Hello and welcome to twentieth episode of Fanboy Nation’s Toon-In-Talk, your rendezvous for animation interviews. Whitney loves comic books and graphic novels, so when she’s not watching cartoons she’s reading comics.  One of her favorite cartoon sagas is the DC Animated Universe, including the fabulous cartoons Static Shock and Batman: The Animated Series. Whitney had the luck to speak with Joseph Phillip Illidge, who helped shaped the hero Static at Milestone Media and also reinvigorated he Batman comic book series.  Joseph continues to write and edit comics as well as expanding his talents into other creative endeavors.

• Joseph is a writer, editor, and columnist. He writes a column at ComicResources.com called “The Mission” about diversity in comic books, he is currently the writer of the graphic novel The Ren published by First Second, and writes the series Solar Man.
• Whitney is a huge fan of the DC Animated Universe hero, Static Shock. The founders of Milestone Media created Static in the 1990s. Joseph had the awesome opportunity to work at Milestone and with Static.
• Joseph and Whitney discuss about Static’s character was a great superhero and identifiable for teenagers.
• Joseph was an editor at DC during the Batman: No Man’s Land He delves into exciting details about how he shaped Batman as a series as well as the characters.
• This is one of Whitney’s favorite sagas in Batman.
• They discuss how the Joker has changed from his incarnations during No Man’s Land to the current version in the New 52. Both Whitney and Joseph agree the Joker has gone in some extreme directions.
• The Suicide Squad is going to take Harley Quinn to new levels. The movie will be a good test to see whether or not if DC can face-off against Disney’s Marvel Entertainment.
• The Ren is a teenage love story about a young bass player from Georgia who moves to Harlem, New York with dreams to become a famous musician and he falls in love with young dancer. It’s about what they go through from 1925-1926. It was written due to the lack of black romance graphic novels in the medium.
• Joseph explains about the lack of graphic novels starring characters of non-European ancestry, how he wants to expand the offering, and some of his favorite graphics novels that do fit this niche.
• Whitney talks about her own graphic novel and wanting to see more heroine-centric comics sans romance.
• As comic geeks always do, Whitney and Joseph suggest titles to read to each other.
• Joseph declares a desire for a better and friendlier comic book industry.