Our Black History Month spotlight falls on a creator who should have a far higher profile than he does currently. Maybe his new project in comics will change this. Let's find out.

2/12/07

43. Dwayne McDuffie

(Image courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com)

McDuffie is a prominent black creator, but he's not a prominent creator, if you catch my drift. He should be, though.

His first big project was Damage Control, for Marvel. As you all know, Damage Control was a great idea and a pretty fun series.

He continued at Marvel to bring us Deathlok (II), which was the best Deathlok series of them all, and certainly the best version of the title character. A pacifist in the body of a cyborg death machine! That's good comics.

McDuffie moved over to DC for his biggest project, the Milestone imprint. This was the little corner of the DC Multiverse that introduced numerous black superheroes like Hardware, Icon, the Blood Syndicate, and the most famous of all, Static.

The line lasted a few years and then dropped off the radar. It's okay, though, 'cause Dwayne moved on to a career in animation and brought us the Static Shock! animated series, which then led him into taking over Justice League Unlimited, and delivering a cartoon that the fans all plotzed over.

McDuffie's big return to comics occurred last year with the Beyond! mini-series. Now he's come to rescue us from bad Fantastic Four stories by taking over the title.

Will his run on FF be the big new awesome thing to catapult him to the stardom he deserves? I guess we'll have to wait and find out.

Is it agreed? Is Dwayne McDuffie a reason to love comics? I think so. He's introduced plenty of new and exciting characters and concepts into the medium and written some damn fine stories.