MILES T O NE MEDIA

Milestone

BY JIM DANDENEAU

Thirty years ago, Milestone Media launched, and the comics world listened. Hardware #1, from legendary creators Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan, was the company’s first book in February 1993. It was nothing less than a statement of purpose, the tale of a Black genius fighting his white industrialist boss (who’s secretly a crime lord) to get pay and recognition for his inventions.

But it wasn’t until the Static Shock cartoon launched on TV in 2004 that Milestone made a broad cultural impact. “For so many of us in that generation, Static [Shock], the cartoon, was the door that opened a lot of things up,” Jordan Clark, a member of the Milestone Initiative’s inaugural class, tells Den of Geek.

Milestone and the superheroes it developed—Static and Hardware, Icon and Rocket, the Blood Syndicate, and so many others—turn 30 this year. And the Milestone Initiative, a program designed by Milestone’s current leadership to bring new talent into an industry that’s almost constitutionally resistant to change, just wrapped up its first cohort. Doors are being jammed open, and the comics line is arguably better than it has ever been—high praise for characters created by incredible talents like McDuffie, Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek Dingle. But before this revival, the line and the company seemed to be stuck in a state of perpetual near-relaunch for the better part of a decade.

Milestone Media was founded in 1993 by McDuffie, Cowan, Dingle, and Davis. Others were there and involved in its formation—Christopher Priest, the incredible mind behind one of the best Black Panther runs of all time as well as a brilliant recent run on DC’s Deathstroke, was working behind the scenes to launch the company, as was the media mogul who would eventually be instrumental in its return, Reginald Hudlin. “When we first started Milestone, Reggie was one of the original people who was invited to be part of the company, [but] he couldn’t do it because he was directing a movie called Boomerang with Eddie Murphy,” Cowan says. “I couldn’t believe that he would turn us down for something like that.”

The company was part of the mini-labor revolution in early ’90s comics that saw superstar creators breaking away from traditional superhero publishers and striking out on their own. “Thirty years ago, everyone was younger, all the ideas we had were gonna be great, and we were gonna do everything to change the world,” says Cowan.

For others in the creator rights movement, it was about controlling their own ideas and stories. That was a big part of the goal for the Milestone founders, but it was also about making more Black superheroes. “I’ve had people who were very heavy into collecting comics at the time,” says Clark, “who would talk to me about what it was like going into the stores, picking up Blood Syndicate, picking up Hardware, picking up Icon. I could feel the love and passion from them.”

The Milestone founders formed their company and made a deal with DC for distribution and promotional support, and they were initially very successful. The characters they created resonated. Icon is a superpowered alien who crash lands on a plantation in 1839 and is adopted by an enslaved woman, takes the form of a Black child, grows into his powers, and doesn’t age beyond adulthood. Hardware, aka Curtis Metcalf, is a young genius inventor whose patron is a mega-industrialist and who uses his brilliance to create technology to fight crime. He breaks away from his patron after being denied a share of the profits from his labor (sound familiar?). There’s the Blood Syndicate, a group of people who gain superpowers after a gang war in Dakota City is broken up by police using tear gas laced with an experimental chemical. And there is one bystander to that police attack who becomes Milestone’s biggest character—Virgil Hawkins, aka the beloved Static.

The line sold like mad for a bit and grew to include new titles like Shadow Cabinet, a super team dedicated to protecting humanity, and Xombi, about a Korean-American scientist named David Kim who got loaded up with nanites and became nearly immortal. But after that early success, the comic industry took a turn, and so too did Milestone’s publication fortunes. Static remained broadly popular because of the cartoon, but by 1998, the comics ceased publication, and there began a decade-long struggle to return the characters to the public eye.

DC worked to integrate the Milestone characters into the main universe, with former DC editor-inchief Dan DiDio announcing that Static would join the Teen Titans at San Diego Comic-Con in 2008; the publication of a new Xombi series in early 2011; and Static Shock as a launch title for DC’s big New 52 reboot later that same year. But despite those green shoots, the comics never took a firm hold, and with McDuffie’s tragic passing in 2011, it seemed like Milestone’s return was going to be a heavy lift.

But in a way, it was McDuffie’s death that would set the stage for Milestone’s huge return, even if it took several more years. Cowan, Dingle, and Hudlin spoke at McDuffie’s wake and resolved to get these characters back into print. “Derek said, ‘It’s been too long. We’ve got to restart the company’,” Hudlin told the Washington Post in an interview in 2015. “So the three of us have been working… on sorting out all the business, and now we are the core of Milestone Media 2.0.”

