[Criticism Corner] What Happened to Static Shock? (Patreon)

Originally,  this was going to be a complete history of Milestone Comics, but let's be real, Static is the main thing that most people know about and his journey has been pretty interesting as well.

In the year 2000, my favorite thing in the world was waking up on Saturday mornings to a big ass bowl full of Fruity Pebbles and play Pokemon Red while simultaneously watching Kids WB.  This programming block had ALL the coolest shows like X-Men: Evolution, Jackie Chan Adventures, Histeria, Cardcaptors, Pokemon, and so much more, but one of my favorites was a little show called Static Shock.

It was about this teenager named Virgil Hawkins that had electromagnetic powers.  He was smart, witty, and had a really REALLY cool costume.  For me, that’s all that really mattered and at the time, I didn’t really think twice about how my black friends got an extra layer of enjoyment from seeing a hero that looked like them as the main character.

Regardless, there’s no denying that Static Shock left a huge impact on a lot of people’s childhoods, but what ever happened to it and why is it that now when superheroes are more popular than ever, Static has been shoved to the backside?  The answer is actually really interesting and involves some lawsuits, but in order for that to make sense, you first need to understand the history.

Back in the 90s, comic books were INSANELY popular and new companies were popping up left and right to hop in on the craze.  However, there was one company that was special out of the bunch, Milestone Comics.

Obviously, Marvel and DC had tried their hands at making diverse superheroes in the past, but it was clear that they were having a hard time achieving long-lasting success.  Frustrated with this lack of diversity in comics, a team of talented veterans of the industry came together to address this issue.

Using the connections they had already established in the industry, Milestone was able to enter into an extremely unique opportunity with DC Comics.  DC would publish Milestone’s comics and as a part of that, Milestone retained all rights to their work and would have the final say on all merchandising and licensing deals regarding their properties.  DC would also promote Milestone within the pages of their own comics and at conventions, help get them preferred placement at comic book shops, made them available at convenience and grocery stores, and ON TOP OF THAT, they would pay Milestone between $500,000 to $650,000 a year to licence their characters.

The only thing that DC would take in exchange was a share of the profits and the condition that they had the option to not publish anything that they were uncomfortable with.  All in all, it was a pretty sweet deal.

Milestone got a LOT of hype and press before the release of their first books and when they finally hit the scene, it was a huge deal.  These first four titles, Hardware, Icon, Blood Syndicate, and Static would set the stage for Milestone’s legacy, making them the most prominent minority-owned comic company that the industry had ever seen before or since.

While the books did well, Static was the main breakout character.  Because Milestone could more or less write whatever they want, their titles covered some extremely heavy subject matter that other mainstream comics shied away from, but while Static was no exception to this, handling topics like racism, homophobia, gun violence, police brutality, anti-Semitism, and teenage sexuality, Static was by far the most fun loving and humorous comic that Milestone had to offer.

He was like Spider-Man in a lot of ways, a teenage superhero in a world of adults who constantly cracked jokes and was clearly intelligent.  Although Virgil has a lot of powers at his disposal, most times, he would have to stop the bad guy with clever solutions as opposed to brute force.

That being said, Static did have some controversy and resulted in one of the few times where DC decided to step in to not publish a Milestone book.

So the cover of Static #25 featured Virgil and his girlfriend, Daisy, about to have sex, roll of condoms in hand and sex manual on the floor.  This made the higher ups at DC very uncomfortable and they banned it from publication.  Milestone’s editor-in-chief, Dwane McDuffie offered to have the condoms airbrushed out of the cover, but DC wouldn’t budge.

As a compromise, the image had a large black heart border around it.  But the full cover was printed inside the comic along with a scathing note about it from McDuffie.

Although Milestone made a huge splash in the comic industry, they were never a huge success or even a failure, but the sales weren’t enough to justify having a whole comic company and in 1997, they closed their doors, but as we all know, that wouldn’t be the end of Static.  Dwyane McDuffie stayed with DC and worked in animation, helping bring Virgil to the small screen.

To help paint a better picture, let me hand things over to my friend Mattie with the Watchtower Database, a channel dedicated to talking about DC’s animated work.

Going as far back as Milestone’s beginnings in 1993, there had been attempts by DC editor-in-chief, Jennette Kahn, to pitch their characters for animated television. Almost immediately, Batman: The Animated Series producer, Alan Burnett, was roped into the process, and while it would take years before a project was greenlit, that didn’t dissuade anyone from continued attempts.

