Dwayne McDuffie, Influential Writer for Comic Books and Animated TV Series, Passes
Through Milestone Media, the company he co-founded, McDuffie made important strides in the diversification of comic books and cartoons.
Dwayne McDuffie, a comic-book and television writer whose work helped to diversify the superhero genre, died February 21, 2011, in Burbank, California. He had turned 49 the day before.
According to news reports, McDuffie died due to complications from heart surgery.
McDuffie did much of his work through Milestone Media, a company he founded and which garnered recognition not only or its innovative comics but for being owned and operated by minorities.
An independent company distributed by DC Comics, Milestone creates comics with ethnically diverse characters. Among the better known — all of which McDuffie co-created in collaboration with illustrators and other writers — are the African-American Static, Icon and Hardware, all of whom are African-American; Xombi, who is Asian-American; and the Blood Syndicate, a group of male and female crime-fighters that includes blacks, Asians and Latinos.
Static inspired the animated television series Static Shock, which aired on the WB television network from 2000 to 2004 — McDuffie was a creator, story editor and writer on the show.
Other television credits included writing and producing such animated series as Ben 10: Alien Force and Justice League. Wile McDuffie oversaw the Justice League of America — predominantly an old boys’ club featuring white males like Batman and Superman — it added new black and female characters.
Born in Detroit on February 20, 1962, McDuffie earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in physics from the University of Michigan. Later, he later studied film at New York University. He worked as a copy editor at Investment Dealers’ Digest, and in 1987 he became an editor with Marvel Comics.
At Marvel he helped develop the company’s first line of superhero trading cards and wrote for such popular series as Spider-Man and Captain Marvel. He also created Damage Control, a mini-series that explained the clean-up following massive battles between comic-book heroes and villains.
McDuffie left Marvel in 1990 and did freelance work for DC and other publishers before founding Milestone with three partners in the early 1990s. The first Milestone comics appeared in 1993. They were published regularly by DC until 1997 and in reprints afterward. Two new Milestone series, Xombi and Static Shock, were scheduled at the time of his passing.
In 1993 McDuffie received a Humanitas Prize for an episode of Static Shock about gun violence.
Survivors include his wife and his mother.