DC co-publisher Jim Lee told Publishers Weekly that the company will finally announce plans for moving forward with new Milestone content next month at New York Comic Con.
In a surprising move, Lee suggested that the announcement will not be made at one of DC’s many panels and signing events but rather at Robert Kirkman’s panel in support of his upcoming project The Secret History of Comics.
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According to PW, Kirkman’s series will feature the history of Milestone, a group of comic book characters created, written, drawn,starred, and marketed for people of color in the ’90s.
Milestone was spearheaded by Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, Derek Dingle, and the late Dwayne McDuffie, and the characters have appeared only rarely since the original Milestone imprint — licensed to DC but never sold to them — shut down in 1997. McDuffie used some of the characters in an event during his run on Justice League of America just prior to his death, and Static Shock showed up as one of the launch titles for DC’s 2011 New 52 relaunch.
More recently, DC announced in 2015 that they had come to terms with the remaining Milestone partners to make new content, and in 2016, they were sued by McDuffie’s widow, who claimed they were cutting his estate out of the revival. That suit is ongoing.
DC chief creative officer Geoff Johns has expressed an interest in working on a Milestone graphic novel one day, as has Lee, who remains one of comics’ best-selling artists.
The relaunched Milestone was intended to bring in fresh blood as well as the old hands to develop original graphic novels featuring the characters rather than monthly comics. PW reports that Kirkman’s panel will feature appearances by Cowan, Reggie Hudlin, Kirkman, and Code Monkey Save World writer Greg Pak.
