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Milestone Media is a company best known for creating the Milestone comics imprint (that was published through DC Comics) and the Static Shock cartoon series. It was founded in 1993 by a coalition of African-American artists and writers (namely Dwayne McDuffie, Michael Davis, Derek T. Dingle and Christopher Priest) who believed that minorities were severely underrepresented in American comics. Milestone Media was their way to correct this imbalance.
Although Milestone comics were published through DC Comics, they did not take place in the DC Universe. Under arrangement simular to the one DC and Wildstorm have today, all Milestone characters existed in a separate continuity that did not fall under DC Comics' editiorial mandate. All Milestone characters belonged to their respective creators.
All Milestone Media titles were set in a continuity dubbed the "Dakotaverse", beaause, just as most Marvel Comics titles took place in New York City, all Milestone Media titles took place in a fictional Mid-Western city called "Dakota". Before any titles were published, Christopher Priest created a 400-page story bible, which provided backstory and information on all Dakotaverse characters, as well as detailed background information on history and geography of Dakota. Denys Cowan came up with the original character sketches that served as a guide for all artists who worked for Milestone Media. The guide was subsequitly edited by Dwayne McDuffie, but the basic concepts remained the same.
In 1993, Milestone Media launched it's first batch of titles: Hardware, Icon, Blood Syndicate and Static. A year later, the company's staff expanded. It was no longer considered an exclusively African-American operation. At the same time, Milestone Media published it's first company crossover, Shadow Wars, which spawned two more titles: Shadow Cabinet and Xombi.
In the summer of 1994, DC Comics and Milestone Media published an inter-company crossover called "Worlds Collide". It featured a meeting between Metropolis-based superheroes from DC Universe and Dakota-based superheroes from Dakotaverse. Unlike many inter-company crossovers, it was intended to be part of the regular continuity. The situation was somewhat complicated by the fact that in Dakodaverse, DC superheroes were regarded as fictional characters. Although the crossover had no lasting consequences in DC continuity, it was remembered by Milestone's superheroes.
Milestone Media was forced to shut down its comic book division in 1997. This was due to the combination of declining sales, the fallout from the collapse of Speculator Bubble, Distributor Wars and general decline the industry experienced at the time.
Comic titles published by Milestone include:
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