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Milestone Forever brings much-needed closure, finally ... maybe?

Milestone Forever

According to this post over at DC's The Source blog, original Milestone Comics editor-in-chief Dwayne McDuffie is teaming with several artists who worked on the original Milestone Comics line back in the 1990s to wrap up the stories that were being told in those books before the line was canceled. It also sounds like it'll somehow transition the characters from their separate Milestone-verse to the DCU proper, where we've already seen them show up in the pages Justice League and Teen Titans.

McDuffie will team with John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Denys Cowan to wrap up the stories from Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, Blood Syndicate and Static. I figured we were well past ever seeing these characters again in their original environment, so this is welcome news, even if it is "a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe."

DC Comics 'wasted my time' with Milestone deal, McDuffie says

The Brave and the Bold #24

After announcing last summer that the Milestone heroes would be merged fully into the DC Universe, the publisher seems to have pulled back on its big plans for the properties.

The Shadow Cabinet appeared near the end of writer Dwayne McDuffie's abbreviated run on Justice League of America, and Hardware and Static have been featured in The Brave and the Bold and Teen Titans. But beyond that?

"At this particular time, we have Static in the Teen Titans, and we're looking at a storyline that might be built around Static later in the run," DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDio said in an interview posted yesterday. "But right now, no other plans."

The news doesn't come as much of a surprise to Milestone fans, or McDuffie himself.

"Plans for a Static monthly were scrapped by DC last spring," McDuffie, co-founder of Milestone Media, wrote yesterday on his forum. "Based on their actions, they never really wanted to publish the Milestone stuff, they wasted my time. We could have done a little deal for them to use Static without me having to spend so much money on lawyers."

Milestone was founded in 1993 by McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle in an attempt to increase minority representation in comics.  Through DC Comics, the company published such titles as Hardware, Blood Syndicate, Icon and, perhaps the most successful, Static (which in 2000 spawned the animated series Static Shock). Milestone closed its comic division in 1997.

Blogger Rich Watson, who summarized the recent roller-coaster relationship between McDuffie and DC, questions what this latest turn says about the publisher's "level of commitment to its black audience."

"DC is content to have its black superheroes appear in team books and the occasional mini-series, but an ongoing series is -- what? Beneath them?" Watson wrote. "And Static, a character that has proved itself not just in comics, but on television as well, can’t get a series either?"

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