If DC had left McDuffie alone to do what he wanted to do, his run would have probably been a lot better than what it was, and the Milestone arc would have been received much better.

As far as my personal opinion on Milestone, I think that the industry benefits from ALL types of comics, no matter what the subject matter is. I see the return of Milestone in whatever form it takes as a positive and I hope this mini-series is a success.

I’m sure if it were the other way around no one would say a word.

The Milestone books were QUALITY books about the world we all live in. They reflected the diversity of opinions, cultures, and people in our REAL LIFE world. It’s taken three decades to get the first male African-American hero at DC on the Justice League (Black Lightning)…and a decade and a half to get the first female African-American heroine (Vixen) back on the roster. That says a lot right there.

I’m a white man who thinks these books were GREAT, and are still GREAT characters.
And I’d like to remind so many of you that when you were watching JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED on TV that so much of what you enjoyed about that show was the hard work of Mister Dwayne McDuffie. That’s right, the same guy who created so much of the Milestone Universe. When I read so much of the above comments, it just hurts because I’d take Dwayne’s run on Fantastic Four over Mark Millar’s any day of the week. Mister Dwayne McDuffie is Mister Quality in my book. I loved the recent cross-over in Justice League, and just wished he had had the luck of a more seasoned artist for that run.
So seriously… go read those Milestone books, OK?
They put so much of what the rest of the industry was doing in the 1990′s to shame.

Dwayne, go kick it into orbit again.
I’ll be there.

TPBs: I believe DC is working on re-issuing the trades that were originally published – I think the first ICON trade may even be in stores.

Failure of the line: By that token, every new super-hero universe started in the 1990s (Malibu/Ultraverse; Dark Horse’s Comics Greatest World; Valiant; Marvel 2099) must not have been as good as the Image Universe (such as it is), because that’s the only one that didn’t get shut down.

Not that I’m saying they were all great, or anything (especially, some of those I left out, like the Continuity Universe) – but the 1990s were a messy time, and there were numerous factors in the demise of lines and books. Quality was an issue, but so was a market depending on speculation demand; once people realized that having five mint copies each of SUPERMAN #75 (Death of Superman), X-MEN #1 (the one that’s now X-MEN: LEGACY, and had 5 cover variants, four pieces of a “quad-tych”, plus one that had the whole picture as a gatefold) and BLOODSHOT #1 (chromium cover) was not only not going to get their kid through college, but might not even get their kid from home *to* college. [I'm finally reading through my full collection of the Superman books since the 1986 reboot, and stopped when I got to SUPERMAN #75, which I had never opened. Thought anbout selling that for the trade - until I found that it was basically going for cover price.]

Yes, some books had significant quality issues, but several babies were thrown out with the bathwater.

And shame on any decent fan who reads some of this race-baiting crap and leaves it unchallenged.

[I never got into most of the Milestone books. Icon just didn't really interest me, nor Static. I think I have every Hardware issue as that appealed to me more. Perhaps in retrospect, static was a better book and character.]

It’s fine if Hardware is your favorite Milestone character. The whole point of Milestone’s offerings was to expand customers’ selections not force them to buy everything they sold.

It’s no different than how few people buy everything Marvel publishes. Instead a customer like myself buys those books (e..g., Invincible Iron Man, Nova) that appeal to personal taste.

[@ Anacondan

Don't you think that DC making a "Black-verse" in the first place was an insult to African Americans?
Regardless of whether or not it was thought up by a bunch of black creators or by DC, it was still a horrible idea, and didn't sell, PROVING it was a bad idea.
"Hey, let's make a black Superman, a black Iron Man, etc, etc, etc, and we'll put them in a universe ("on an island") all by themselves!"
"Great idea, we can't be mixing in those blacks with the whites! Gotta keep 'em separated!"]

So, was Vertigo an example of “anti-magic bigotry” since supernatural characters like Swamp Thing and Sandman (Morpheus) don’t interact with the mainstream DCU characters like Superman?

Just pointing out that Milestone wasn’t the first imprint published by DC.

On the bright side, it’s always nice to see Chris Cross getting work. I’ve really missed his art.

Race-baiting aside, I will say this: It is preposterous to suggest that popularity, as measured in sales, indicates some inherent quality (or lack thereof, in the case of poor sales). There are plenty of creations in any medium (comics, books, films, music, whatever) that are huge hits but are pretty dreadful, and plenty of quality creations that never find a mass audience. Sometimes there’s a sweet spot when the two intersect, but regardless, it should be obvious to everyone that sales/rankings/ratings do not necessarily reflect a creation’s artistic worth.