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And now, the story that you all have been waiting for. Well, that I have been waiting for anyway.

If you have been reading my column regularly, then you will remember how overjoyed I was that the Shadow Cabinet guest-starred in the Justice League of America last year, and I have been similarly enthralled by Static’s membership of the Teen Titans. However, learning that Dharma had ‘folded’ his world into the DCU, or New Earth, was a bittersweet pill. As glad as I was to see these characters again, I wanted to know how this has occurred, thus I was left feeling a little cheated.

No more however. With last weeks Milestone Forever #1, it looks like we will finally get to see the details of how this happened. More specifically, how this happened on the Milestone/Earth Dakota side of the fence, not Infinite/Final Crisis after-effects in the DCU.  I can’t believe that it has been seventeen years since the beginning of Milestone, and I hope their return to the big leagues remains strong for many years to come.

Milestone was a tidy little line, where you could read as many or as few titles as you liked, and always feel that you received a full story. Except maybe the pre-Zero Hour crossover Worlds Apart where the Superman titles encountered Earth Dakota, which remains one of my favourite crossovers. One of it’s selling points at the time was that just like the world itself, the characters came from a highly multicultural stock. It was never the ‘black’ comics company, but it highlighted a greater diversity than the other major publishers of the time.

To me that was slightly irrelevant, which I would like to think was the point the writers were aiming for. These were good solid characters, believable and flawed, entertaining and ones that you could not help but accept into your heart. Except maybe Holocaust, but then we were all supposed to dislike him.

It was interesting to see all the familiar faces again, but presented in a manner that also introduced many of them to new readers, yet I cannot help but think that the issue is only enhanced by familiarity with the characters, else certain scenes may seem a little blasé, such as Rocket destroying Flashback’s crack pipes. (Actually, even having followed Blood Syndicate from start to finish, I still find the scene a little blasé, but there’s a limit to how much can be fit into an issue.)

For continuity cops there appears to be glaring error however. We see Holocaust burn himself away to a skeleton, but supposedly after this, he appears in one of last years issues of The Brave And The Bold. I detect another rewriting of the universe.

But then again, that’s the point of the series. I highly recommend this, and I look forward to bigger and brighter things for the Milestone crew.

Now all I am waiting for is the Blood Syndicate/Mighty Crusaders crossover. Oh, the Crusaders haven’t happened yet? They will.