DC Comics is bringing back Milestone Comics this year, or rather the characters from it. They got a fairly high profile reintroduction in JLA, which is getting a hardcover in October, and there are a series of trades coming out soon collecting issues of the old series. I’m not exactly clear on whether or not they will be collecting the full runs, but the trades are coming. Static Shock has already been announced, for example. I’m a little skeptical about it collecting what’s basically the beginning and the end of the series, but you know what? Both are really good stories, so that’s fine.

No, my problem is this. I’m starting a new weekly series tomorrow morning, and I’m prepping posts ahead of time. I wanted to see what trades were coming out for Milestone, as I’m only going to be showing off stuff you can actually buy in a store or on Amazon, so I popped over to dccomics.com to see what trades where coming.

Milestone Media is a fairly well-regarded institution. Its comics are fondly remembered, they broke a ton of industry talent, created a few fascinating breakthroughs in coloring, and DC obviously thought well enough of them to bring them back into the fold after a lengthy absence.

I’m not exactly asking for dccomics.com/milestone, though that is a great idea and should probably happen. But, if you’re doing this big relaunch of a specific property, why can’t I use the search to see what’s coming? I ended up searching by series and found two Static trades (Trial By Fire is out of print and Rebirth of Cool comes out in June) and one trade of Icon, which is out of print.

Some kind of microsite or something pointing the way to what Milestone is, what’s coming, and what’s come before would be nice. Even just the word “Milestone” in the descriptions would work, so that I could find these series via search.

C’mon, DC Comics. This is easy. Even better, holler at this guy, jazz it up some, turn it into dccomics.com/milestone, and throw him a few hundred bucks. The work is already done.

42 drafts, 36 images, 28 posts, 28 days, and I’m still number one.

Black History Month has been over for a week. Coincidentally, this post is about a week late. I’d intended to do it after Wondercon ’09, but I ended up pretty sick without even realizing it. I figure I caught the nerd flu from the con or something, because I am positively miserable.

Anyway, BHM09 was an interesting experience. I started out with a solid third (give or take) of the posts written or in detailed notes form. That was enough of a head start to carry me through the month with no problems. But, I quickly went off script. I’ve got a folder full of half-finished drafts that’ll never see the light of day, either because I couldn’t make them work or because I made them work and then realized I hated them. Best laid plans, meet open window.

I had some very interesting conversations, many of which helped realign or clarify my own views on race and comics. I only ran into two outright trolls, neither of which had any heart, so I guess I didn’t make anyone important angry. Hopefully, and I think this is true, people read and learned or understood or got something they didn’t before. I realized partway through the month that I was repeating and reiterating what I’d already said, but race in comics isn’t exactly rocket science.

This is basically a table of contents for BHM09. It will explain what each post is about, in as few words as possible, and also the title. That’s probably the only real secret- each post’s title is a music reference. “Hip-hop and comic books was my genesis,” right?

Before I get into that, I’d like to thank the people who linked me when I first started out: Cheryl Lynn, Johanna Draper Carlson, Jog, Tom Spurgeon, Heidi MacDonald and especially JK Parkin, who so kindly offered to syndicate a post a week on Robot6, which is in turn hosted on one of the two biggest comics news sites around. Extra thanks to Pedro Tejeda of Funnybook Babylon and Cheryl Lynn (again) for a couple of really good suggestions for posts. Thanks also to everyone who emailed me over the course of the month who is still waiting on a reply. To all of you, I can only say, “I suck.”

If you don’t want to read this entire list, I asked around and apparently posts 22, 12, and 20 are pretty good. I also want to give special notice to this post on the official Atomic Robo blog, which is really very thoughtful and I’m kind of honored to have at least partly inspired it.

I’m pretty burned out on black stuff right now, so it may be a while before I do anything like this again. I am, however, planning on doing something big at least every other month this year. It may not be daily blogging (it will not be daily blogging), but it’ll be something.

Thanks for reading.
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Alanna, my friend who made the GIF that should clearly show you why you shouldn’t be reading or buying comics by Greg Land, read Green Lantern from last week and, like a lot of really smart people (me), realized that something sucked. In her own words:

I really hate the Star Sapphire outfit. A lot, it’s a stupid outfit and a recent redesign, so someone looked at it in the last decade and thought it was a good idea, and that’s terrible. But I think I get the idea, the designer tried to make it a sexy costume to go with the whole love theme. It’s just that they just made it impractical (especially when you’re as endowed as most of the Star Sapphires) and completely ridiculous. Bits of the detailing are neat, but they’re completely overwhelmed by the rest.

