Milestone Media Company LLC is a company best known for creating Milestone Comics, which were published and distributed by DC Comics, and the Static Shock animated series. It was founded in 1993 by a coalition of African-American artists and writers, consisting of Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, Derek T. Dingle, and Christopher Priest. The founders felt that minorities were severely underrepresented in American comics and wished to address this.
History
Development
Christopher Priest participated in the early planning stages of Milestone Media, and was originally slated to become the editor-in-chief of the new company, but left the endeavor for personal reasons before any of Milestone's titles were published. Davis left Milestone in 1995, after the imprint had launched, to become president of the new Motown Animation & Filmworks, the comic book line Motown Machine Works was published by Image Comics. Cowan soon joined him to serve as editor in chief.
All Milestone Media titles were set in a continuity dubbed the "Dakotaverse", referring to the fictional midwestern city of Dakota in which most of the early Milestone stories were set. Before any titles were published, an extensive "bible" was created by McDuffie and other early creators which provided back-story and information on all of the original Dakotaverse characters, as well as detailed information about the history and geography of Dakota. Cowan produced the original character sketches that served as a guide for the other artists.
Publishing deal
Although Milestone comics were published through DC Comics, they did not fall under DC Comics' editorial control; DC retained only the right not to publish any material they objected to. Milestone Media retained the copyright of their properties and had the final say on all merchandising and licensing deals pertaining to them. In essence, DC licensed the characters, editorial services, and creative content of the Milestone books for an annual fee and a share of the profits. Dwayne McDuffie said that DC held up this agreement even though some of Milestone's storylines made them "very uncomfortable" as they were from perspectives that DC weren't used to. The biggest conflict they had was when an issue of Static showed the hero kissing his girlfriend on a bed, with unopened condoms visible. DC didn't want to publish this cover on grounds that it was using sex to sell comics; Milestone covered most of the image as a compromise. McDuffie believed it made DC uncomfortable because it was specifically "black sexuality", noting that the man who communicated DC's concerns at the time was standing in front of a copy of Legionnaires #16, the cover of which depicts a blonde, white character in a revealing costume posing in a sexually suggestive position.
Dakotaverse
In 1993, Milestone Media launched its first four titles: Hardware, Icon, Blood Syndicate and Static. At the same time, SkyBox and DC issued a trading card series, Milestone: The Dakota Universe (1993).
A year later, Milestone Media published its first company-wide crossover, Shadow War, which spawned two more titles: Shadow Cabinet and Xombi. Another ongoing series, Kobalt, was introduced later. Milestone also participated in an intercompany crossover with DC, called "Worlds Collide" in which Metropolis-based superheroes from the DC Universe and Dakota-based superheroes from the Dakotaverse interacted temporarily. Milestone had several advantages in its publishing efforts: their books were distributed and marketed by one of the "Big Two" comic book publishers; the comics industry had experienced remarkable increases in sales in preceding years; they featured the work of several well-known and critically acclaimed creators; they used a coloring process that gave their books a distinctive look, and they had the potential to appeal to an audience that was not being targeted by other publishers.