Dwayne McDuffie, a prominent writer of comic books, contributing to both DC Comics and Marvel comics, has died due to complications stemming from surgery. He was 49 years old.
McDuffies notable works include the animated series Static Shock, Justice League / Justice League Unlimited, and Ben 10: Alien Force / Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Most recently, he contributed to the animated films Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and All-Star Superman. He was also one of the co-founders of Milestone Media.
In co-founding Milestone Media in the early 1990s, McDuffie made it a point to represent multiculturalism in their characters. Milestone was created by a coalition of African-American artists and writers, including McDuffie, who believed that minorities were underrepresented in American comics. Milestone Media was their attempt to correct this imbalance.
He once said, If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people.
You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before.
