Dakotaverse
In 1993, Milestone Media launched its first four titles: Hardware, Icon, Blood Syndicate and Static. At the same time, SkyBox and DC issued a trading card series, Milestone: The Dakota Universe (1993).[8]
A year later, Milestone Media published its first company-wide crossover, Shadow War, which spawned two more titles: Shadow Cabinet and Xombi. Another ongoing series, Kobalt, was introduced later. Milestone also participated in an intercompany crossover with DC, called "Worlds Collide" in which Metropolis-based superheroes from the DC Universe and Dakota-based superheroes from the Dakotaverse interacted temporarily.
Milestone had several advantages in its publishing efforts: their books were distributed and marketed by one of the "Big Two" comic book publishers; the comics industry had experienced remarkable increases in sales in preceding years; they featured the work of several well-known and critically acclaimed creators; they used a coloring process that gave their books a distinctive look, and they had the potential to appeal to an audience that was not being targeted by other publishers.
They also suffered from several disadvantages: the comics market was experiencing a glut of "new universes" as several other publishers launched superhero lines around the same time (a slump would start in 1993 and a market crash in 1994), and a significant number of retailers and readers perceived the Milestone books to be "comics for blacks" and assumed they would not interest non-African-American readers.[9] The books received limited exposure beyond existing comics-shop customers, the coloring process added slightly to the cover price of their books, and overall comics sales had peaked around the time of Milestone's launch and declined dramatically in the years that followed. Initial sales, however, were found to be decent, albeit not as high as other companies. The perception of "comics for blacks" would be used by industry insiders to justify these early sales issues, ignoring the existence of the glut; few people at the time wanted to believe that the market conditions might be unsound and excuses were needed for why newer companies were struggling.[10]
Milestone cancelled several of its lower-selling series in 1995 and 1996, and aborted plans for several mini-series. Heroes, a new team book featuring Static and several of its more popular second-tier characters, was launched, but failed to sell well enough to justify an ongoing series. Milestone shut down its comic book division in 1997, with some of the remaining ongoing series discontinued in mid-story. It became primarily a licensing company, focusing on the Emmy Award and Humanitas Prize-winning animated series Static Shock.
In 2010, DC released a limited series titled Milestone Forever. Taking place in the original Milestone Universe, it detailed the final fate of several of Dakota's heroes and revealed the events that led to its earlier merger into the DC Universe.[11]
