Dwayne Glenn McDuffie (February 20, 1962February 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. McDuffie earned three Eisner Award nominations for his work in comics. Early life and education McDuffie was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Leroy McDuffie and Edna (Hawkins) McDuffie Gardner. He attended and graduated from the Roeper School, a school for gifted children in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1980. Of African-American characters in comics, he later, said: In 1983, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Michigan, followed by a master's degree in physics. He then moved to New York to attend film school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. 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. Posthumously, comedian Keegan-Michael Key discovered he was Dwayne McDuffie's biological half-brother, by their father. Career Marvel and Milestone Going on staff at Marvel as editor Bob Budiansky's assistant on special projects, McDuffie helped develop the company's first superhero trading cards. He also scripted stories for Marvel. 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. After 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. Becoming a freelancer in 1990, McDuffie wrote for dozens of various comics titles for Marvel, DC Comics, and Archie Comics. 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. In early 1991, he divorced his first wife, Patricia D. Younger, in Seminole County, Florida. In the early 1990s, wanting to express a multicultural sensibility that he felt was missing in comic books, McDuffie and three partners founded Milestone Media, which The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio, described in 2000 as "the industry's most successful minority-owned-and operated comic company." McDuffie explained: Milestone, whose characters include the