Hello everyone! Well, taking a step away from the Black Firsts theme to celebrate the life of an individual who contributed many ideas and characters to the Comic Book community, Dwayne McDuffie, passed away today.
For those that knew him outside the comic book world he looked like this:
For those that knew him inside the comic book world he is most recognizable as this:
For a good part of his career he worked as a freelance cartoonist, but in 1993 he (along with three other African-American writers) created Milestone Media. This was under the DC Comics label, but was meant to focus on the under-representation of minorities in the comic book world.
This is what he had to say about the beginning of Milestone Media:
“If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.”
This was the first time minority characters were represented as characters instead of representatives of their race. Milestone Media also grew from that focus to be known for its storytelling more than anything else. The most popular character that has come from Milestone is Static and this character became part of the animated kids show Static Shock.
For more information of Dwayne McDuffie and his work check out some of my sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_McDuffie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_shock
http://www.blacksuperhero.com/articles/art3-Lander.html
http://www.toplessrobot.com/2011/02/rip_dwayne_mcduffie.php
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=30969
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