A little black boy on the shoulders of his father has the deepest brown velvet-colored eyes, filled with the happiness of being with his dad. Then as the panels pull out from his eyes, to his face, to the crowd surrounding them you begin to absorb the scene. At age 3 Curtis Metcalf was at a protest because a young black man was killed. The few pages after have a similar three panel set up, a deep look into Curtis’ eyes, this time as an adult, a view of his full face, but then something changes. Instead of the happy young boy, a grown black man witnesses the carnage of the big bang that has occurred in Dakota. We then see Curtis in his Hardware persona, being chased by cops, the artwork moves from clearly defined to abstract and slightly out of focus. It’s a beautifully, striking view of Curtis’ state of mind and what has occurred around him. What remains consistent is Curtis, who knows exactly what’s happening and who’s responsible.
‘Milestone Returns: Hardware Season I’ is one of the best resurrections of a comic-book universe. The Dakotaverse has come back and continues to be relevant and entertaining. Hardware has been betrayed by his white mentor who claims that Curtis should have been satisfied with whatever he got, as if Curtis’ intellect and talent would be nothing without Edwin Alva’s money. For this and several other reasons is why this first issue is subtitled ‘Angry Black Man.’ Throughout this comic Curtis shows his ingenuity, intelligence and transparency to the reader. We’re rooting for him from page one and are highly invested in seeing him get justice. There are also purposeful gaps that the reader isn’t aware of. We are caught in this narrative seeing how Curtis is wronged and how from childhood Alva takes advantage of him. But we don’t know about his parents passed what we saw on the first page. What happened to them? Did Alva isolate Curtis from everyone as if to groom him to be and do exactly what he wanted for his corporation? And why does Curtis call his artificial intelligence Pop? Is it his father’s consciousness or a homage to his father in some capacity?
Originally, the comic-book series under the line of Milestone Comics, (an imprint of DC Comics) set in the Dakotaverse were co-created by Dwayne McDuffie and Denys Cowan in 1993. Still, these aren’t reprints. Instead, there’s still the same origins with small tweaks. Take for example the inner monologue Curtis reflects about a bird and what would happen when he cleaned out its cage as a young boy. The first time it was told in the early 90’s we saw the bird and how it literally was still imprisoned since its only means of escape after being let out of its cage was a closed window. The continuous impossibility of freedom felt by that bird felt like a metaphor the situation Curtis was in as an adult. In this version Hardware is in the midst of battle, and through several action-sequenced panels and splash pages is doing what that caged bird only dreamed of, being free and fully aware to make his own choices. Currently, being written by Brandon Thomas with pencils by the same Cowan who helped create and shape this comic-book world, inks from Bill Sienkiewicz, colors, Chris Sotomayer and letterers by Rob Leigh this is a visual Black-Speculative, Afrofuturist story where you can’t wait to read the next issue.
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