These pitches ranged from an X-Men like series in which characters from the Dakotaverse would be grouped up on a team called The New Guard, an Icon Movie, a live action version of Static starring, uh… Jonathan Taylor Thomas… for… some reason, and another pretty yikesy premise where Virgil would have been adopted by a white family.

The executives knew they struck gold when, in the middle of an Icon pitch, Alan Burnett switched gears to Static and described him as 'Chris Rock at 14 with powers,'. Almost immediately, Kids WB brought in Static comics artist Denys Cowan to go deeper into detail on the premise of who the character was and what the show could be.

Once the project was greenlit, and scripting began, Alan suggested that Static’s other creator, Dwayne McDuffie be brought on to write a few episodes. At first, this was seen as a risky move since Dwayne had never written for television before, but after turning in his first script, which only took him one day to write, everyone was so impressed that, according to Burnett, it informed the entire direction of the show going forward.

As Drake alluded to earlier, the team behind Static, the comic, was never afraid to tackle heavy topics in their writing, but now that the character was coming to the small screen there were some things that had to be changed for younger audiences. Those changes came in the form of re-imagined versions of the characters, like axing Frieda’s battles with Bulimia or changing Virgil’s gay friend Rick Stone to implied-to-be-gay-but-never-confirmed-on-screen Richie Foley, as well as toning down the violence, or removing subplots about the city of Dakota’s political landscape.

Even with those changes, Static Shock did a brilliant job capturing the soul of the source material, and delivered not only a kids action superhero show for 4 years, but a show that was able to give the viewers a look into heavy topics like gun violence, racism, and even dyslexia.

After four seasons, the show was canceled not because it was bad or unpopular, far from it!  Static Shock’s ratings were really strong, but like many animated shows, every episode of Static Shock was made as a loss and it was expected to make up the difference with toys and other merchandise.

But that’s the issue.  For “some” reason, the show had a hard time attracting licensors.  There were no toys, no t-shirts, and no posters.  I mean Subway got some kids meal swag, but that was it.  Freaking SUBWAY!  There was a four issue mini-series that was put out to capitalize on the show’s popularity, but this was also at a period of time where comic sales were starting to massively plummet across the ENTIRE industry which it still hasn’t fully recovered from.

Now even without that extra revenue stream, Warner Bros. still continued to make the Static Shock even though it was losing them money, but they called it quits after fifty two episodes since that would be enough for the show to last in syndication, allowing there to be a new episode every week.

So was that it for Static?  No!  Milestone had a few attempts at making it back in the spotlight, most significantly, in 2008 when Milestone’s characters were officially folded into the main DC Comics continuity.

Yeah, despite what the TV show depicts, Milestone’s characters in the comics always existed in their own universe separate from DC outside of the occasional crossover.

The official merging of the worlds allowed for Static to become a member of the Teen Titans which honestly is just perfect and DC planned for him to get his own comic series, but it was unfortunately canceled after the tragic passing of Dwayne McDuffie.

But when DC rebooted their comic book universe in 2011, this was the perfect opportunity for this shelved Static series to get made… Albeit with a short lived series that was rife with behind the scenes drama between the writer, artist, and editor that ended up in the finished being pretty lackluster. (http://johnrozum.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-i-quit-static-shock.html)

After the series bombed, Static vanished from DC Comics altogether and it looks like after some recent comic book events, he was erased from it entirely.  Yet despite being absent from the comics, Static would make the occasional appearance in other DC media, notably his time in the Young Justice cartoon series and as a playable character in the mobile version of Injustice.  Interestingly, Static was supposed to be a playable character in Injustice 2, but was cut despite being pretty far along in development.

So why did this happen?  Well the most likely answer is also why Static and the rest of the Milestone characters have vanished from all of DC media, lawsuits.  Yeah, DC had been saying for YEARS that Milestone was going to be making a comeback, but every time that they announced that it was happening it would be followed by silence.

It turns out that when the Milestone founders got back together to work on this deal with DC, the widow of Dwyane McDuffie, Charlotte Fullerton, was excluded despite owning her late husband’s FIFTY PERCENT of the company’s rights and that instead of buying her out, they just formed a new company that they called “Milestone 2.0” and proceeded to work with DC without the consent or compensation to the McDuffie estate.

That is some sleazy stuff, but in 2019, the lawsuit was settled and I’m happy to announce that Milestone is finally back!  I’m personally really excited for what the future of Static and Milestone holds and I’m also hyped about the supposed live action Static movie that’s in the works!