In 1993, Milestone landed a distribution deal with DC Comics, allowing them creative control over their characters and to keep the copyrights and merchandising rights. Milestone’s characters would exist in a separate (but equal?) universe, away from the main DC continuity. According to McDuffie, having a line of minority heroes was more important than creating one or two characters because:

If you do a black character or a female character or an Asian character, then they aren't just that character. They represent that race or that sex, and they can't be interesting because everything they do has to represent an entire block of people. You know, Superman isn't all white people and neither is Lex Luthor. We knew we had to present a range of characters within each ethnic group, which means that we couldn't do just one book. We had to do a series of books and we had to present a view of the world that's wider than the world we've seen before. (wikipedia,originally posted on DwayneMcDuffie.com)

The “Dakotaverse,” was named after the city that was central to the Milestone world and the most popular character was Static. The character eventually landed his own Saturday morning cartoon show in the late 1990’s. This issue tells his origin.

The parallels to Spider-Man are apparent, but updated. Our hero, Virgil Hawkins, is the new kid in school and is an outsider in a white neighborhood and gets picked on by a white “gangster” Biz Money B, who cuts in while he tries to flirt with the Kelly Kapowski-esque, Freida and smashes him into a locker. Like Parker, Virgil also has a missing parent but his mom’s still in the picture. Also, when he goes after the villain in the playground he cracks jokes like Parker would and they both seem to only have confidence when in costume.