Dwayne McDuffie’s Legacy

Dwayne McDuffie passed away yesterday due to complications from surgery. I feel compelled to share a couple of stories about him that mean a lot to me.

Years ago, at Planet Comicon in Overland Park, KS, I was privileged to meet Dwayne McDuffie. He was on a panel with Mark Waid and the two of them were discussing writing comics and talking about DC in general. McDuffie is perhaps best known as the creator of the Milestone Universe, but more particuarly, the electric-based superhero Static.

At the time, the cartoon of Static’s adventures, Static Shock hadjust been released and at this convention, McDuffie shared some of the compromises he had to make.

The core of Static Shock was to be the hero’s family. McDuffie wanted to present a positive family atmosphere in the show as exemplified by the typical nuclear family of two parents and two kids. Unfortunately, this idea didn’t sit well with the WB because they felt as if Static needed a tragedy in order to fuel him as a hero. While this might have been counterproductive to McDuffie’s agenda, he conceded.

Originally, the WB wanted Static’s father to die, but McDuffie stated that he wouldn’t allow it because he didn’t want another black character without a father on TV. To compromise, he reluctantly allowed for Static’s mother to be killed for the sake of the show. He wrote a script for the show that featured a scene where Static’s mom passed away due to a battle with a terminal illness and that was that.

I could be wrong about how McDuffie found out about the script changes, but I want to say he didn’t learn about the changes until he saw the episode itself. Then again, this could be because time has warped the story in my head. Regardless of how he found out, Static’s mother’s death wasn’t due to a terminal illness but due to a stray bullet during a drive by shooting.

I’ll never forget McDuffie’s comment when he told this story, “So, the studio decided her death was due to a drive by shooting . . . which is of course how most black people die.”

To which Mark Waid responded, “But on the coroner’s report it says that she died of terminal cancer just before being struck with a bullet.”

That one conversation ten years ago opened my eyes to the Hollywood formula and the treatment of minorities in the media.

Years later, McDuffie’s words echoed in my brain as my friend Rich and I started watching the absolutely horrid film Step Up. After the first fifteen minutes, I said, “I’ll bet $50 that the African American teenager dies in a drive by shooting and that inspires Channing Tatum to keep dancing.”

Sure enough, I was right.

McDuffie was socially conscious and a stalwart defender and champion of the entire superhero medium. Not only did he create some great characters from the Milestone Universe, but he made them believable. McDuffie focused on the humanity behind the heroes rather than simply their skin color and this is more important than any storyline he ever crafted.

Static is a character with a lot of staying power. He’s a character that had a successful cartoon that a generation of kids really enjoyed. I never watched the show personally because it wasn’t on TV where I live, but I knew of kids that really enjoyed the show. It was thoughtfully crafted (on McDuffie’s part, at least) and was a positive influence.

Looking beyond his influence on promoting minority images within mainstream comics, McDuffie also brought attention to the problems within DC editorial near the end of his Justice League of America. In a rare moment where fans got to look behind the curtain of how comics are made, McDuffie was open and candid on the DC Message Boards about various problems that were arising during his tenure on the title saying:

Yes, Anansi is supposed to be me, and the story arc is about my not having control of the stories in my book. Ironically, both [the Anansi/Vixen] story and the parallel Red Tornado arc were supposed to be smaller B and C plots in a much larger arc (involving Luthor’s plan from my first arc, Starro, and Despero) that I wasn’t able to do because of other plans in the DCU.

There were tons of others snippets that Rich Johnston’s Lying in the Gutters managed to capture at the time and you can read them all here. If you’ve never read his message board posts, please do so now. It’s really fascinating to see how much control a writer can lose when editorial mandates come in.

Because of his comments, McDuffie was released from the title, and while there still may be problems within DC editorial, McDuffie’s comments allowed for readers to see that writers aren’t always the ones to blame for bad stories. Too often, fans complain about writers and the direction they are taking a story, but it all ultimately comes down to the editors who are choosing what can and cannot be put into a book.

It’s funny how closely these two stories are related. Hollywood edited McDuffie’s Static Shock which changed some of the central message of the series and DC editorial consistently battled with McDuffie over various story choices.

Dwayne McDuffie’s passing comes as quite a shock and a surprise to many people. From what I’ve heard, he was nothing but a kind man, and even though I only really met him once, that meeting had a profound affect on me as an educator and as a consumer of media. I tell the story of Static Shock‘s creation to all of my classes as an example of why its important to be more conscious of the media they consume.

I won’t pretend to have read all of his comics or to have been a die-hard McDuffie fan, but I appreciate all that he has done for the medium and for raising my awareness. He will be missed.