Flash forward a decade, and Milestone is on fire. The whole line is back in regular publication and being created by some wildly talented people. Icon & Rocket, by Hudlin, Leon Chills, and Doug Braithwaite, follows Augustus Freeman and Raquel Irvin as they attempt to use their powers to change the world for the better. Hardware, by Cowan and Brandon Thomas, has Curtis Metcalf fighting his crime lord ex-boss to protect his own creations.

Blood Syndicate Season One paired original Milestone talent ChrisCross with Geoffrey Thorne to tell the story of Dakota’s super-powered gang war. Duo updates the old Xombi concept with star creators Khoi Pham and Greg Pak. And Static: Season One matched Vita Ayala’s thoughtful character work and sharp dialogue with thrilling, energetic visuals from Nik Draper-Ivy.

While the characters and the concepts are familiar, the execution is very different. Back in the day, you “couldn’t walk out of a burning house [with Jefferson Davis’ severed head],” Cowan laughs, referring to the page in Icon and Rocket Season One #2 that sees Icon doing just that. “I love the direction it’s going in… it’s just taking all those things [we were trying to do] and pushing even further.” The fresh talent—Chills, Draper-Ivy, Ayala, even Hudlin, who is only now finally getting to play with the toys that his friends set up—are taking these stories in fun new directions. “When we have our brainstorming sessions, [Reggie’s] extremely excited,” says

Chills. “It’s his first time getting to actually write for Milestone, even though he’s been part of the history for so long.”

Case in point: Icon vs. Hardware, the new crossover written by Chills and Hudlin, with art from Cowan. “The book is about the battle between two ideologically different superheroes and their approach to creating a utopia,” Chills tells us.

Hardware gets his hands on a time machine created by 18th-century inventor Benjamin Banneker and plans to use it to right wrongs in the past. But while there, he runs into the nigh-immortal Icon. “Icon comes from a utopia, in Terminus,” Chills tells us. “And then, with the time machine, Hardware has the ability to make changes, to create what he hopes will be a utopia. He certainly thinks he’s smart enough to make those changes with no consequences.”

It’s safe to assume that those consequences will be the crux of the story. “With Curtis, there’s an element that because he’s Black, there are certain atrocities that he feels like he can potentially affect to create a better future for his people,” Chills says. “[It’s] him trying to do what’s best for his people.”

And then there’s the other piece of the returned Milestone’s work: the Milestone Talent Initiative. In partnership with Ally Bank and DC, Cowan, Hudlin, and Dingle have brought in a new generation of talent from historically marginalized backgrounds to teach them about the comic-book industry. You can see the Talent Initiative starting to bear fruit in this year’s DC Power: A Celebration anthology.

The Milestone Talent Initiative is a piece of DC’s Next Generation pipeline, a way to nurture and support diverse new voices and bring them into the DC Universe. Jordan Clark and Dorado Quick are two members of this inaugural class, and they co-wrote a Kid Flash/Aquaman story in DC Power that tackles DC’s legacy heroes (something these characters speak to very effectively) from a distinctly Black lens. Their story has Wallace West and Jackson Hyde —Kid Flash and the new Aquaman— arguing about their places as legacy heroes, the struggles they have as Black legacy heroes, and trash-talking each other the way only old friends can. Quick says that he and Jordan Clark developed the idea out of “a combination of three things: our love for the characters; owning a name like [in] Creed; and Issa Rae’s Insecure about [being] comfortable about who you are.”

There’s a bit at the end of their story where a young boy asks Kid Flash for his autograph. Clark and Quick meant that piece as a reflection on their time in the Milestone Initiative. “You go through something; it’s not just for you,” says Clark. “It’s often for someone else to look at your example… everything that Wallace and Jackson are going through, some little kid who is aspiring to be like them, if they don’t exist, if they’re not there, no matter what they’re going through, that young person doesn’t ever believe that they can be that.”

Despite this success, the work isn’t done. “I’m not usually a person who focuses on all the wonderful things we’ve already done,” says Cowan. “It’s always what we have to do next. So all that stuff with the Milestone Initiative is awesome. It’s great. Did it fulfill whatever mission I had back then? No, [but] it’s a start. You know, it’d be great if there was a Milestone Initiative every year for the next 10 years.” Let’s hope the Initiative can keep bringing new voices to superhero comics for longer than that.

Icon vs. Hardware #1 from Chills, Hudlin, and Cowan is on sale Feb. 14 in comic shops and digital platforms. DC Power: A Celebration, featuring Quick, Clark, and several other Milestone Initiative grads, is on sale now.

