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Personal History

Dwayne Glenn McDuffie was born in Detroit, Michigan, in February 20th, 1962, the son of Leory McDuffie and Edna McDuffie Gardner, née Hawkins.[1][2] Dwayne had one brother.[3] He attended Roeper School for gifted children in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, graduating in 1980.[2] He later got a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Michigan in 1983, then a master's degree in physics.[4] Next, he move to New York City so as to attend film school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.[5] One of his classmates in film school was Gregory Wright.[6]

McDuffie's father died in 1989.[3] McDuffie married Patricia D. Younger, and they got divorced in early 1991 in Seminole, Florida.[5][7] He later married comic book and animation-TV writer Charlotte Fullerton in 2009,[8] remaining with her until his untimely death in February 21st, 2011, one day after his 49th birthday, in the Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, of complications from emergency heart surgery.[9] By then, he was living in Sherman Oaks, California.[8] He is survived by both his wife and his mother.[8] The direct-to-DVD adaptation All-Star Superman, which he had written, was released the day after his death.[10]

Posthumously, comedian Keegan-Michael Key, who had been adopted, discovered his biological family and found out that he shared father with Dwayne McDuffie and with his brother, who at that point had also died at 45 years of age.[3]

Professional History

McDuffie worked as an editor for Investment Dealers' Digest magazine[8] when, per some sources, a friend got him an interview to work as an assistant editor for Marvel Comics.[5] It is known that he began his work at Marvel in 1987,[8] assisting editor Bob Budiansky on special projects[11] and helped in the development of Marvel's first superhero trading cards[8] while also scripting stories for Marvel; his first major work being the creation of Damage Control.[12][13]

Dwayne McDuffie humorous pitch 001

A series pitch presented by Dwayne McDuffie to Marvel, as a humorous satire, to criticise Marvel's approach to African-American characters.

McDuffie famously and repeatedly criticised the approach to racialised characters in mainstream comics as unrealistic, both in the character's personality and in the chosen colors, believing that real black readers (like himself) did not feel represented in the stories.[8] To that end, McDuffie wrote a humorous proposal for a comic called "Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers" in 1989.[14] Eventually, in 1990, McDuffie left Marvel altogether to become a freelance writer, working for several companies including Marvel, DC, Archie Comics and Harvey Comics. He eventually said in his personal webpage that Harvey Comics' Sid Jacobson had been a great personal influence, while also recognising the influence of right activists and political writers in his work[15] - e.g., for Marvel, Deathlok (Vol. 2) includes several explicit references to W.E.B. DuBois (#3, #5), Ralph Ellison and Marcus Garvey (both #25).

Still feeling that comic-books lacked multicultural sensibility, in 1993 McDuffie founded Milestone Media with three other partners[8] (Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle and Michael Davis, the later leaving in 1995). The problem they wanted to tackle was that, unlike non-racialised characters, minority-representing characters had the extra bagagge of having to represent their whole communities, which did not allow to make those characters interesting by themselves - and, as a way to solve this, they wanted to generate several series, so that they could provide a view of the community, not just a token character.[16] Their first story, Hardware #1 (1993), was about a black scientist, Curtis Metcalf, working for a powerful company but denied a share of the profits from his work; and, when he discovers the company manager is involved in immoral activities, becomes a high-tech superhero. McDuffie later admitted (in 1995, for Les Daniel's book DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes) that this was a thinly veiled criticism of him and his partners leaving Marvel, disappointed at Marvel's corporativism.[16] During this time, McDuffie also had unpleasant brushes trying to work with DC,[15] but Milestone distributed its book through a deal with DC Comics.[8] Importantly, DC agreed to only get an annual fee and share of the profits for their work, but Milestone authors retained the copyright of their work and had a final say on any deal involving them, keeping them outside DC Comics' editorial control;[17] in a unfinished documentary of this subject, McDuffie recognised that DC was frequently surprised and uncomfortable as the storylines were different to theirs, but agreed to publish them.[18] In 1995, McDuffie was nominated to three Eisner Wards (Best Writer for Icon; Best Editor for Worlds Collide, Xombi and Shadow Cabinet, and Best Continuing Seires for Icon), and in 1996 his work was recognised by the Roeper School. Although an important Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer, described Milestone as "the industry's most successful minority-owned-and-operated comic company,"[8] Milestone's sales were not enough to continue most of its books and close down their comic division in 1997.[5]

Dwayne McDuffie from Incredible Hulk Vol 1 357 001

McDuffie's 1989 pro file, humorously detailing aspects of his life.

