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| Milestone Comics Logo |
Christmas just passed, and AWA is well underway to having a spectacular new year. But we could not go into the New Year without highlighting the 20 year anniversary of Milestone Comics.
Founded in 1993 by Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, and Derek Dingle, Milestone Comics was the one of the first comic book companies owned and operated by African Americans. It created black characters who were empowered, three-dimensional, and just really cool.
The company started as a dream held by Cowan and McDuffie, who felt stifled by Marvel and the limited number of black characters. McDuffie explains:
"If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. [...] We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before."
With McDuffie as editor in chief, Dingle as president, Cowan as creative director and president and DC Comics as distributor, Milestone created a company that highlighted not only African Americans, but other minorities as well. After a jump. we have a list of key reads to get you acquainted with their work. (1)
