Just got home to the news that Dwayne McDuffie has died. I'll be honest, I hadn't realised what he did before tonight. I knew the name and I vaguely associate it with Ed Benes art (I do not know why), but after having looked him up on wikipedia and discovering that he founded Milestone Comics, I also saw this quote:
"If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.[4]"
Not enough people understand that. For that reason I am sad he's gone.
Dwayne McDuffie is now trending worldwide on twitter. In the last 2 minutes there have been 97 new tweest mentioing him. That's a big deal.
"If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.[4]"
Not enough people understand that. For that reason I am sad he's gone.
Dwayne McDuffie is now trending worldwide on twitter. In the last 2 minutes there have been 97 new tweest mentioing him. That's a big deal.
Very sad news. I remember he did quite a lot of good work for Marvel in the '90s, like Damage Control, which he created. And, of course, Milestone was indeed a milestone for the comics industry. My sympathies to Mr.Mc.Duffie's family and friends.
ReplyDeleteDuffy was also a story-editor on JLU, and took over Justice League for bit as well. Really sad to hear about this...
ReplyDeleteYeah, he worked on a lot of the DCAU stuff, including the upcoming All Star Superman animated movie.
ReplyDeleteReally sad news :/
I loved Xombi! So fun and original!
At least at DC, I guess some of his proprieties are in good hands (check out one of the latest Brave & the Bold issues http://www.comicvine.com/the-brave-and-the-bold-annihilating-angel/37-167484/ they weren't made by Dwayne but were pretty close in tone to his work)