I mentioned on my Facebook page that I recently “accidentally” found out about the untimely loss of writer, artist, producer Dwayne McDuffie - one of the founders of Milestone Media. He was only 49 years old.  Even though he has worked in various capacities for Marvel and DC comics, I mention Milestone Media first because that’s when I discovered him.

FRESHMAN DISCOVERY

I was a freshman at Bethune-Cookman College (now University). As a person who has always enjoyed reading comics and watching cartoons - I made my way to the comic book shop one day and discovered the launch of an entirely new line of comic books! And on the covers of the four titles that started a revolution, were characters who looked like me. Icon. Static. Hardware. Blood Syndicate. I was blown away by what I saw. I grew up enjoying the epic stories of primarily white superhero characters (Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman, Flash, Thor, etc…) Over the years, I learned to “translate” the characters in my head so that it didn’t matter if they didn’t look like me. I focused on what they stood for and on their powers and the stories themselves. But even as I read the stories, I often wished there were heroes who looked like me and who shared my values - even if in some cases only remotely. At that young age, I never thought that one day I would be able to create my own characters who would fulfill this need. but the day would come.

So there I was, in Florida at the comic book shop. The owner drawing my attention to this new line from Milestone Media.  I was hooked. In many respects, it was like a dream come true. Although, Blood Syndicate (story about a superpowered street gang) didn’t fit my tastes at the time, I read Static, Icon and Hardware voraciously! I couldn’t put them down.  And so the name Dwayne Mcduffie, began to have some significance to me.

Black Inspiration

I had always hoped to meet him, although the closest I got was to be “friends” through Facebook. However, his creative genius (as well as the genius of those who worked with him at Milestone) served as inspiration for me. It was possible to create strong superheroic stories with African American characters. Characters that weren’t sidekicks to the main hero (who happened to be white), but were fully developed on their own.

When Milestone media closed up shop, I was saddened. But then came Static Shock! Watching that show was a great experience!

One thing that Dwayne McDuffie and Milestone did, as I said above, was inspire me to create my own stories. It took a number of years, but I began drawing from my own life experience, imagination and inspiration from others to create a number of characters. The first to be released to the public, as a teen-fiction novel, was Speedsuit Powers which was published in 2009.  It’s a story about a boy who moves from the suburbs to the inner city and encounters a school bully who’s determined to make his life miserable. The story has been hailed as an “epic urban adventure”. Now, we are prepping to produce it as an independent movie.

LEGACY

So, I started this post by saying that I “accidentally” found out about Dwayne McDuffie’s death on Friday February 25th. The news was a great shock to me. He will be greatly missed.  I know that death will come to us all… this is why it’s important to discover what we are called to do and do it with all our might - then we can inspire others and leave a legacy so that those who come up behind us can be propelled into a bright future. 

This is also a reminder that time is short for all of us. Let’s make each day count and tell the people who are close to us how much we care for them and how they’ve impacted our lives.  We don’t know if we’ll have a chance to do so tomorrow.

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Filed under: Bullying • comic book ideology

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