The Age Of The Black Superhero

Back in the sixth grade, some friends and I sold most of our baseball and hockey cards at a school sale. We made almost $200 from our Roberto Alomar and Frank Thomas rookie cards, amongst other collectibles. So with our new found wealth we headed over to the Grey Region comic book store (which in those days was actually located on Queen street). Rather than replenish our baseball card collections, however, we all opted for an exciting new medium hitting the school yard - comic books.

It was on this day that I became a fanboy. I started going to the comic book store regularly, forking over my hard-earned allowance money on Superman and Batman comics. It was also on this day that I discovered another group of superheroes unlike any that I'd come across before from a company I never heard of.

Milestone comics, an imprint of DC, was launched in 1993 and featured all black superheroes. The first four titles released were Hardware, Blood Syndicate, Icon and Static. They occupied what was dubbed the "Dakotaverse," named after the city of Dakota - a fictional, mid-western city in the United States. The Dakotaverse operated in its own continuity, completely separate from the other DC universe titles, i.e. Superman. Most of the major characters acquired their superpowers in an event known as "the big bang" when the cops used experimental tear gas on a gang war that broke out in Paris Island, a suburb of Dakota. The gas, however, killed most of the gang members and gave the rest special abilities.

I don't know what drew me to pick these comics up. Perhaps it was my burgeoning racial consciousness, or maybe I thought they would appreciate in value. Regardless, I picked up the first issue of Static and was hooked right from the start. I guess what drew me to the book was its main character - Virgil Hawkins - a teenager who can control electro-magnetic fields. This allowed him to basically shoot lightning from his hands and control electronic objects to various degrees. He was pretty much a black Spider-Man - a geek with superpowers. He would often crack jokes while fighting bad guys and go to school during the day all the while protecting his secret identity from his parents and friends (save his best friend Freida).



Over time I started to collect the rest of the Milestone books, particularly Blood Syndicate. They were probably the most original creation from Milestone comics. A motley crew of sorts, these guys were the surviving members of rival gangs who adopted powers from the big bang and chose to squash prior beefs and form a new gang. They took over Paris Island and basically kicked out all the remaining drug dealers (and the police too). Their leader, Mack-10, could shoot any weapon and never run out of ammo. Another member, Flashback, had the ability to go backwards in time, but only for three seconds (kind of a ripoff if you ask me). DMZ, the most mysterious member and one of the few to not get his powers from the big bang (he turns out to be an alien connected to Icon) and Wise Son were my favourite characters. Wise Son would eventually get his own miniseries, penciled and written by Toronto artist Ho Che Anderson.

What separated the Milestone universe from DC and Marvel superheroes wasn't just the colour of their characters' skin, but the range of topics addressed by each book. Issues of racism, class, homophobia, sexism, drug use, gang violence, police brutality and other problems associated with the inner-city were a prominent fixture (think The Wire if Avon Barksdale could shoot fireballs from his hands). And the writers didn't use metaphors or symbolism to address these subjects either, but rather dealt with them head on. One of Static's first villains is a black nationalist militant known as Commado X, who sets off a wave of bombings against "white" institutions. It was a pretty balsy story arc that I didn't really understand as a kid, but grew to appreciate more as an adult.

Unfortunately, this kind of storytelling proved too heavy for some readers. Milestone's sales declined over the years, and eventually the company folded. Even yours truly stopped collecting every issue (no thanks to my dwindling allowance savings). Static remained the most popular character, however, even earning his own short-lived animated series Static Shock. He was even featured in an episode of Justice League Unlimited. But characters like Hardware, Icon and the Blood Syndicate weren't as well-received and it wasn't long before the company folded. It seems comic-book nerds, who are predominantly white and male, aren't exactly interested in stories about black gang bangers with superpowers (there were other factors of course, but I choose to only consider the racist ones).

Unfortunately, only Static and Icon were ever collected in trade paperback, and only a handful of issues at that. Feeling nostalgic, I sought out all the Milestone comics I could find at comic-cons and used book stores a few years back in order to complete my collection. I managed to get my hands on some copies of Hardware and a few Blood Syndicate issues, but it was impossible to track down every issue I was missing. I was heart-broken. Not only were these characters no longer around, they weren't even being sold anywhere. And given the lack of demand for these characters when they were around, it would appear that the age of the black superhero was doomed to fade into obscurity.

Not so. Last year, DC comics announced the return of the Milestone characters. They were incorporated into the DC universe earlier this year in Justice League and Teen Titans respectively. Icon, Hardware and the Shadow Cabinet (another superpower team that came later) were featured in Justice League #27 and 28, and Static appeared in Terror Titans #4 and is set to join the Teen Titans.

With Dwayne McDuffie, who launched Milestone, behind the wheel, I hope they don't white wash the characters. Part of what made someone like Icon so appealing was that beyond his obvious parallels to Superman, he was a black republican with a "pull yourself up by your boot-straps" mentality (think Colin Powell if he could fly). Hardware was pretty much Iron Man, but of the same volition as Icon, until he sees what his weapons and technology are being used for and can't take it anymore. The Blood Syndicate were the most polarizing comic of the four because the characters were technically just gang members with superpowers, but they were complex and multi-dimensional. I hope that DC does these characters justice by staying true to their origins. I guess with a black president anything is possible.