I figured they’d look far better, or at least like a Corps worth taking seriously, if they’d put on something that isn’t a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. So I threw this together.

Alanna popped into Photoshop and sent over this:

Things I like about this:
-The black provides a great parallel to the uniform of the Green, Yellow, Red, and Orange Lanterns. Put simply, it makes the Star Sapphires actually look like a Corps, rather than a legion of space hookers.
-Black and violet goes together pretty well, and even gives the uniform something of a sinister look. The Sapphires are straight up brainwashing people into their corps, so this really works.
-Love doesn’t, and shouldn’t, equal sexy. Therefore, the Love Corps shouldn’t really be letting it all hang out. Isn’t a big part of love keeping it all your private bits limited to one person? Sexiness at least has an element of “Hey look at THESE,” but I’m pretty sure “love” as a concept requires a bit of discretion or discernment.
-It’s way better than the real uniform.

On Illmatic, Nas breaks off the intro to N.Y. State of Mind to say, “I don’t know how to start this.” There’s a pause, and with a “yo,” he goes on to kick five minutes of sublime lyrics. It’s not a studio gimmick or a punch-in. It’s real life. This little snippet of time, maybe three seconds at most, is Illmatic in miniature. It’s the biography of the young black male: simultaneously brilliant and unsure, arrogant and nervous, full of potential and lacking at the same time.

It’s a line that brings to mind Loop Hughes of 100 Bullets. Before the events of the series, he was the son of a single mother, running with faceless nobodies, and drifting through life. He had a life, but it was half of one. He was going nowhere.

Eventually, he meets his father, thanks to a nudge from Agent Graves, and that puts him on some kind of a road. He absorbs knowledge and experience from his father like a sponge. After his father dies, he learns that his father was respected a great deal by hard men, and he learns another lesson.

Over the course of the series, Loop pays attention to things and keeps learning. He’s trained in prison by a man with no conscience, and when they get out, he’s connected to more men who knew his father. As time goes on, he learns about life and killing. He’s a sponge.

Finally, toward the end of the series, he’s in a situation that is the ultimate mexican standoff. Two of the men involved have no interest in solving it any way but one. Loop sees another solution and takes it, trusting that things will align as they should. And they do. It’s another Illmatic line. “Whose world is this? The world is yours, the world is yours.”

There’s a lot that I like about Loop, and a lot that I can relate to. I know about having a single mother. I know about being aimless. I know about needing a push to reach greatness. I can identify with Loop’s rise over the course of 100 Bullets, because it resembles my own.

Illmatic’s message is, at least in part, about potential. You are sitting at the top of a hill and full of potential energy. You can either waste that energy and fall, or you can spend it and soar. The thing that I, and a lot of people like me, understand is that the potential within me is limitless. The older I get, the more I realize I can do. Everything I’ve ever decided to do, I’ve done and done well. When someone asks me “Whose world is this?” the only appropriate response is “It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine.”

At the same time, that arrogance only goes so far. Sometimes you have to sit back and whisper, “I don’t know how to start this.” You start out on the back foot, so you’ve got to worry about how you look to others and make sure that you’re on point. The moment you screw up, you become a statistic, a stereotype, typical, and generally just another reason for people to go “Ugh, I knew it.” There’s that little voice in the back of your head that says that you aren’t good enough, and never will be.

Once you get past that, the world is yours.

Loop’s been on my mind a lot lately, for both the reasons I mention above and the fact that 100 Bullets is about two weeks away from ending as I type. When I went to New York Comic-con, I had a chance to get a sketch from Eduardo Risso, artist of 100 Bullets. I thought about it for a moment and realized that I needed a sketch of Loop. So I got it.

I currently have two things on my wall. One is a page of original art from Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, featuring John Henry waking up from being lynched and walking off into the darkness to do what needs to be done. The other is the classic Muhammad Ali poster “First Minute, First Round,” with a triumphant Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston. The other is going to be this piece by Risso of Loop.

I’m very picky about what I put up on my walls. It’s got to have some special meaning to me or represent something, rather than just being a hot piece of art. Ali is the arrogance that is necessary, John Henry is about purpose and drive, and Loop is about potential.

It’s 2009. I’m 25 years old, and the world is mine.

Today is a short one. It’s from Icon #30, by Dwayne McDuffie and MD Bright. They say my overall point much better than I could, so I’m going to keep my talking to a minimum.

Really, though- I hope DC does right by Milestone. The company, its legacy, and its characters deserve to be done properly.

