I love a comic book that presents great characters challenged by unexpected and tough situations and obstacles, where good battles evil, and actions have consequences. I don't care if the hero is white, black, red, green, male, female, human or alien. A great character is a great character. Great characters form strong bonds of shared experience with readers, and those shared experiences don't have to be exclusively defined by the color of the hero's skin. We hope to deliver a great superhero comic in which the lead character happens to be black.

People of all color respond strongly to the character Batman not because he is white but because he stands and fights in the face of a tragedy that could have ruined his life. That yearning to stand against the tide of evil, to refuse to sink into despair, to seek justice with all your human might, to devote yourself to something so completely that you become the best there is, are all themes that many people can relate to in their own lives. These are the deeper connections between character and reader that matter, and these are the kind of connections we want to create between Virgil and readers of every color.

Creatively and editorially we agreed from the very beginning to define Virgil Hawkins / Static Shock with these priorities:

(1) The primary focus of the series will be dynamic superhero action / adventure.

(2) The secondary focus of the series will be teen issues relevant to all teens, not just minority teens (ie, school, girls, friends, bullies, etc.).

And this choice of focus is entirely consistent with the stated goals of the character's creators. Quoting from the original "Static: A Dakota Universe Bible:"

"STATIC is classic superheroic adventure about the discovery of power and potential. STATIC's major themes are: the potential of youth; alienation and race-relations; the responsibility of the individual to society vs. his responsibility to himself; and youth coming of age."

"... we will create an extra degree of excitement among minority readers ... by validating their existence. That is to say, we will speak to them, by creating fantasies that are both specific to their lives and accessible to all super-hero fans, regardless of ethnic identity."

In other words, we want people to love Virgil Hawkins / Static Shock for who he is as a person, not only because of the color of his skin. People who currently are Virgil / Static fans love him for who he really is inside: Virgil Hawkins, the brilliant but awkward and insecure kid who is funny, likable, caring, loyal and selfless, who allows himself to open up as the overly-confident, enthusiastic, wise-cracking superhero known as Static. He's a great CHARACTER. And he happens to be black.

We decided the best way to validate him as a black superhero is to treat him as a superhero - period. He's a great CHARACTER, and I think he has a great chance to earn wide appeal.

The recent history of Harlem interestingly parallels the recent history of Virgil Hawkins / Static Shock. Static Shock was born in the context of poverty and gang violence. But much like Harlem, he has escaped his tough past and he now faces the challenges that come with new growth / new beginnings.

While we have made initial story choices that have focused on many different areas of NYC, there are two interesting examples of Harlem in the book so far. The first is the exterior and interior of Virgil's brownstone home, revealed in issue #1, which are modelled on real Harlem architecturals. The second is Virgil's high school, the "Dwayne G. McDuffie Center for Science and Mathematics," which is revealed in issue #2. While purely fictional, Harlem residents might recognize peculiar similarities to other educational institutions in the community.

My first step was to reacquaint myself with the layout of the city and its neighborhoods by studying my encyclopedia and doing general internet searches.

Next I visited several local bookstores to acquire as many travel books, maps and photo books of NYC that I could find. I picked up two great travel books, two giant fold-out maps, and half a dozen oversized photo books of the city that provided a wealth of historical and visual information.

Once armed with this more structured overview of the city and its neighborhoods, I returned to the internet to 'zoom' in on certain areas of interest or focus, browsing real estate journal articles, NYC neighborhood articles, and searchable sim city and detailed street map websites.

Studying Harlem, or any other neighborhood, at a distance can never inform the artwork more than actually experiencing it first-hand. However, I work very hard to recreate the neighborhoods as accurately as I can. It's a great way to infuse integrity and authenticity into a story.

Static Shock was created as a comic book character by Dwayne McDuffie (and Derek Dingle, Denys Cowan and Michael Davis) for Milestone Media. After Milestone stopped publishing comics, Static Shock was developed into an animated series, and McDuffie was hired to serve as writer / story editor. This animated series material was designed to be enjoyed by a different, primarily though not necessarily younger, audience. And there are significant story differences between the comic and cartoon. For example, in the comic, both of Virgil's parents are alive. In the cartoon, only Virgil's father is alive. These important differences cause the character's history, or continuity, in the cartoon to diverge and become increasingly independent of the history revealed in the published comic.

For the relaunch of Static Shock in the New 52, we went back to the foundational comic book character material presented in the Milestone Media's Dakota Universe Bibles "Static" and "The City of Dakota." These two foundational documents, along with the entirety of material that was published in comics, served as our starting point for the character.

In his published comic book backstory, Virgil was coerced by a 'friend' to use the cover of a major gang war to take lethal revenge on someone who disrespected him. Armed with a revolver, Virgil sneaked into the war zone just before the fighting started, moved up behind his target, aimed his revolver at his target's back - and discovered he isn't a cold-blooded murderer. But he found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The actions of "the authorities" to break up the gang war had terrible consequences: many were killed outright, and a few, including Virgil, were transformed. There is plenty of grit baked into his origin, and we've injected a double-dose of grit into his opening relaunch story that would make Batman quake in his cowl.

This new series steps into new ground, new to both the comic readers and fans of the cartoon. We face a tough challenge. Not only do we want to make new readers excited to follow Virgil's adventures, we also strive to earn the approval and readership of longtime fans of the original comic and devoted fans of the cartoon. But we're confident that we've maintained the essence of Virgil / Static as a character, and fans of both the comic and cartoon will easily recognize him in this series.

Scott McDaniel

Static Shock, Co-writer and penciller

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