortunate circumstances that made that happen and it’s taken a tremendous amount of effort on behalf of all parties to bring it back, but it had to be done,” said Reginald Hudlin, a partner and writer with Milestone. “We said we were going to make this happen —we’re glad that that day has arrived.”
The comic book universe returned in February with the digital edition of “Milestone Returns: Infinite Edition #0,” a preview into the universe and its upcoming books, with the physical edition releasing on May 25. The revival draws from the original books by reimagining the “Big Bang” event. This time around, the incident takes place at an anti-police brutality rally where police fire untested chemicals at protesters who gain superpowers.
A page from “Milestone Returns: Infinite Edition #0.”MILESTONE MEDIA/DC COMICS
The book sets the stage for each major Milestone character to be featured in their own books, including Static (June 15), Icon and Rocket (July 27) and Hardware (August 10). Milestone has largely remained on the minds of comic fans thanks to the popularity of Static, who appeared in his own television series, “Static Shock,” from 2000 to 2004. Last summer, actor Michael B. Jordan announced he would join Hudlin to produce a new Static film for Warner Bros.
“When the first round of Milestone came out I was a fan. There was a hole that was open and that needed to be filled with great storytelling. There were no other books saying what those books were saying. The challenge for all of us bringing it back was we’re not interested in nostalgia. We’re interested in being as relevant and cutting edge today as the first launch of Milestone was,” Hudlin said.
Milestone returns to a comic book industry that is noticeably more diverse than the ’90s — with Black superheroes like Marvel’s “Black Panther,” “Luke Cage” and “Spider-Man: Miles Morales” gaining mainstream popularity with TV and film spin-offs. Still, Hudlin and Cowan believe Black representation in comics has a long way to go.
“Blackness is a constantly evolving and expanding term. There was a time when almost all Black Americans had a similar set of experiences — that’s not been true for generations now. So when you go by exploring every aspect of it, thankfully that’s a lifetime mission,” Hudlin said.
Hudlin says everything is on the table for Milestones’ future, including new television shows, live-action and animated films, along with toys and trading cards. And in addition to Milestone’s well-known characters, Cowan said the creators will introduce new characters to the universe.
Icon and Rocket in “Milestone Returns.”MILESTONE MEDIA/DC COMICS
When Devin Robertson, a 28-year-old fan, was a child, his mother would give him $10 before he tagged along with his brother to a local comic book store in Jackson, Tennessee. Robertson never enjoyed “Goodnight Moon” or Dr. Seuss’ books but credits Milestone with helping him learn how to read.
“Milestone Comics has been an integral part of my life since childhood,” Robertson said. “I loved seeing so many diverse characters interact, not just diverse in race, but diverse in every way.”
“Every character felt important and connected to the rest of the world, even the talking dog — the talking dog was my favorite,” he added. “I’m beyond excited to see how their world has evolved.”
Vita Ayala wasn’t interested in adding to their current comics workload, but then Milestone came calling, and the writer of books like Children of the Atom and The Wilds couldn’t turn down an opportunity to work with one of the most influential Black comics characters ever.
“It is really hard and it is really stressful but it’s also, for me, I couldn’t not do it,” Ayala told a group of journalists, including SYFY WIRE, earlier this week. “I promised myself that I was not going to do any more, take on more work, because I’m just tired. And then the universe was like, ‘But what about this though?’ And I was asked to pitch on it. I was like, ‘How do you not do that? How do you say ‘No,’ to Static?’ I grew up with that.”
Next week, Ayala and artists ChrisCross (a Milestone Comics original who drew work like Blood Syndicate for the publisher) and Nikolas Draper-Ivey will lead the way to a new version of the Milestone Universe with Static: Season One, a new series that reinvents the title character for a 2021 audience and sets Milestone on a path that, in the coming months, will also include relaunches of titles starring other heroes like Rocket and Icon. For both Ayala and Draper-Ivey, working on the series was the fulfillment not just of a professional dream, but a personal one, something Draper-Ivey said he feels acutely every time he sits down to work on the book.
“There’s no other way to put it. It’s very, very hard,” Draper-Ivey said. “I wouldn’t put anybody else in this seat right now. I wouldn’t wish this on somebody. ‘Hey, fill in for these shoes.’ Everyone says they want to do it. Everyone says, ‘Oh I could do it, I could do it.’ But I say this to people that are fans of this, and people that hear this or see this: It’s all well and good to be a fan of this. It is a completely different feeling when you are in the seat. Suddenly it becomes way more. It’s not just: ‘Oh yeah, I’m just drawing Static,’ you’ll wake up every day and you’re like, ‘Yeah!’ It’s a heavy feeling.”
Ayala added, “But I mean: Virgil Hawkins, come on. You got to do it, you got to do it. Even if it’s hard, you got to do it. I think it’s an honor. We were chosen to do this. [Original Milestone creators Reggie Hudlin and Denys Cowan] were involved in that process and they looked at what we said we had to offer and they said, ‘Okay. Get it done.’ And that is an incredible feeling. I don’t know how to process that. I’ll process that after it’s done. Yeah, [Static] means as much to me as he does to anyone else that I know, so it’s awesome.”
After debuting as part of the Milestone Comics line in 1993, Virgil Hawkins, aka Static, quickly became a fan-favorite character, and seven years later spawned the hit animated series Static Shock that propelled him up out of comics and into a wider mass media fandom. Nearly 30 years after his creation, the teen superhero with the power to manipulate electromagnetic energy remains an iconic figure among teen superheroes, Black superheroes, and beyond. So, following the announcement that Milestone Comics would return and the release of a preliminary Milestone Returns one-shot last year, Static felt like the logical next stop in relaunching the universe.
