By Arturo R. García
Well now this is interesting.
As Variety reported on Tuesday, the demand for a new Static Shock revival will finally be met, in perhaps the most unexpected of fashions: an online-only live-action series.
It’s also encouraging to see the revival of Milestone Entertainment’s signature character is being led by Milestone alumni: Film and comics veteran Reginald Hudlin will be the executive producer, in collaboration with Denys Cowan, who produced the much-missed animated series that Warner Brothers stubbornly left by the wayside years ago.
The upside might be more than even DC anticipates: Static now has the benefit of returning to television after literally years of fans and critics (including this site) denouncing the company for letting him languish in the name of feeding executives’ apparent love for Silver Age white heroes.
This new incarnation is also arriving at a moment when the Black audience is growing online; according to Interactive One, that audience has grown by 30 percent since 2011 to an estimated 23 million viewers. Comparatively, the white online audience has only grown by 8 percent during the same span.
But as is the case with Cyborg, DC must now consider how to take advantage of Static’s new presence in its comics. Currently, the character is supposed to be featured in upcoming issues of Teen Titans. But it’s going to be hard for longtime fans to forgive how badly the company botched its relaunch as part of the New 52 era, in a short-lived run that “featured” original writer John Rozum, another Milestone alumnus, essentially get turfed out:
From the first issue on, I was essentially benched by Harvey Richards and artist/writer Scott McDaniel. All of my ideas and suggestions were met with disdain, and Scott McDaniel lectured me on how my method for writing was wrong because it wasn’t what the Robert McKee screenwriting book he read told him was the way to do things. The man who’d never written anything was suddenly more expert than me and the editor was agreeing with him. Scott had also never read a Static comic book, nor seen the cartoon series, yet was telling me that my dialogue didn’t sound true to the character and would “fix it.”
There was more concern about seeing that the title sold and didn’t get cancelled than there was in telling good stories and having something coherent to bring readers in. This is what led Harvey to insist on the stuff with the two Sharon’s and cutting off Static’s arm. He had no answers for how to resolve these things, but thought it would keep reader’s wowed enough to stick with the series. This, too, was frustrating. It was a lot of grasping at straws and trying to second guess what would keep it selling. It was decided that “bigger action” on every page of every issue was the key.
Static’s alter ego, Virgil, who was more important to the original series than his super hero persona, was put on the very back burner because Harvey said it wasn’t important and that the book just needed to be all action. One of my scripts was deemed too slow because there were a total of 4 pages where no one was hitting or shooting anything.
There’s little reason to believe that Cowan and Hudlin won’t want to avoid this kind of creative debacle. Nor should we doubt that they’ve considered the tremendous upside Static stands to give DC. The big question, as always, is whether a company that complained nobody would buy his action figures is willing to let them develop and deliver on that promise.
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