Notwithstanding this, Milestone continued his work by adapting one of its characters, Static, to a TV animated series, Static Shock, with McDuffie writing and editing eleven episodes of the series in the early 2000s.[8] Partly due to his collaboration with DC Comics as editor of Milestone, McDuffie also became a writer of DC-related series, including Teen Titans and Justlice League, then becoming editor and producer of Justice League Unlimited, being involved in 69 of its 91 episodes, and in the videogame Justice League Heores and in several direct-to-DVD animated films featuring the League. He also worked in What's New Scooby-Doo, then in Cartoon Network's Ben 10: Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, working along with J.M. DeMatteis.[19]

During this decade, McDuffie returned to work for Marvel and DC as a writer, recovering his creation Deathlok (Michael Collins) in Beyond! and also being the regular writer for Fantastic Four. For DC Comics, he wrote "Milestone Forever", a miniserie describing the last adventures of Milestone characters when their universe suffered a catastrophic event that melted it with DC's main universe.

After his death, McDuffie was paid tribute to in several works, either with a recognition in the credits (the film Justice League: Doom, 2012, was dedicated to his memory, as were 2012 episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien), and with in-universe mentions (a diner named "McDuffie's" appears in Green Lantern: The Animated Series; the CEO of Damage Control in Ultimate Spider-Man S1E18 is named "Mac"; the high school in Static Shock comic series is named after him; and DC Comics' character Naomi received McDuffie's surname). Besides, from 2015, the Long Beach Comic Expo gives out the Dwayne McDuffie Award of Diversity in Comics.[20]

Work History

Trivia

  • Curtis Car's High-Tech's armor, first appearing in Deathlok (Vol. 2) #11 (written by McDuffie), is very similar in appearance to the armor worn by Hardware, one of McDuffie's creations for Milestone Comics, whose secret identity shares first name with High-Tech.

See Also

Links and References

References

  1. "Charlotte L. Fullerton and Dwayne G. McDuffie". Eagle Tribune.
  2. 2.0 2.1 "Charlotte L. Fullerton and Dwayne G. McDuffie". Eagle Tribune.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Keegan-Michael Key at Nerdist and at Bleeding Cool
  4. What Dwayne McDuffie Meant To Comics And Why There's An Award In His Name, by Matt Wayne, in Playboy; published February 27, 2015
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Gregory Wright in Universo Marvel (in Spanish)
  6. Mithra, Kuljit. "Interview with Gregory Wright," ManWithoutFear.com (March 1998), available at: https://www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTERVIEW.shtml?id=Wright
  7. "Public Record: Divorce Orders", Orlando Sentinel, January 13, 1991. WebCitation archive.
  8. 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 Fox, Margalit (February 23, 2011). "Dwayne McDuffie, Comic-Book Writer, Dies at 49". The New York Times. WebCitation archive. Print edition February 24, 2011, p. B12.
  9. Obituary in LA Times
  10. Phegley, Kiel (February 22, 2011). "Milestone Creator Dwayne McDuffie has Died". Comic Book Resources. United States: Valnet Inc.
  11. "Bullpen Bulletins", Marvel Comics cover-dated June 1990.
  12. Marvel Age Annual #4
  13. Damage Control #1
  14. CBR: Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #138
  15. 15.0 15.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20120321120657/http://dwaynemcduffie.com/scripts/
  16. 16.0 16.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20110228163542/http://dwaynemcduffie.com/comics/milestone/
  17. Brown, Jeffrey A. (2001). Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics and their Fans. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-281-0.
  18. Milestone documentary in Youtube
  19. Dwayne McDuffie in IMDB
  20. Dwayne McDuffie Award of Diversity in Comics
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