Milestone

Milestone Media is a licensing company best known for their line of comics published through DC during the 1990s and several seasons of the popular KidsWB cartoon Static Shock.

The company was formed in 1993 by writers Dwayne McDuffie and Jim Owlsley (Later Christopher Priest), artists Michael Davis and Denys Cowan and magazine editor Derek Dingle. Owlsley (Priest) and Davis would leave the company prior to and shortly after the publication of their first comic Hardware #1 respectively.

The Milestone comics took place in what was know as the Dakotaverse which was centered on the fictional working class Midwestern city of Dakota but the comics themselves visited various real and fictional locales.

As a shared universe, many of the Milestone characters were interconnected and could trace their origins to the colloquially known "The Big Bang" on Paris Island.

Milestone was responsible for launching the careers of many of today's top talents in comics, including JH Williams III, John Rozum, John Paul Leon, Jamal Igle, Humberto Ramos as well as many others.

Milestone published Hardware, Blood Syndicate, Icon, Static Xombi, Shadow Cabinet, Kolbalt, Deathwish, My Name Is Holocaust, Heroes, Wise-Son White Wolf. Milestone had three crossovers: The Shadow War, Worlds Collide, and The Long Hot Summer. Milestone Media became defunct in 1997 until it was briefly revive with a four issue mini-series, Static Shock Rebirth of the Cool in 2001.

The legacy of Milestone Media inspired the cartoon series Static Shock starring the young superhero. It lasted four seasons from September 23, 2000 to May 22, 2004. Characters later resurfaced during Dwayne McDuffie's run on Justice League of America, Sean McKeever's Terror Titans and then Teen Titans as the Dakotaverse, along with the Red Circle Universe and Tower Universe, merged with DC Universe during the conclusion of Final Crisis in 2008. The origin of integrating universe was explored in Milestone Forever on February 3rd 2010 as a two issue miniseries.

Another revival of Milestone, under the new direction of Reginald Hudlin, was announced in 2015 as the Dakota was to be renamed Earth-M. Milestone Returns Zero was exclusively released online on September 12th 2020 on DC Fandome. The printed release is scheduled for May 25th 2021.