Milestone Forever #1

February 6, 2010

Quick Rating: Good
Title: Meta Fictions

The beginning of the end of the Milestone Universe

Writer: Dwayne McDuffie
Pencils: John Paul Leon & Mark D. Bright
Inks: John Paul Leon & Romeo Tanghal
Colors: Snakebite
Letters: Sal Cipriano
Editor: Harvey Richards
Cover Art: Admira
Publisher: DC Comics/Milestone

When the Milestone characters reappeared in Justice League of America last year, we discovered that at some point their “universe” had been essentially destroyed, its locations and survivors merging with the people of New Earth, with nobody any the wiser. None of the heroes remember ever living in a different universe at all. This two issue miniseries is basically the “last” Milestone Universe story, hopefully paving the way for the characters to be used more freely across the DCU.

This first issue doesn’t really deal much with the story of what happened to the Milestone Universe. Instead, it seems intended to take care of a lot of the loose ends left over when those books were cancelled years ago, which is just fine. Rocket, estranged from Icon, has been running with a gang-controlled version of the Blood Syndicate. This issue, Icon and a team of all-stars (you can probably guess the names) team up to try to take the new Syndicate down.

With the Milestone characters making their first appearances in years, there are probably a lot of readers encountering them for the first time. This book, honestly, isn’t really for them. There’s not enough backstory to fill anybody in if they aren’t familiar with the world already. I picked up on a lot of things from the Milestone books I did read, but not having read them all, there are a lot of assumptions I had to make. The story works as sort of a “last hurrah,” one more chance to see all these characters in their original habitat, but it’s definitely for the older fan and not the newbie.

John Paul Leon handles the framing sequence, but most of the art here is done by Mark D. Bright. I’m not sure what Bright has been doing lately, but I was a really big fan of his work in the 90s, and he’s doing the same superb work here. He’s one of those great, underrated superhero artists, the sort with a classic style that still works very well with contemporary color and ink techniques. I really hope that this miniseries is only the beginning of more DC work from him.

This issue is okay, but I’m hoping that next issue (which I’m assuming will be the real story of “the end”) will be better.

Rating: 7/10