Hello true believers, well as we all know it's February and that means Black History month. Since Examiner has a personal connection with this celebration of one the world's greatest but least honored ethnic groups, Examiner thought this would be a great time to revisit one of the greatest events to ever occur in the comic book world. The creation of Milestone Media, which gave birth to Milestone Comics. Published by D.C. Comics, it was a comic company owned by African Americans whose characters belonged to ethnic minorities.
Milestone was the brain child of black comic book superstars Dwayne McDuffie (also from Detroit, 1962-2011 R.I.P.), artist Denys Cowan and Derek Dingle. Their goal was to make characters that truly reflected the buying demographic and fill the gaping void of minority characters.
They knew that if you write it and draw it, they will come. In honor of their contribution to the legacy of Black America, Examiner will run a series of bios on some of their more memorable heroes for the entire month of February.
First a little about Milestone's location, we've all heard of the Marvel Universe and the D.C. Universe correct? Well how about the Dakota Universe? Dakota City was the setting for this group of ethnic urban superpowered adventurers and of course villains.
Some say it was based on Dwayne's and Examiner's hometown of Detroit MI. Set in this Midwestern metropolis heroes like Icon, Rocket and a host of other meta hip hop humans saved lives and fought life and death battles. Pitched battles would be waged not only with super powered foes but real life villains and issues like crack addiction and poverty.
Showing its effects on those close to the addict and the surrounding environment were ground breaking at the time. Also teen pregnancy (Rocket was 15 and fighting crime while 4 months pregnant.)
Let's see Batgirl do that. Some of the members of the Dakota Universe were very similar to more well known black heroes already in existence but were only background characters or very poorly written in the more mainstream universes.
A great example of this tongue in cheek homage was "Buck Wild, Mercenary Man." Based on the original writing and style of one of the very first Black super heroes, Marvel's "Luke Cage, Power Man." We'll get into him and many more this month so stay tuned for a great time trip back to the nineties and the eruption of color into comic books.
