With new Milestone comics there's a risk of bad things happening. I'm not going to lie and tell you everything Milestone was gold because that's just not true. Instead, I'm going to give you three things that they should avoid with the relaunch.
3. Early DC Universe Crossovers
Like the Black Lightning television series, I want Milestone to crossover with the rest of DC. I just don't want it right away. If there's some cute little tip of the hats, like Batman monitoring a big bang in Dakota, sure. But, I don't need Batman running through the streets of Dakota throwing down with the Blood Syndicate. I don't need Icon facing off with Superman. I don't want Xombi taking Ryan Choi under his wing. I'd like crossovers, but only after Milestone has developed it's own feel and cemented their characters. Vertigo and DC have crossed streams a few time, but never full blown crossovers. If you want Black Lightning to show up and tell Static "good stuff kid," for an annual, I'm okay with that. But you better not be doing Justice League vs Shadow Cabinet.
2. New Heroes
Hey, everyone likes new heroes, but that's not why we're here. We're not here to meet any new characters. We're here to show love to the characters we know and love. We want Rocket. We want Hardware, we want Icon vs Oblivion, we want Buck Wild. New heroes are cool. We just don't want them right away. It would be great to see the next generation of Milestone heroes, but can we have the old ones first? It's been so long and we'd just like a moment to reminisce.
1. Don't be Woke
There's this idea that if you're socially conscious , you're woke. But, being woke opens a can of worms. It leads to people sacrificing their true selves to tiptoe through the world and never offend anyone. Woke people eat each other alive the moment they catch one of them doing something they can label as problematic, that might not even be problematic. We live in a world where Detroit Red would never have become Malcolm X. While classic Milestone was very progressive, socially conscious and focused on putting important issues forward, they weren't too woke to sacrifice story telling. If they did a story about homophobia you can bet they used the word "fag" with no censoring. There's a guy named Holocaust running. Drug addicts, racism and all that. They pushed people forward without trying to hold them under water and make them woke.
You should buy Darrell's Book, watch him on the Blerds Online YouTube Channel or The CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts.