With the character primed for a triumphant return, it fell to Ayala, ChrisCross, and Draper-Ivey to reinvent him for a modern audience while retaining the attitude that made Static so popular in the first place.
“I’m a huge, huge fan of the original series. All of it actually, all of the comics, the TV show, all of that kind of stuff. And I wanted to take him and put him into our context,” Ayala said. “What does it mean to be that kind of character — this funny, slightly annoying but in a cute way, really, really smart black kid — in 2020, 2021? How do you survive and keep that optimism and keep the heroic nature? I think for me he’s an incredibly heroic character because he sees all of this terrible stuff and he’s like, ‘I want to make it better for the people around me right now.’ It’s not like this higher order, like, ‘I’m going to save the earth,’ it’s like, ‘I’m going to save my block.’ So that was important to me to bring that forward into the context of more contemporary time.”
That contemporary context begins in Milestone Returns with a reinvention of “The Big Bang,” the event that gives many of Milestone’s heroes their super powers. The Milestone Returns version begins when police use experimental chemicals to gas a crowd in the midst of a police brutality protest. The chemicals kill many of the people in attendance while imbuing others, including Virgil, with strange new powers. Static: Season One picks up in the aftermath of The Big Bang, as Virgil is both just beginning to understand his gifts and still trying to process the trauma of the event.
“When we see him when it starts, he’s not happy. He’s gone through this incredible trauma and I wanted to find a balance between those two things,” Ayala said. “He’s angry and he’s sad and he’s scared. He literally just watched his classmates die horrible deaths. And now he just is an electric ball sometimes. I could not handle that. But also he’s the kid that plays video games and reads superhero comics and all this kind of stuff. So for me I had to find a way to synthesize those two things to make it feel real.”
With that contemporary feeling, of course, also comes a sense of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” as Ayala put it, some of whom are working directly on the book and the broader Milestone relaunch. ChrisCross worked on layouts for Static: Season One and left finishes to Draper-Ivey, who also noted he was in regular contact with Static co-creator Denys Cowan about everything from character designs to coloring choices. The result is a comic that features many familiar features of classic Static stories — from Virgil’s powers to key members of his supporting cast — while also pushing the character and his world in a new direction.
“There comes a point where you have to realize that you are telling a different story, you’re doing your own thing,” Draper-Ivey said. “You’re not your predecessors. You have to have respect for them and reverence for them and all of that, but in the end, ultimately, you have to try to make it your own. So I think that’s what Vita and I are trying to focus on.”
Static: Season One #1 arrives Tuesday from DC Comics.
Starring Jay Reeves,Thaddeus J. Mixson,Corinne Foxx
Directed by Reginald Hudson
Rating: *** ½
There is not one bad character in the entire length and breadth of Safety.And I am okay with that. Really. We have enough of negativity and ugliness to deal with in real life. The movies should give us the opposite.And Safety doe. In ample measures. It is a full-blown feel-happy movie with dollops of cheering life-reinforcing sunshine spots for us to bask in.
And to know this is a true story and not some concocted Disney fluff stuff is even more reassuring.Yes, we will survive this crisis as long as we care enough for humanity, put aside our narrow interests and pitch our tents in the heart of civilization.
Safety is about a promising black football player Ray McElrathbey( Jay Reeves)who braves tremendous hardships to win a football scholarship to Clemson University. But then the unexpected happens. Ray has to take guardianship of his kid brother.
The struggle to play guardian and to keep his academic world intact , is strikingly adumbrated by Jay Reeves who has practically no experience as an actor.He looks every inch the harried ingenue . But the real star of this happy-go-looking endeavour is young Thaddeus J. Mixson. As Jay’s kid brother Fahmarr, little Mr Mixson with his large pleading eyes and a demeanour that suggests much resilience in the face of adversity, steals the show from all the adults.
No wonder he soon has them all eating out of the palm of his hands.Even the campus authorities including the coaches, agree to bend rules so that young Fahmarr can be spared a remand home.No one gets all teary eyes and sacrificial. It’s all done in the spirit of if-not-now-then-when?
It is a poignant story with tremendous potential for dramatic tension.The director Reginald Hudlin keeps the proceeding on an even emotional pitch. There are scenes with the heroes’ mother in drug rehabilitation which could have eventuated in a tsunami of tears. The director keeps the tears in check. There is a life to be lived. You can’t afford to mope around feeling sorry for yourself. At least Ray can’t. His uphill task is to be a father to his sibling and fair to his own ambitions.
The tears are held in check as the highly emotional story heads gently towards it (predictable) courtoom finale. There is nothing here that you can’t see coming. But that’s the whole charm of this heartwarming film. It offers the comfort of the familiar. To watch the entire campus pitching in to help Ray without patronizing him is to know humanity will survive. The Covid be damned.
Courtroom dramas are typically among the most tense and dramatic movies because of the inherent stakes of the genre. There are clearly defined sides, and lofty themes of justice, innocence, and law and order. Because of these elements, viewers are often kept on the edge of their seats as they watch the defendant’s fate be decided.
Oftentimes, the most powerful and dramatic courtroom movies are those that are inspired by real-life cases. These films are able to captivate audiences while shining a spotlight on oppression, prejudice, systemic issues, and legal precedents.
8 / Marshall
The 2017 legal drama Marshall centers around an important case early in the career of Thurgood Marshall in which he successfully defends a black man accused of assaulting a white woman in the 1940s. The film depicts a defining moment in Thurgood Marshall’s path to becoming the first black Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The movie tells an important story about prejudice and the fight for justice. The centerpiece of Marshall is Chadwick Boseman’s strong performance as Thurgood Marshall. The film’s supporting cast includes Sterling K. Brown, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, and Dan Stevens.
