Feb 16: Dwayne McDuffie

By Jude Ngangsic-Asongu

His “theory” was that lack of proper minority representation in comic books and comic book media and took “action” by cofounding Milestone Media.

Dwayne McDuffie was born February 20, 1962, in Detroit, Michigan and was a comic book and TV show writer. After graduating from college, he moved to New York and eventually got a job at Marvel comics. He noticed a lack of black and minority characters at the time and didn’t like that most of them didn’t get to have their own books and were usually just the sidekick to white characters. In order to fix that, he and 3 other men founded Milestone Media, a comic book company that released books starting minority characters. Eventually, Milestone Media was brought by DC and that led to Dwayne being able to create and write for the TV show “Static Shock”which had Vergil Hawkins, a black teenager, as the main character. He was even able to become a writer for other popular shows like “Justice League Unlimited” and comic books like “Justice League of America”. Throughout his career, he won or was nominated for multiple writing awards for his work. He died on February 21, 2011.

I think that Dwayne McDuffie was important because of his for minority representation in comic books while also being a good writer. His “theory” was that lack of proper minority representation in comic books and comic book media and took “action” by cofounding Milestone Media. Not all of his stories were perfect, but Dwayne was a good writer and creator and didn’t limit himself to just stories starring black people. He also knew that equality is important as well and didn’t try to add an agenda where it didn’t belong. While “Static Shock” had episodes about racism and gang violence, “Ben 10” and “Justice League” had mostly white casts, but he wrote good stories for them and didn’t try to shoehorn a black character that would miraculously save the day out of nowhere.