Everybody wants to be Dwayne McDuffie. Let me re-phrase: I wanted to be Dwayne McDuffie when I was growing up, viciously devouring comics like a fat girl in a donut shop. They used to have profiles in the back of comics about the creators and editors of the comics. They were all whiter than a cream cheese and sugar sandwich on Wonder Bread. Then I saw this.
Because of that profile, and some incredibly funny and well-developed writing, I've been following Dwayne McDuffie's career ever since.
He started out in the comic book business in a way very few have: he pitched an original idea. Having his name only slightly known in the field with one Solo Avengers storyline, his mini-series Damage Control marked him as a rising star in the industry in the late eighties. Most would've been content to stay in the medium, to work with great artists associated with the big boys of the industry—Marvel Comics and DC Comics. Instead, a mere four years after his first published work, McDuffie and friends Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek Dingle founded Milestone Comics and gave comic geeks of color a banner to get behind. "We stopped the comics in '97 and went to book packaging and advertising packaging after that," McDuffie tells me. No longing in his voice. Only pride.
From Milestone, McDuffie spun his writing into a television series, Static Shock, for the WB Network and won not only critical acclaim but also the 2003 Humanitas Prize for an episode dealing with gun violence in school.Static Shock feels like those old Spider-Man comics Steve Ditko used to draw, when the morality of the story was infused with the angst of adolescence. It's the type of cartoon you can sit down with a seven-year-old and watch. You won't be bored, you'll cheer for the good guy, and you can have a conversation about it with the kid later.
To follow up on his success with one of the only cartoons with a black hero, McDuffie wowed the animated world by accepting an invitation to story-edit on the Justice League (the updated version of the Super Friends, for those of you who don't read comic books). "After the first season [of Static Shock], Alan Burnett, who was producing the show, called me up out the blue and said, 'Do you want to try writing one of these [episodes]?' I figured I'd give it a shot and . . . it came out pretty well. That led to some Justice League work, and then Bruce Timm [the animated Batman, Superman and…well, most good Warner Brothers cartoons from the nineties to now have been touched by the hand of Bruce Timm] called me up and asked me to story-edit on the second season of Justice League. That's how I got in."
You can't watch a Dwayne McDuffie cartoon and think you're watching fluff. There isn't a character that he's involved with that doesn't have some compelling motivation. These aren't animated figures you're watching, they're people struggling with feelings and emotions. McDuffie helped give a sense of balance and humanity to characters as grand as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. As you watch the show and hear the dialogue, you begin to understand their motivations in a way you never did in the old days. McDuffie writes the scene and dialogues to match the grandeur of the visual landscape.
Yet McDuffie's true effect isn't limited to what he writes. Characters he designed years ago, Damage Control, still play major roles in comic book lore. "I created Damage Control, that's sort of how I broke into comics years ago. And I wrote a four-issue miniseries and a few stories. Then Village Road Show was developing it for a feature. And some guys wrote a really funny screenplay for it where they used Marvel's Squadron Supreme characters as a parody of the Justice League ironically. This was years before I wrote the Justice League. It got pretty far from what I understand. But 9/11 put the nail in the coffin on it. A building falling over isn't quite as funny as it was in the nineties… [Damage Control] had a big role in Marvel's line-wide crossover, Civil War, where Spider-Man revealed his identity and all the super-heroes are forced to register with the government. It turned out an evil CEO of Damage Control was responsible for the inciting incident. And I just heard they're showing up in the new Ant-Man book. And I'm looking forward to seeing that."
It turns out it's a rarity for McDuffie to read comics these days. "I tend to read trade paperbacks just because I can't keep it straight—there are just so many books out now. And I'm working on so many different projects, it's confusing to have so many stories in my head at the same time. So . . . I go through about four trade paperbacks a week, on top of what I call 'real' reading, like real books. Not to undercut my own work . . . ."