BY DAVID CROW

SCREAM VI BREAKS ALL THE RULES AS GHOSTFACE HITS THE BIG APPLE. WE CHAT WITH THE CREATORS AND STAR ABOUT PLANNING THE TRIP.

Alittle over a year ago, an old friend to horror fans (and a scourge to their onscreen counterparts) returned to cinemas in a big way. After being gone for more than a decade, Ghostface slayed again in Scream (or “Scream 5,” as everyone, including its directors, calls it). And the fiend really did make a killing: at the box office, with fans, and with a majority of critics. Curiously, there is something comforting about seeing the same Edvard Munch-inspired Halloween mask and hearing the familiar voice of Roger L. Jackson hiss movie trivia through a landline. The movie’s climax even revisited the suburban dream home turned nightmare from the original 1996 film.

“We made sure it lived in what we called a warm blanket,” director Matt Bettinelli-Olpin says now. There’s sound logic in this. Alongside his regular collaborator Tyler Gillett, Bettinelli-Olpin was the first person not named Wes Craven to direct a Scream flick. So they wanted to make sure they “played the hits.”

In retrospect, it was a real Ghostface maneuver, considering how gleefully the pair is now departing from that same formula. In Scream VI, there are no greatest hits, no bucolic Woodsboro setting, there’s barely even time to breathe. Now the survivors of Scream 5 are being tossed onto the streets of New York City on Halloween night, and Ghostface is chasing them in the crowds… with a shotgun.

“No warm blankets on this one!” Gillett laughs. The filmmakers have sliced it to shreds.

When we catch up with BettinelliOlpin and Gillett, they’re in the final mad dash to finish Scream VI, with three weeks left of special effects, sound, and other little adjustments. It’s been almost one year to the day since Scream 5 opened, and the pair liken the turnaround to hanging onto a rocket ship as it lifts off. Nonetheless, they appear giddy, partially because this is the moment where “the movie becomes a movie,” as Gillett notes, and also because Scream VI is more or less the Ghostface attack they’ve been plotting from the start.

Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are part of the filmmaking collective Radio Silence, along with producer Chad Villella. And the way they tell it, the collective, as well as screenwriters

James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, always knew that if they got another bite at the apple, Scream VI was headed to New York City and its population of eight million suspects.

Says Gillett, “I think one of the really interesting story paths that Guy and Jamie found was taking characters that have experienced something really singular and really specific and putting them in a big city. They are, just by the natural sense of what they’ve experienced, isolated… and they’re in a new place where they would never imagine it could visit them again. Then it visits them again.”

Setting Scream VI in NYC is also the immediate draw in the film’s early spate of marketing. Suddenly, Ghostface isn’t sneaking into your house; he’s hiding in plain sight on the subway on All Hallows’ Eve or following you into a bodega where there’s only one exit that he’s standing in. It’s chilling, tantalizing stuff for a horror setup.

“I got very excited when I found out that it was going to take place in New York City,” says Scream VI star Melissa Barrera, “just because I love New York City. I think it’s a great setting for a scary movie. It can be a terrifying place.” Indeed, Barrera knows the backdrop well, having gone to school at NYU’s Tisch, and when we sit down with her, she’s only moved a little further down the river, Zooming in from Hoboken, New Jersey.

The actor also recognizes that Ghostface picked the perfect time to visit the Big Apple. While she used to thrill at riding the subway, “postpandemic, crowds do scare me. I think we have a bit of PTSD about that as a society. We’re not used to being in close proximity to people and bumping into each other. You don’t know where hands are coming from, and anybody can touch you, anybody can grab you. You can disappear in a crowd.”

Plus, with the exception of Scream 3 being set in Hollywood, this is the first time Ghostface has left small-town locales. Says Barrera, “We’ve had little visits somewhere else, but mostly we stick to the West Coast. I feel like going all the way to the East Coast is a big statement.”

The declaration includes a gaggle of returning protagonists, too, as Scream VI boasts five (!) survivors from the last film: Barrera’s Sam Carpenter, who is still nursing her physical and psychological wounds following the realization that she’s the daughter of Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich’s masked killer from the original Scream); Sam’s younger half-sister Tara (Jenna Ortega); and Tara’s childhood friends whose love of horror movies was shaken after being stabbed themselves, the twins Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown) and Chad (Mason Gooding). Meanwhile, Courteney Cox’s Gale Weathers is as indefatigable as ever after the killer shows up in her trendy loft above the city.

Almost everyone is back, and the one thing they all seem morbidly excited about is how this movie just moves so unlike its predecessors.

“There’s no off-ramp,” BettinelliOlpin muses. “It’s you get on, and then you go, and then the movie ends. That’s something we just love, movies that don’t give you a chance to take a breath.”

