In early 1991, he divorced his first wife, Patricia D. In addition, he wrote Monster in My Pocket for Harvey Comics editor Sid Jacobson, whom he cites on his website as having taught him everything he knows. Becoming a freelancer in 1990, McDuffie wrote for dozens of various comics titles for Marvel, DC Comics, and Archie Comics. His first major work was Damage Control, a miniseries about the company that shows up between issues and tidies up the mess left by the latest round of superhero/ supervillain battles.Īfter becoming an editor at Marvel, McDuffie submitted a spoof proposal for a comic entitled Teenage Negro Ninja Thrashers in response to Marvel's treatment of its black characters. Going on staff at Marvel as editor Bob Budiansky's assistant on special projects, McDuffie helped develop the company's first superhero trading cards. Posthumously, comedian Keegan-Michael Key discovered he was Dwayne McDuffie's biological half-brother, by their father. While McDuffie was working as a copy editor at the business magazine Investment Dealers' Digest, a friend got him an interview for an assistant editor position at Marvel Comics. He then moved to New York to attend film school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In 1983, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Michigan, followed by a master's degree in physics. There was no diversity and almost no accuracy among the characters of color at all.'

I've never seen anyone that's gray or purple before in my life.

And they were all colored either this Hershey-bar shade of brown, a sickly looking gray or purple. You had the stupid angry brute and the he's-smart-but-he's-black characters. 'You only had two types of characters available for children. Of African-American characters in comics, he later said: He attended and graduated from the Roeper School, a school for gifted children in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1980. McDuffie was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Leroy McDuffie and Edna (Hawkins) McDuffie Gardner. McDuffie earned three Eisner Award nominations for his work in comics. Dwayne Glenn McDuffie (February 20, 1962 – February 21, 2011) was an American writer of comic books and television, known for producing and writing the animated series Static Shock, Damage Control, Justice League Unlimited and Ben 10, and co-founding the pioneering minority-owned-and-operated comic book company Milestone Media, which focused on underrepresented minorities in American comics.

Rebirth of the Cool by Dwayne McDuffie