More than 15 years after its release, DC: The New Frontier offers hope, truth and inspiration to a world that needs it more than ever.
It’s weird to think of DC: The New Frontier being 16 years old since it feels so timeless. Written and drawn by the late great Darwyn Cooke in 2004, DC: The New Frontier is a love letter to the mid-20th century and to the spirit of American heroism and exploration.
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It takes the classic superhero ideal and juxtaposes it with America’s more idealistic era, creating a perfect synergy that exudes only love, affection, and life.
It’s one of the most vibrant comics of the modern age, and it absolutely stands out alongside other non-continuity classics like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: The Killing Joke, Kingdom Come, and All-Star Superman. best books DC has produced.
Nostalgia to the max
Our current pop culture climate is obsessed with nostalgia. Sometimes this is a great thing. Sometimes it is to the detriment of the art that is being created. In 2004, when New Frontier was first published, the trend of linking all of our media to the past had not yet begun.
Yet DC, and the entire comic book industry, relied on comics from the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and every incredible story that precedes the comics currently on the stands.
In creating New Frontier, Cooke pointed out what made DC superheroes great and gave birth to a standalone epic story from that understanding.
It helped that DC had history on their side. With superhero stories dating back to the 1930s, New Frontier begins less than a decade after the birth of Superman in the pages of Action Comics and Batman in the pages of Detective Comics.
It takes the same approach to the characters’ real-world origins that it does in a metanarrative way with the original source material. By offering readers the opportunity to observe Hal Jordan engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the battlefields and Wonder Woman liberating a group of marginalized women from crushing oppression, we have a clear and straightforward path to understand these superheroes. iconic in a fundamental way that is sometimes lost when you read a story month by month in real time.
Origins from another perspective
Origin stories are not a rare thing in comics, although it can be difficult to find a definite origin, especially for characters who are not part of the Justice League.
I’ve always appreciated that in New Frontier, Cooke gives an origin story to each and every important person. My hot take? The pages of New Frontier portray the best Martian Manhunter origin that ever existed or will be.
If you’ve never read New Frontier, watch the sequence where Martian Manhunter is watching TV. If it doesn’t sell you New Frontier and J’onn J’onzz in general, I don’t know what to tell you, kid. It’s brilliant out of this world!
New Frontier is a primer for everything pink and perfect about superheroes. It illustrates the Justice League at its best when they first came together and made the decision to make the world a better place.
In fact, there are strong connotations of the Justice Society throughout the book that are sure to delight die-hard JSA fans.
Inspiration from Darwyn Cooke
The tone that Cooke hits is much closer to an Earth-2 JSA adventure or an early JLA adventure than any of the contemporary titles with the words Justice League in them.
To dig a little deeper though, Cooke introduces the real-world events these superheroes occupy and shows how simply by being who they are and standing up for what they know to be right, their actions and their example are enough to change the world.
The greatest superpower of a superhero is his ability to inspire, which is something Cooke seems to understand unequivocally. DC: The New Frontier is nothing more than a testament to that.
A comic at its finest
Cooke’s stunning visuals and classically inspired line art serve to illustrate what comics and superheroes in a uniquely American medium really are, but it’s also a very clear reason why this story was adapted into an animated film in 2008.
Celebrating these characters in their prime, including the portrait of a Wonder Woman who is taller than Superman, which I love! – As we witness them transform into the superheroes we love so much, New Frontier challenges us to understand the roots of heroism in this. scale.
By association, it also makes clear how we can inspire ourselves and make these same changes in ourselves and in our lives. And that’s not to mention Cooke’s incredibly transcendent art style, which feels both retro and extremely contemporary and high-concept. Simply put, New Frontier is comic book at its finest.
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Source: Dc comics
The New Frontier is upon us.
Welcome to mid-20th century America and the Silver Age of the DC Universe… a time of promise and paranoia, of glittering cities, segregated neighborhoods, dizzying scientific progress, and a Cold War about to break out. It is in this environment that a new generation of young and brave adventurers appears who fearlessly accept the challenges of the New Frontier.
From Eisner Award-winning artist and writer Darwyn Cooke and Eisner Award-winning colorist Dave Stewart comes: DC: THE NEW FRONTIER… a timeless tale of idealism and one of the most acclaimed superhero comics of the 21st century.
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