So aside from fans, there was no expectation or build-up for the characters, save for the implication that they’re criminals who are (this time) on the side of the angels. Why should I care about them now?

I know full well that they are terrific characters with a lot of good ideas behind them, as I collected Milestone back in the day. Hardware was my favorite. But they literally just appeared from nowhere in JLA and people are supposed to get excited? They had zero personality in their introduction story (a surprise given McDuffie wrote it). To make it worse, Ed Benes art saw them all drawn as palette swapped white characters. One coloring mix up and Icon could have been Superman. How about bringing in Denys Cowan to introduce the characters??

(Slightly off topic, but Denys Cowan’s run as the artist on Steel with Priest was terrific – look it up on eBay, Steel #34-52!)

Bottom line was DC didn’t get anyone excited for Milestone’s return with poor marketing (something they maybe learned from and corrected given the Red Circle hype), and McDuffie phoned in an awful story.

Saying that McDuffie is somehow being a “thorn in DC’s side” by being honest about the situation in a post on his OWN message board is idiotic at best.

The fact that the honest answers made DC editorial look bad is not his fault either, he wasn’t trash-talking. Hell, most of the time, when people responded to his posts with comments like, “That must be so hard / make you so mad,” he tended to respond that this was simply the reality of working on a high-profile team book, which he’d known going into it, rather than playing the martyr.

If DC are going to make decisions that embaress them if they come out, the fault must surely lie with them, not the person who mentions those decisions.

Maybe you should check-out “Unknown Soldier” if you’re looking for an African-American Hero of the book.

Anyways, “Static” should have his own monthly, put the former Blue Beetle creative team on it. I mean if you’re going to make craptacular monthlies that get cancelled in 12-issues like “Vigilante” and “Magog”, THEY WILL BE CANCELLED BELIEVE ME.

If they can put crap like that out, I don’t see the harm in making “Static”, “Black Lightning” and “Firestorm” (HEY THERE YOU GUYS COMPLAINING ABOUT DC IGNORING THE BLACK AUDIENCE.) monthlies too. They all get canceled eventually

Why in the hell do we care about the Milestone characters interacting with DCU characters? I think it dilutes their importance and relevance to do so. I honestly don’t get why McDuffie does not just try to put the band back together and move over to Image or IDW or Dark Horse or anywhere that will allow them to make good comics instead of be beholden to a corporate giant.

The saddest thing, for me, is that I missed the boat on Milestone back when they first appeared and I was looking forward to reading the stories in these new trades that are coming out. I guess they will not continue now and that’s a shame.

I honestly think you’re right. I think when DC announced that the Milestone characters would be implanted into the DCU, McDuffie thought that meant they would have similar roles in the new universe that they had in the old one. Like Icon would be of Superman-level importance in the DCU. Didn’t happen, obviously.
The Milestoners showed up and we were all just expected to automatically care. They were running around like they actually mattered.

I’m not prepared to launch into what happened to Dwayne being right or wrong because I don’t have enough information but I will say that from a purely comic-book-reading point of view, I’m not that bothered by the scaled-back involvement of the Milestoners because they are not interesting characters. At least, they haven’t been so far. (Ok, I like Static but all of my affection comes from the cartoon, nothing from the comics).

(Now, you could argue that they haven’t been given a fair chance to become interesting and that’s a valid point. But still….)

Well put McKrinkle, let’s not forget how notoriously dysfunctional DC editorial is known to be, please note the previously mentioned Countdown/Death of New Gods/Final Crisis disconnect. Didio when one of your two A-List talents asks you to leave something be for the sake of the story to be told, do it, don’t say well we had to have a story to explain how they died. Morrison explained that in two sentences, you didn’t need eight issues to tell anyone. Poor McDuffie should have seen the interference that Paul Dini had with Countdown, Dini, another guy who gets it on the animation level, forced to bend for the brainless throw it at a wall to see what sticks editorial.