Even though I have problems with some of the treatment of black characters in comics, I think that things are looking better than they ever have. There are more black headliners, more black characters, and better stories featuring those characters than there were years ago. Vertigo, once the stronghold of stories aimed at goths, published Sentences and the Papa Midnite book, in addition to expanding to the point where they’ve got an entire line based around crime fiction. Marvel seems committed to treating Black Panther as a major player in terms of both stories and real world stature.

I don’t think that things are perfect, not by any means, but things are getting better. I still want to hear more black voices, see black characters that aren’t introduced and shuffled off to the sidelines or the background, and stories that do more than paying lip service to the idea of black culture.

It’s a cliche to say that “black history is American history,” but it’s true. America would not be the country it is today without the input of black people, be it forced or voluntary. Slavery led to economic prosperity, but contributions from black people didn’t end there. There’s the Harlem Renaissance, slavery-era literature, 20th century music, novels, movies, and dozens of others. You don’t have to dig very deep at all to find something of value.

I’d like to be able to say the same about comics. Milestone is back in what could be the perfect time for its resurgence. A company that blazed trails in portrayal of non-white characters, transgender characters, and coloring can go from a well-regarded footnote to actually having the stature and respect it deserves. Gay characters in comics don’t begin with Perry Moore and end with Northstar. Islam in comics didn’t start with GW Bridge or The 99. There’s a lot out there that has gone forgotten simply because the material isn’t easily accessible.

There are a bunch of extremely talented black artists out there who will one day be up there with the greats. There’s fascinating panel designs, fusions of influences from Kirby to Otomo to Moebius to Tezuka and back again, and new and exciting ways to approach comics. I’m sure that there are plenty of writers waiting in the wings, too, with fresh ideas and perspectives to bring to things.

What do I want out of blacks in comics? I’ve got a list of things. I’d like to see black characters on an even keel with white ones, more research, more variety, and more respect.

Really though, two words: good stories.

Bishop had the strange position of being one of exactly two black X-Men when I was big into the comics. He was on the cover of the first issue of Uncanny X-Men I paid for with my own money (I remember this because it was behind the counter on a display as the first appearance of Bishop.) and he seemed pretty cool. Whilce Portacio made him look pretty mean and scary, and his power was, and is, dope.

But, he doesn’t work all the way for me. It isn’t that he’s inauthentic or not “black” enough or whatever– he’s from the future. It’s also not necessarily his origin or his underlying story. The X-Traitor stuff was fascinating, his ties to Gambit were interesting (the Boysenberry pie scene from X-Men is still one of my all-time favorites), and the hero worship he originally had for the X-Men was really very cool.

He just hasn’t clicked yet. He’s been through a few different variations. His original version is probably the most interesting to me, though the costume and hair left much to be desired. The idea of the X-Men living on into the future and inspiring people even then is, well, inspired. It’s a nice twist on the idea of a superheroic legacy, and Bishop being awestruck the first time he meets Storm or Cyclops was fun. There’s an unspoken undertone of authoritarianism to the whole works that adds a bit of sauce, too. After a while, he just turned into a generic X-Hero, but it was interesting while it lasted.

Bishop went through Age of Apocalypse and ended up with his mind turned inside out. He tripped from that into Onslaught and a series of increasingly uninteresting adventures that went from New York to the future to outer space and back again. When he landed, Claremont reinvented him as a bald detective guy, which could have been an interesting idea. Instead, it turned Bishop into a generic guy who makes deductions and sometimes fast-talks cops. District X was a series which threw Bishop into the midst of Mutant Town, New York, but it was similarly bland.

Messiah Complex added a new wrinkle to Bishop’s past. It explained that the dystopia he hails from was caused by a certain mutant baby. Messiah Complex was essentially a crossover that is at least in part about Bishop trying to kill a baby. This situation escalated in Cable’s solo series, where Bishop is chasing Cable and that baby through time.

While it’s actually kind of a gross-sounding hook on paper, I think it would have been way more interesting if Bishop were presented as at all sympathetic. If the baby actually did cause the death of millions, then Bishop is genuinely trying to do the right thing and you have a real dilemma. Instead, Bishop is eliminating entire eras in his attempt to pop the baby. It makes him pretty unlikeable, I think, on top of the whole “I need to kill this baby” thing.

Bishop’s a character that I want to like, but, like Nightwing, he’s never had a Frank Miller come along and turn him on his head and make him interesting. He’s run through a gauntlet of characterizations at this point, and none of them really seem to click. He’s always missing something. He needs a good hook and a good arc to make him worthwhile.