While the condensed timeline appears poised to heighten the tension, the filmmakers seem genuinely excited about how it will affect all their returning characters, particularly the central heroines played by Barrera and Ortega.

“It’s really a sister’s story,” says Gillett. “Our favorite scenes in this movie are the two of them talking to each other, honestly. There’s a level of depth and richness in the relationship that they are building onscreen. We keep saying when we’re watching, ‘We just want to be the Carpenter sisters!’”

Barrera teases that this involves Sam being overprotective of Tara after the events of the last film, with the older sibling essentially playing big sister/ mama bear to all three of the last movie’s teenage survivors. She even follows them to college in Manhattan.

“There’s a little bit of friction between the sisters,” Barrera explains, “Tara was used to being independent and not having to deal with anyone. And Sam’s like, ‘I’m back, and I’m never going to leave you alone.’”

Their directors also acknowledge that there’s a quality and trust which springs from reuniting with Barrera and Ortega on the second shoot.

“We didn’t know Melissa or Jenna before Scream 5 was written,” Bettinelli-Olpin says. “So now we know them and we know their strengths and how to play into them and what they’re interested in. That informed the script Guy and Jamie wrote in a lot of ways, and it informed where the story went. To say Melissa and Jenna are a big part of why the movie turned out the way it did is an understatement. It is really special.”

Adds Gillett, “Everything else feels like of greater significance because, at the end of the day, you hope that those characters can find a way to connect.”

Of course, for a number of Scream fans, including perhaps Radio Silence, the ensemble of Scream VI will be bittersweet since this also marks the first movie not to feature Neve Campbell’s Sidney Prescott, the main protagonist of the four original Scream movies and the performance which anchored everything that came before.

Bettinelli-Olpin doesn’t recall how far into developing Scream VI they were when Campbell publicly announced she wouldn’t join the film. However, he says their reaction was probably the same as everyone else: What does this mean for Scream going forward? All the directors can answer is that they hope to replicate what Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson did between Scream and Scream 2 by building a genuine ensemble whom audiences care about (something of a novelty, then and now, in the horror genre).

“[We must] make sure that you get the time with them, and you understand who they are and you really learn to love them, and you’re on the journey with them. You’re not watching them from afar.” He adds, “We love Neve. Hopefully, there’s another one down the road.”

Until then, Radio Silence is bringing back all their favorites, and not just the main characters from Scream 5. Stars from the filmmaking collective’s cult darling Ready or Not are making their

Scream debut with Samara Weaving and Henry Czerny joining the cast. Additionally, fan-favorite Hayden Panettiere is reprising the role of Kirby Reed for the first time since Scream 4 (“She is so good in this movie!” Gillett beams). With all these familiar faces, it really does feel like an extended that Roman had been plotting this from the beginning [in Scream 3]. You don’t know if this [killing spree] is a long-term plan for someone.” She muses, “All of the movies are whodunits, but this one is, particularly, a different type of whodunit.”

It appears to get back to the original reunion, beginning with the “found family” of two pairs of siblings at the movie’s core. Still, Scream movies are, in their heart of hearts, whodunit stories; mysteries in which a killer is waiting to be unmasked from within your own ranks. And every family has its black sheep.

“You still can’t trust anyone,” Barrera hints with a smile. “We’ve seen it in the Scream universe when we found out impetus for Scream VI: remove the warm blanket and throw fans in a big city slaughterhouse. With Scream being Scream, though, fans can rest assured the movie will remain aware of its origins and its setting since many sequels, from Friday the 13th Part VIII to Home Alone 2, have taken Manhattan by storm… and to sometimes checkered results.

When asked if Scream VI will comment on that colorful heritage, Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin share big grins and exaggerated winks. “Maybe!” they say in near unison. They do concede at least that Scream VI will nod to star Jenna Ortega’s other recent franchise success under the horror umbrella, the Netflix sensation Wednesday, with some type of Addams Family Easter egg hidden in Scream VI’s New York City.

Says Gillett, “So much of the tone and the fun of what this movie is, we think, is that all this crazy shit’s happening, but at any moment, somebody wearing a ridiculous costume could walk through the shot. That, for us, is Scream in a nutshell. The real world can enter and exit this terrifying experience at any time.”

The transparent joy the filmmakers get from such fourth-wall breaks affirms they see themselves as real-life Kirbys or Mindys: film nerds who grew up loving movies that interrogated the fact they’re movies.

As Gillett later promises, “Every part of the movie provides some commentary on the state of movies and franchises and all of that. We’re living the movie.”

Scream VI opens in theaters on March 10.