30 Years of Static
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In the fictional city of Dakota, Virgil Ovid Hawkins is just your average teenage kid trying desperately to navigate the wilds of high school… or is he?
In a twist of fate, the 15-year-old underdog of Ernest Hemingway High School finds himself caught in a gang upheaval where cops crash and release radioactive tear gas. But the harmless chemical turns out to be further spiked with a mutagen, and all the kids are exposed, in what comes to be known as the “Big Bang” incident.
Shortly thereafter, mild mannered Virgil discovers his superpowers (he’s electromagnetic) and dubs himself Static.
Static #1 (June 1993) debuted under the Milestone Comics imprint from DC Comics. The character was created by Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III and was adapted for television for the series Static Shock, which debuted on the WB in 2000.
A plethora of supporting cast appears in both the comic and the TV series, including Richie Foley (adapted from the print Rick Stone character) and Frieda Goren as Virgil’s best friends and co-keepers of his secret; and villains who were also victims of the Big Bang (dubbed “Bang-Babies”): Princess Nightmare, The Swarm, Dr. Kilgore, Biz-Money-B, Hotstreak, The Rubberband Man, Powerfist, Laserjet, and others.
Both the comic and the show have been large successes, and Static is considered the youngest black superhero to reach the mainstream.
After a period in which no new Milestone comics were published, Static and others began appearing in the DC universe in 2009. More recently, the character didn’t have the best outing of DC’s New 52 relaunch as the new Static Shock series was canceled after just eight issues.
In 2020, Milestone was relaunched as Milestone Returns, introducing a version of Static that combined previous comics and the Static Shock TV show. For this updated continuity, Virgil attended a Black Lives Matter demonstration where police used untested tear gas that would cause the Big Bang. He would star in the six-issue series Static: Season One, which ran from 2021 to 2022.