That's actually a common call of veterans of the comic industry. And McDuffie is definitely a lifer. He's watched the industry go through its many fits and starts, from Marvel Comics almost closing due to bankruptcy, to the rise and fall and rebirth of Image Comics. " [The comic book industry] has become more insular and more mainstream at the same time. When I first got into the business, it was still largely a newsstand business, where you were producing books for very casual readers. Now books are made entirely for the direct market, comic specialty stores, where you have a much smaller pool of readers but who are more heavily involved. And they read not only every issue of your book but also every issue of twenty other books—and probably know more about the world you're working in than you do. So you really have to pay attention. It's just a change. Things change. I don't think its any better or worse. I wish the audience pool was larger, but there's something to be said for a very intense, medium-sized audience."
One of his current writing assignments is his fan-boy dream job, writing The Fantastic Four. "There's a lot of strange stuff going on in the book now because of that whole Civil War thing. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman have temporarily left the team and, to take their place, the Black Panther and Storm have joined." When I asked him if he approached writing black characters any differently from writing others, he said, "No, I don't. I approach all characters the same way. I think of who they are and what experiences have gotten them to where they are. I think of what they want, which is the way everyone should approach all characters. You should try and put yourself in that character's skin, whatever skin that may be."
If you look at the number of terrifically talented people unable to make their mark, it's not entirely a coincidence…. It's not a reason not to do it. It's a reason to do it.
Despite McDuffie's lofty ideals, he's also a pragmatist and a brilliant strategist. "The major money-making characters get more attention. Again, paradoxically, the characters no one cares about are often better written because someone's off in the corner and no one is telling them what to do all the time so they can impart more of their own experiences into it. So often, the books no one is looking at get very good." The character that came to my mind was Daredevil. But get the image from the movie out of your head. In the eighties, Daredevil was Marvel's lowest selling book, soon to be discontinued, when a young and hungry writer named Frank Miller (think Sin City and 300) got his hands on it. He flipped the script on the character, and twenty-five years later it's still one of Marvel's benchmark books.
Dwayne urges the public to enjoy the great comic stories from the mainstream but to also appreciate the independent spirit of people who put out their own books. "First of all [with independents], you have a lot more control and you get to write about what you want to write about it. Second of all, if you want to break into the mainstream, well, comic editors like comics. They like to read them. If you send them a script, maybe they'll read it. If you send them a comic, they'll probably read it and if they like it, really like it, they'll call you up. A lot of people broke in that way." Like most of the lifers in the industry McDuffie knows his business.
He also knows Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment for BET. Not only is Hudlin kicking much ass on the Black Panther comic but he's also working with McDuffie on a new project. "I can't even say what the title is yet, but BET is producing an original series I created. They're doing two animation blocks, a kid's block and an adult's. And mine is one of the adult, prime-time, science fiction animated series. It's pretty cool. I can't wait until I can talk about it constantly. " But even that project isn't enough to slow him down. “I haven't done a lot of stuff I wanted to do. I'm story-editing a show called Ben 10 from my new office. It's a show that's been very successful for Cartoon Network. We're doing a revamp of the show set five years in the future, so Ben's not ten anymore, he's fifteen. Also very probably, by the summer, I'll be taking over a very big title for one of the two big companies. I can't say any more until they announce, but it makes a lot of sense for me to be writing it. It will be a good book for me… I'm going to write where there are audiences that are interested in hearing what I have to say, whether that's live action, animation, comics, poetry slams—wherever I can get a bunch of people in a room to read what I have to say, or experience what I'm talking about."
You'd think someone with as much going on as McDuffie would be cocky. Try the polar opposite. He's reserved, almost to the point of being formal. I had to wonder if it was an effect of being a black man in a predominately white field. But that didn't seem to be his concern. "The fact of the matter is, the industry has the same problems as every other part of American society. When I talk about how hard it is to break in when you add race to it, it becomes ten times harder. If you look at the number of terrifically talented people unable to make their mark, it's not entirely a coincidence…. It's not a reason not to do it. It's a reason to do it. That's not a reason to stop trying, it's a reason to come in and change things."
I realize by the end of my interview with Dwayne McDuffie that he's not the renaissance man I've made him out to be. He's more like my grandfather: quiet, strong, unflinching, and hard-working. When I asked him for any advice for readers who want to break into the industry, he said, “Be talented, be clever and resourceful, be stupidly stubborn. And then when you get knocked on your ass, get back up and do it some more."
