For those unfamiliar, the late Dwayne McDuffie was a comic writer and producer, and one of the brightest stars in the industry. My first exposure to his work was with the Milestone comics, which were multicultural stories. I love them. They had minority-led stories, but without bashing me over the head with the extremely obvious nature of their race. I loved Black Panther, I loved Luke Cage, but too often, in the clumsy hands of a culturally clueless writer, the easy-going Power Man would come off as a ham fisted brute or thug, and the regal T'Challa would be either pompous, aloof, or both. Or worse.
McDuffie didn't stop there, nor did he fall into the rut of creating 'black comics', which I believe would have been career suicide. He moved up in the ranks, and became a top-shelf writer and really showed not only his skill for handling multi-ethnic stories, but for writing clean, intelligent, gripping stories.
He will be missed, and I am pretty much done with DC with his passing.
Mind the gap, kids.
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