It’s been nearly a year since DC Comics announced the creative teams for the first wave of the Milestone 2.0 titles. After announcing the return of the Blood Syndicate series this May, today the publisher revealed the new “Earth-M” line, described as “a collection of new concepts and characters created by original Milestone cofounder Denys Cowan and current Milestone relaunch shepherd Reginald Hudlin, both inspired by and nestled within the Milestone universe. In time, these new heroes may meet their Milestone forebears, but now is the time for Milestone to do what it was always meant to through Earth-M: broaden perspectives on the superhero genre as a whole with ideas you’ve never seen before.”
One of the first titles debuting in the Earth-M line is Duo, a six-issue limited series from writer Greg Pak and artists Khoi Pham and Scott Hanna as penciler and inker respectively. No additional creators for the series were named. Fans may recall that Duo was first announced back in 2017 during NYCC before the Milestone relaunch hit a major snag due to the ongoing lawsuit with the widow of Milestone co-founder Dwayne McDuffie. Thankfully, all things have since been settled.
A new take on the Xombi series published by the original Milestone line back in the ’90s, Duo stars doctors Kelly Vu and David Kim, an Asian-American husband and wife team of biotech scientists who accidentally set off a deadly chain reaction that is only halted when the wife sacrifices herself and allows a series of sentient nanobots take over her body. In an attempt to save her human form, her husband inadvertently fuses their consciousness and she turns into a separate conscious entity inside of her husband’s head.
As the creative team divulged in an interview with DC Comics, Duo depicts multiple backgrounds in the same family with David Kim as Korean-American while Kelly Vu is Vietnamese-American. Moreover, Pham is particularly proud to be able to depict darker-skinned Asians as part of the broader range of Asian representation in the series.
Duo #1 will feature a main cover by Dike Ruan with a variant cover by Denys Cowan and a 1:25 variant cover by Nimit Malavia. It’s set to arrive in stores and digitally on May 17.
Check out the preview art below:
