Milestone Comics, the gold standard of comic publications for an era died when Dwanye McDuffie sadly passed away in 2011.
As a fan and an animator i personally mourned his death for months and was in even more of a depressive state when I found out that his tv shows Justice League, Ben10 and Static Shock would be cancelled as well, I then started to realized the incredible giant that we had lost.
Fast forward a decade later and we’re getting DC’s rebuild of the milestone universe and sales have not been good.
Author Reggie Hudlin is responsible for the newest version of universe that many critiques call lackluster.
Isis comic creator Shawn James is one of those critics.
James and Hudlin sparred on Facebook over the substance of the new milestone universe.
Most of the disagreement came from Hudlin’s remake of Icon which fans have been upset about to say the least.
James essentially called Hudlin’s version of Milestone subpar, seeming to say that the writing was lackluster and at times outright bad.
To start, Hudlin’s version of Icon feels like a low grade superman comic. The new version has Icon being center of attention despite his original origin where he maintains anonymity. It also has no character development of Icon’s sidekick ‘Rocket’ even though its already 7 issues in.
Critiques of Rocket are valid. She lacks the depth illustrated by Mark Bright and McDuffie in the 90’s version that created her as a symbol of a generation of rebellious youth from the hearts of the inner city. Hudlin’s version of Rocket make her into a corny world star hip hop groupie that makes odd suggestions to Icon.
Statements like “we should be superheroes” shouldn’t be written into actual scripts, its beyond cringeworthy.
Fans also say Hudlin destroyed the Static comic, which was the flagship of Milestone Comics. Keyword being “was” because in Hudlin’s version of Static, Virgil doesn’t get his powers from the gang war outside of the Dakota chemical factory, the incident known as the ‘bigbang‘. No, in this version fans get Virgil gaining his powers at a Black Lives Matter protest which really just feels like a forced social justice narrative being pushed instead of an organic story that truthfully tackles anti-Black racism.
Hudlins comics are flopping at the store, with sales for Icon and Rocket averaging around 12,000 sales a month, while Static is just hitting above 15,000. These numbers directly reflect that fans aren’t feeling Hudlin’s version of Milestone.
DC’s publishing house can’t hold a comic that can’t even swing above 20,000 sales a month on its roster for any real length of time. If Hudlin can’t create better stories for these historical characters, Milestone’s rebuilds will be removed from publication and if that happens then Hudlin and DC will have failed Dwayne McDuffie.
–Kel McKnight, B1Daily
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