As an opener here, I have to admit that it wasn't until I was in the middle of drawing Icon #3 and saw a brief piece about Milestone on a show about comic books on the "Sci-Fi Channel" that I discovered that "Icon" was about Rocket/Raquel and not about Icon/Agustus. That really surprised me and refocused what I did while drawing that comic book.

Not to say that it was in any way bad but it was different than any other working situation that I was a part of.

It was like being on a football team where there weren't enough players to fill every position if anyone got "sick or injured" - read as: late on their part of the book - so lots of the staff had to play on both sides of the ball - "offense and defense." That wouldn't have been so bad if there was a casual attitude about what Milestone was doing but no one at Milestone was looking to be satisfied with just getting to the final whistle. They all wanted Milestone to be a winning effort. There was a lot of cross-talk and cross-help in getting the books done, on time and making them as good as possible.

I can't remember ever talking to as many people involved in the various phases of producing any other comic book that I had worked on before.

This invariably meant catching a stray heated comment or two from various staffers during my time at Milestone but that's sort of the way things had to work, you knew everyone who worked in the office and as such sometimes you really had to come face to face with the results of your work ethics.

...and there really wasn't much that you could say if someone was put into an untenable position because you had fallen down on your part of the assignment.

On the flip side of the coin, I had rarely felt more appreciated and supported by all of the people concerned with a book that I was working on.

One of the more satisfying aspects of working at Milestone was the fact that I did more things there than I was asked or permitted to in comics anywhere else. Somewhere along the way Dwayne and Denys got it into their heads that I should ink my own covers. My full art covers were pretty bad in the beginning but over the course of 20 or 30 issues, I reached the point where I was only a bad inker instead of a horrible one.

The other thing that happened was that Dwayne let me try my hand at writing whether or not that was because he was just too darned busy trying to help run Milestone or because he really wanted me to try my hand at writing, doesn't really matter. I was able to write three issues of Icon and was in the middle of writing and drawing a two part story as well as be placed as the writer of Static, one issue of that seeing print, when Milestone Comics were finally concluded.

My most vivid memory of what the Milestone crew was like comes from while I was working on ICON #25. It was a double sized issue and I was later than usual. I was so late that I finished pencilling a few of the pages right there in the office. Dwayne never actually said much about how late everything was but the number of people still there and doing various things concerning Icon #25 sort of made the situation clear. This turned into a very late night at the Milestone offices.

I don't know what time it was when I finished pencilling but as soon as I put down my pencil I started inking pages myself. Everyone else was already inking a page or two. The only saving grace was that these were all splash pages for the opening frame of the issue, Romeo Tanghal already had the body of the book.

No one did any handstands over my sticking around to try to help clean up a mess that I made but I know that I came away from that day/night appreciating where I worked and the people who worked there, even more than I had before.

Funny/gratifying thing: Today, lots of people who were just starting in comics at Milestone and whom at first meeting called me "Mr. Bright" are people whom I call to get work from now at various other comic book companies.

...now I kind of wish that I hadn't been so persnickety with them about the quality of the Xeroxs of my pages that they used to make for me.