Talk:Milestone Media

Racial make-up
The contention about Milestone's racial make-up reflects a common misunderstanding about the company. It was (and presumably still is) 100% African-American-owned. But it was not an all-black operation at any time during their publishing history. I don't know the race of very many of the people who worked on their first books (so I may be missing some key examples), but I do know that Mike Gustovich (who inked Icon #1) is white (I've met him), Jimmy Palmiotti (inked Hardware #1) is white (I've seen photos), and - while the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive - that Ivan Velez (cowrote Blood Syndicate #1) is latino. Milestone included more non-black people on their creative roster as time passed and people came and went, but they ceased to be all-African-American well before their first comic went to press. Tverbeek 11:50, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. --Strannik 13:26, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Milestone Bible
My name's Dwayne McDuffie and I'm one of the founders of Milestone Media. I've been directed here by several e-mails from fans. Christopher Priest, who was quite involved in many of the organizing and early creative meetings for Milestone, was not a founding member. He chose not to join the group. While his contributions were significant, he did NOT write the 400 page Milestone Bible. I did, minus about thirty pages. Priest wrote the subsection of the "City of Dakota" section dealing with the history of the city. Robert Washington wrote a section about sports teams, local department stores and the like, Ivan Velez, Jr. wrote a section called "The Gangs of Paris Island." All of this material added up to less than 30 pages. I'd already written the rest myself in a hospital in Florida. Priest gave notes on this document in his capacity as DC Comics Editor and liaison to Milestone, as did DC's Paul Levitz, Dick Giordano and particularly Jenette Kahn. Freelancers Matt Wayne, Ivan Velez, Jr., Robert Washington and Mark Bright were also all given a look at early drafts and gave notes. We took some of all these suggestions and incorporated them in the third draft. For the record, I also wrote the thirty or forty page pitch bible that pre-dated the Milestone Bible but contained most of the major elements of the later version. Derek Dingle edited this draft, and Priest created the Milestone "M" logo when he designed the package for this document.

Keep in mind that the Milestone Bible was a living document that grew with the company. The latest version I have is over 700 pages long with significant contributions from Matt Wayne, John Rozum, Robert L. Washington and others.

If you have any questions, I can be reached at dwayne@dwaynemcduffie.com.

McDuffie elaborates further on Milestone's status here, in case anyone wants to work this info into the article. -leigh (&#966;&#952;&#8057;&#947;&#947;&#959;&#962;) 15:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Nothing really new here. The fact that Milestone owns the copyrights to all Dakodaverse characters is self-evident to anyone who ever bothered to look at the fine print of any Milestone comic. Trademarks, on the other hand... well, once again, looking at the fine print, it seems that those belong to DC. I could be wrong, though. --Strannik 18:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

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Milestone Forever
Should this be put on this page?

Milestone Forever gathers the original artists from Milestone’s launch titles: John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Milestone Founder Denys Cowan, to complete the tales told in the original runs of STATIC SHOCK, ICON, HARDWARE, SHADOW CABINET and BLOOD SYNDICATE. Milestone Editor in Chief Dwayne McDuffie reveals the final fate of each of Milestone’s launch characters in a bittersweet tale that chronicles the literal end of a universe, and the birth of something new, with major consequences for the future of the DC Universe. d.m.an (talk) 11:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

References on Fresh Prince of Bel Air
The other day while watching a Fresh Prince rerun I noticed something interesting. On the wall of the pool house near the front door is some artwork featuring Milestone characters. I'm just going from memory right now but I definitely saw Icon and the Shadow Cabinet, and I believe I also saw Hardware and Static. The 4th season episode "Grumpy Young Men" has one really good shot of the artwork.

It's not too surprising; I believe I've heard he's a big comic book fan and on the show had Hillary read from a Spider-Man comic once. 173.53.87.215 (talk) 14:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

my COI
Just to be scrupulous: I just did an edit to this page, and I have some conflict of interest. Specifically, I did a small amount of writing for the Milestone Comics line. The edits I made were legitimately minor (mostly MOS stuff), so the COI should not be a problem.

Having said that, there are some other edits that this page could use. I question whether it was appropriate to refer to the founders as African-American writers and artists, as it includes Mr. Dingle, who apparently made reasonable contributions to the discussion of the characters and situations, but is not to my (admittedly imperfect) knowledge credited with being a writer on any comics, Milestone or otherwise. And the section discussing other African American creators criticizing the launch of Milestone may need a little more context; as memory serves, these were minor folks who were trying to launch a new imprint (ANIA), with some books that didn't make it to issue one, much less past that. --Nat Gertler (talk) 00:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Maddie Blaustein
In a list that starts "Milestone hired new talent, many of whom went on to successful careers. Among them are" there's the name Madeline Blaustein. While Maddie certainly did work for Milestone, both as an editor and as a writer, it was not only not the beginning of her comics career, it was pretty much the end... at least judging by her listings at the Grand Comics Database. The only things listed after that which don't look to be reprints are a couple covers for DC. She has about as many writing or co-writing credits at Marvel and DC prior to Milestone as she had at Milestone. (For anyone confused by that listing: Maddie was working under a prior first name at the time.) So I'm not sure including her in that particular list is appropriate. --Nat Gertler (talk) 13:07, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You're right. Probably better to mention her in the context of MM publishing her groundbreaking trans character. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 14:00, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Trading card publisher
The publisher of the Milestone trading card series was not DC, as the article currently states, but SkyBox International, as can be seen at the listed reference. I will not make this correction myself due to my previously-stated conflict of interest (as well as my retirement from article editing), but I encourage someone else to review this statement and make the adjustment if you deem it correct. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:11, 20 January 2023 (UTC)