I’m less inclined to think that any of this has anything to do with Milestone characters and more inclined to think that they didn’t want to deal with McDuffie anymore and had no real ideas for the line absent his involvement.

Oh I just meant the direct market was creator-driven, not the publishers. Put Black Lightning in a (pretty terrible) Final Crisis tie-in written by Morrison and it sells like hotcakes; put out an extremely solid standalone miniseries by creators who aren’t Morrison, Johns, Millar or Bendis, and it sells a fifth as well.

If DC is going to do ongoings that star black characters, they’re going to need something like Brad Meltzer writing Bronze Tiger or Cyborg for the first 12 issues or something like that.

That’s how it looks to me, anyway.

But then, they keep launching DOA books like the Red Circles, Magog and a Red Tornado mini that it’s hard to believe more than 100 people on earth would want to read, so it’s not like I understand how they make their decisions. I’m just saying I don’t think the market would make a hit out of a book starring any of their black characters, because there aren’t enough fans of any of them (or any character save Batman and maybe, at present, Hal Jordan) will follow regardless of other factors (creators, whether it’s “important”).

If DC’s current direction were truly creator-driven, you’d be seeing a lot more A-list talent working there than Morrison and Johns (not to imply they’re the only ones, but you get the idea.)

More editorial stupidity from DC… I want to read Supes and Wondy books, but I don’t because they just aren’t very good these days. Of course, taking Supes, Wondy and Bats “off the table” constantly (or putting them in a convoluted, pointless & overblown series like Trinity) doesn’t help a bit. Some readers might be enjoying that stuff, but the masses who went to enjoyed The Dark Knight last summer, or watched JL/JLU on TV, aren’t going to go for that. They want the iconic heroes. And, frankly, so do I. Hell, is All-Star Wonder Woman ever going to happen?

“Events” have caused me to cut my buying down considerably, and while I agree that it’s become a creator-driven market, I don’t think that’s helping either. I think Grant Morrison, for instance, has done some great work in the past. But not for some time. He’s bascially been allowed to reshape the DCU to his own liking, and I don’t like what he’s done to it. So I’ve quit reading their books for the most part. It’s not just him, but he’s probably the most obvious example.

To me, it’s the characters and the stories that matter. There are writers I really enjoy (Vaughan and Brubaker come to mind immediately), but as long as the characters are being written well and the stories compelling, I usually don’t care who’s writing the books. I just can’t behind a DC that’s taking iconic characters out of their books, killing off other favorite characters, reviving characters that should’ve stayed dead, and acquiring other minor characters from other companies (I mean Red Circle, not Milestone) when they can’t handle their main properties in a satisfying manner.

So Didio’s screwed the pooch with Milestone too. Act surprised. Personally, I commend McDuffie for going public with his gripes. His hands were tied on JLA, and he was never going to succeed with the crap Didio was forcing upon him.

True. It’s basically what DC did with Captain Marvel back in the day. So maybe they’re biased against people with squinty eyes, too.

Par for the course in the neurotic, contrarian, intellectually and emotionally-stunted world of internet fanboys.

McDuffie was working for DC when he made those comments, but not in the same sense as your typical salaried desk jockie. He was a self-employed freelancer that had been contracted by DC to deliver on specific assignments. As a freelancer, the quality and reception of his current work was (and is) vital to his reputation and ability to secure future work. If the work was being sabotaged by DC, such that it was detrimental to McDuffie’s professional reputation as a competent artist and craftsman, he was sure as hell justified in speaking up about it and letting the world know who was really responsible. This situation runs both ways, and it continues to disturb me how many fanboys rush to the defense of corporate management, no matter what the real subtleties of the situation may be. Is it that they’ve so totally internalized the franchise mentality of the entertainment they consume, in which the license is king and creators are disposable, or do they just feel the need to rationalize and defend their own passive cubicle-rat existences through attacking anyone with enough of a backbone to actually be a real man and stick up for themselves?