Dwayne McDuffie passed away unexpectedly today. A young guy, he wrote a ton of comic books, penned several feature-length animated movies and TV shows, and founded the Milestone imprint which published books with exclusively minority leads. Behind his fun and approachable writing style was a gentle (and sometimes less than gentle) conviction that minority characters continue to be underrepresented and underserved in the comic book and animation worlds.
Mostly, I'm sad because McDuffie's name was on many of my favorite things: his 'Static' character from the aforementioned Milestone venture was made into a deeply underrated animated series that ran on the WB from 2000 to 2004. With a canny touch, the show featured a rare black superhero character (who also faced the trials of teenage life) and also won awards for episodes dealing with gun violence and child abuse. The animated Justice League show, which crossed over with Static Shock here and there, is one of the best action cartoons of all time. McDuffie was story editor for the series and wrote an enormous number of episodes. Lastly, he wrote All-Star Superman which just came out today, and which I'm watching tonight. There may be crying. His name on something always stood for a quality and social conscience with a light touch.
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