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Filtering through the Watchmen and Dark Knight laden Comic-Con coverage for Justice League news is something of a barren task. Unlike some years there wasn’t a specific Justice League panel at Comic-Con and there weren’t that many specific announcements about the League either. There were plenty of announcements about individual Leaguers – the Flash: Rebirth, Neal Gaiman’s Batman story, the Superman anniversary story, etc – but not much about the League directly.
The biggest announcement for the current run of the League really had to do with characters co-created by current JLA writer Dwayne McDuffie. He’s been a comic book writer, editor, and a writer for animation for a little longer that I realised. He helmed a line of comics in the 1990s under the Milestone Media banner, they were published through DC, but were not owned by them. I remember liking few of their titles, particularly Icon, but my interest in comics was burned out at the time and I didn’t really give Milestone much attention. They’re breakout character was Static. He later appeared in his own Cartoon Network show called Static Shock (fantastic show!). McDuffie was called in to work on that cartoon and from there migrated on to the Justice League animated shows.
Well, Milestone has been defunct for a few years now, but interest in the characters has never really gone away – their return to DC has often been asked for at conventions and it now looks like Milestone and DC have done a deal. Any previous crossovers with the DCU and Milestone will be ignored, instead it will revealed that the Milestone City of Dakota has always existed in DC’s America (althrough McDuffie hinted at something deeper going on).
Starting with Justice League of America #27 the League still meet the Milestone characters including Icon and Hardware. Static will also be appearing in the Teen Titans. The Milestone intro arc will also be interesting because it will be the first arc where McDuffie hasn’t been dealing with dangling plotlines from Meltzer’s tenure or the build up to Final Crisis on the Tangent series. He commented on his message board that
Libra and Human Flame were both given to me to help set up “Final Crisis.” The only villain I’ve chosen in my entire run on JLA is Queen Bee, for the fill in. The villain in #24 will be mine, but I’m still wrapping up plots that editorial wants cleared up through issue #27, where I’ll be doing my first “clean” arc. I’m having fun now, but I expect I’ll be having more fun then.
The backstory of the Milestone Universe was that there was an event called the “Big Bang” – the suppression of a gang war with an experimental mutagenic gas – that created a wave of meta-human mutants (“bang babies”). Similar events including Bloodlines and DC World Annuals generally produced a slate of C-listers and, if they were very lucky, a single breakout character. For Bloodlines that was Hitman and for Milestone that was Static. To make Milestone work DC is going to take a long game approach, because these are going to be brand new characters to most readers. Each character should be introduced separately and be allowed to sink or swim on his or her own merits rather than do or die by the fate of the entire ensemble.
The really strange things about this is that the company that handles licensed live appearances of DC characters, including the JLA, for special events and charity promotions is called Milestone Productions! I wonder if Milestone will end up doing the Milestone characters.
UPDATE: Sat 16th June 2008: Newsarama has DC’s November solitication previews up including the blurb for JLA #27.
A “Sightings” tale! Doctor Light is missing, and her former Justice League teammates intend to find the man responsible and make him pay. But before they do that, they’ll have to get past his Shadow Cabinet of powerful superbeings who have sworn to “Save humanity from itself.” Milestone Comics characters Icon and Hardware make their first modern DCU appearance, but this time it’s not clear whose side they’re on!
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