The Culture Beat

Those of you who grew up reading DC comics and who still harbor a love for the superhero genre in your adult years may have heard of or read Darwyn Cooke’s neo-classic graphic novel, DC: The New Frontier, first published in 2004. Cooke’s genius concept was to re-imagine the transition from the era of the first superheroes, the 1940s’ “Golden Age” to the latter 1950s’ “Silver Age” of jet-era characters. The dark undertones of the story arise from a political angle as the first superheroes face governmental efforts to either shut down the masked vigilantes in favor of merely human law enforcement or, in Superman and Wonder Woman’s case, their co-optation as government-sanctioned agents. It’s the era of Cold War paranoia and anyone who won’t unmask or retire operate underground (like Batman).

This resonates historically with the congressional hearings in real life when, featuring psychiatrist Frederick Wertham author of the accusatory book, Seduction of the Innocent, which charged comic books with promoting unhealthy attitudes and behavior in impressionable youth. Comics publishers agreed to police the content of their magazines and give them the Comics Code stamp of approval. The Silver Age began in 1956, with the appearance of the Flash, a sleeker re-invention of the Golden Age character. Like his mythological inspiration Mercury, herald of the gods, he announced the return to exciting adventure tales for a new generation.

Cooke’s epic covers pretty near every DC character of the era, many of which I only vaguely knew of as a small boy glancing over comics in Barnes’ Drug store around 1960. His retro art style wonderfully captures the commercial art of the era and everything about the book is well-thought out. He captures a Cold War America entering the Space Age with its bright hope of reaching for the moon that will inspire in the country at large and in the minds of comics’ readers. The title itself refers to John F. Kennedy’s promise of a new generation facing the geopolitical and scientific challenges of tomorrow with courage and grace. Cooke even includes salutory elements of Philip Kaufman’s space epic The Right Stuff to fuse comic book sensibilities with the world of the brave and bold test pilots. The book’s central character is Hal Jordan, test pilot for Ferris Aircraft and soon to become the Silver Age Green Lantern. We learn why he is choosen as the most fearless candidate for the power ring that obeys his will.

The book starts slowly and those of a conservative bent might be, as I was, put off by the ideological elements of the first chapters. But as I followed the story’s many characters and plotlines I realized it was taking me to heights I’d never experienced in a comic narrative. I’d rarely if ever been deeply moved by superhero stories, I read them for the pure fun of fantastic adventures. DC: The New Frontier combines comic and real life history in an unforgettable saga that ends with a staggering action climax that resolves the many conflicts and creates the world many kids have always loved about DC’s universe of heroes.

Three weeks ago, Warner Bros. releaseed a direct-to-video adaptation titled JLA: The New Frontier. The title change indicates the necessary reduction of scope to fit a 78 minute animated movie–there are fewer non-Justice League of America characters and plotlines but the shape of the original remains potently intact. Cooke, who had worked with Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) on the JLA animated stories, knows how to make characters work onscreen and this is the best looking of anything produced by Timm and associates, and captures Cooke’s style perfectly. Some might complain that newbies coming to the story would be baffled by the wide array of characters, but that’s pretty much how I felt about the book–the more you know about the Silver Age DC universe, the more you will enjoy it but you don’t have to know a whole lot to get that the characters you grew up with, (especially if you were in the Boomer cohort), have grown profoundly richer in both versions of the story.