Thirty years ago, Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Derek Dingle, and Michael Davis founded Milestone Media to try to encourage diversity both on the comics page and in the talent pool. Static (minus the “Shock” at this point) was deliberately conceived of as a youthful Spider-Man figure for a new generation and went on to become the publisher’s most enduring character. We discuss the series’ balance of social issues and good-old-fashioned superheroics, the way it deliberately avoids easy answers and simplistic characterizations, and how Milestone stacks up against the other “startup” universes of the 1990s.