416 MILESTONE COMICS
While Hellboy can certainly be considered the most signifi cant creation of Mignola’s
career, he has also been active in other endeavors. In 2001, he joined the production
team for Walt Disney’s Atlantis: Th e Lost Empire. Th e experience helped him when he
became the concept artist for Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II. During this time Mignola
and del Toro forged plans to produce a live-action Hellboy movie. Th e project came to
fruition when it opened in 2004 to both fi nancial and fan approval—enough to warrant
a sequel. Mignola went on to adapt a comic book one-shot for television, Th e Amazing
Screw-On Head , about a mechanical head called to the rescue by President Lincoln.
In addition to enjoying worldwide popularity, Mignola has won eight Eisner Awards
for his writing and illustrating work on Hellboy. While he continues to occasionally
write and illustrate Hellboy issues, he has handed over the reins of the growing franchise
to artists, including Ryan Sook and Derek Th ompson.
Selected Bibliography: Brayshaw, Christopher. “Between Two Worlds: Th e Mike
Mignola Interview.” Comics Journal (August 1996): 65.
Richard L. Graham
MILESTONE COMICS. In 1993, the comics business in the United States was booming,
and many new approaches were tested on the seemingly ever-growing audience. One of
the most distinctive of these was Milestone Comics, a group of comic books published
as an imprint of DC Comics , but set in a separate universe.
Behind the start of Milestone Comics stood Milestone Media, a group created in
1992 by the African American artists and writers Dwayne McDuffi e, Denys Cowan,
Derek T. Dingle and Michael Davis. McDuffi e was the chief writer/editor and Cowan
did all the initial character and other design tasks. Th eir reason for launching this
initiative was in response to the way minority characters had been treated in Ameri-
can mainstream comics, either being included as token characters or simply not being
included at all.
Th e origin story of the Milestone universe was a massive gang confl ict, called “Th e
Big Bang,” which ended with the police using an experimental tear gas, killing many of
the gang members and mutating the rest, giving them various super powers. Th is was
the origin of the majority of the super-powered characters in the Milestone universe,
often called the Dakotaverse after the fi ctional Midwestern city of Dakota in which
most of the stories take place.
Th e fi rst year of Milestone Comics saw the publication of four titles: Blood Syn-
dicate by Ivan Velez, Jr. and Chriscross, Hardware by McDuffi e and Cowan, Icon
by McDuffi e and MD Bright, and Static by Robert Washington III and John Paul
Leon. Th e titles were, in eff ect, clever African American variations on mainstream
superhero team comics, Iron Man , Superman , and Spider-Man , respectively. Icon
included a distinctive female superhero, Rocket, as well as a hilarious parody of
Marvel’s Luke Cage , named Buck Wild. Th e response was good, both from readers
and critics, and the following year another three titles were added: Kobalt by John