Nas’s Illmatic is basically my favorite album. It’s ten tracks are essentially perfect, and it’s one of the few albums that I can listen to in order over and over again over the course of a day. I woke up to find scans of XXL’s feature about the making of the best record of all time. It’s must-reading.

I’ve always liked Robbie Robertson. He’s both reminiscent of my grandfather and basically the prototype for a successful black supporting character, for good or for ill.

Robbie is, at his heart, a surrogate father figure. He was the only kind man who worked at the Bugle for ages, and served as both a confidante and a source of advice for Peter Parker. In essence, he was the conscience of the Daily Bugle and, to a certain extent, the Spider-Man comics themselves.

The thing about Spider-Man is that he’s extraordinarily self-absorbed, even by superhero standards. That’s the thing that made One More Day work as an idea (not as a story) for me. Peter takes everything personally, and what he can’t take personally he takes on his shoulders. Robbie is there to be that voice of reason that Peter so desperately needs. He provides perspective to a guy who clearly has no sense of it.

Robbie’s got a kind of soft-spoken intelligence that isn’t all that common in comics. Reading between the lines makes it clear that he knows that Peter Parker and Spider-Man are one and the same, but he never brings it up or calls in a favor. He just understands that Peter is fundamentally a good kid at heart and wouldn’t do it without a good reason.

At the same time, he provides a valuable check against J Jonah Jameson’s worst excesses. He’s there to tell him when he goes to far, and he’s there when Jonah has a rare moment of vulnerability. He’s a mentor to most of the Daily Bugle’s staff, as he’s a veteran news man who knows his way around both the business and ethics.

Deep down, though, there is steel. His hard line on ethics is due to a failure early in life, when he squashed a story after a beating by Lonnie “Tombstone” Lincoln. He’s encountered him a few times since, and stood up straight. He used to race cars as a child, too, showing him to be a bit more street smart than you’d expect. He seems like a gentle professor or a grandfather, but everyone was a kid once, and kids get into trouble.

I know a lot of people think of J Jonah Jameson as being the best supporting Spider-Man character, but really, Robbie is where it’s at. Jonah’s got one note and very little range. Robbie has range. For my money, Robbie is the best supporting character, with Mary Jane close behind him. Robbie’s a rock for anyone who needs it.

One thing that is vital in expecting blacks in comics to get better is having black voices in comics. Off the top of my head, we have three black writers regularly getting work at the big two right now: Kevin Grievoux, Dwayne McDuffie, and Reggie Hudlin. Christopher Priest is retired. There are a good number of artists out there, but artists generally don’t get to decide the stories of the books.

Something Spike Lee makes it a point to do is to employ up and coming and already famous black actors. If you’re going to pull from the community, you might as well give some back, right? So, his movies over the years are a who’s who of black actors and, to a lesser extent, Spike’s friends. In an industry which has made a habit of ignoring black voices, Spike has been an island who pushes the other side as hard as he can.

In doing so, he’s put forth the idea that the black voice is just as valid and interesting as the default Hollywood voice. Though he was robbed for the Best Picture for Malcolm X, he’s kept at it and kept making sure that someone out there is keeping that voice going.

I’m not sure why black writers in comics are so rare, but there’s a similar situation with women. Louise Simonson, G Willow Wilson, Gail Simone, and Kathryn Immonen are the first names that come to mind when I think of “women writers at the big two.” Interestingly (or perhaps not), I can’t think of a single black female.

Anyway, a side-effect of the lack of these voices is a lack of representation in the books themselves. You end up having a black experience as told by outsiders. The “black story,” such as it is, ends up filtered and probably even unrealistic. At one point, I had a list of Marvel superheroes who were either born in, operated out of, or had serious ties to Harlem. I don’t have the list any more, but off the top of my head, there’s Black Panther, Falcon, Storm, Robbie Robertson, Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Tombstone, and Randy Robertson. That’s basically all of Marvel’s biggest black names right there, so I’m not exactly making things up here.

And I mean, no knock on Harlem at all, but I’m pretty sure black people are from other parts of New York City, or even the rest of the country. I do believe that Rocket Racer is from Brooklyn, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only fan of RR alive. What about the black folks from the south? Brother Voodoo has Haiti and NOLA on lock, but what about Atlanta? Texas? Where are they at?

An infusion of black writers wouldn’t have more of a negative effect on comics than hiring a bunch of new white guys would. You’d be more likely to see authentic or different stories about black people, which I think is only a good thing. Even better, hiring good black writers can only lead to good things.