Review by Aaron Cooper
I’m constantly amazed at the Big Two’s (that’s DC and Marvel, if you didn’t know) ability to reinvent their own characters origins for a new audience. Most of the time this involves updating a story for a current generation while ignoring outdated attitudes and sensibilities of what has been written before.
Because of this, I was intrigued by Darwyn Cooke’s approach to the DC Universe in THE NEW FRONTIER. Instead of reinventing the DC Universe for 2005, he tells a cohesive narrative of the Golden Age becoming the Silver Age, how original characters had to adapt to changing politics, and the new heroes that emerged from the time. He’s able to keep the spirit of the Silver Age while keeping in mind the current audiences’ understanding of what the 1950’s were really like. It’s a homage that doesn’t need sugarcoating.
He also uses the fullest extent of the available DC Universe of that time period. This isn’t just a Superman story, or a Batman story, or even a Justice League story. Many heroes and villains, be it super-powered or average human appear here, and it is a real pleasure to see the original Challengers of the Unknown and the Suicide Squad appear in the same narrative as Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter. Keeping in mind this is a whole new story and not just a retelling of the origins of the DC universe, Cooke does very well bridging the multiple genres DC offered at the time.
The artwork style used also presents a nice new approach to revisiting a past time period. Rather then ape Jack Kirby or Carmine Infantino, Cooke uses an artwork style more reminiscent of 1950’s advertising then of what we used to see in comics from the time, making it both unique yet comfortable within the context of the storytelling and the timeline involved.
A major criticism is the same one I have for any series that incorporates a mass amount of characters into a limited space. Not any one character gets the development needed to really hook the reader in. The one assumption many of these narratives rely on is that the reader is already familiar with most, if not all, of these character’s histories. Cooke does just fine weaving his enjoyable tale, it’s just that I for one wish I had read up on my history of characters such as The Losers, or Task Force X.
Another criticism I have has nothing to do with the story itself, but a conscientious editorial decision on DC Comics part on how to present limited series in a trade paperback format. It used to be one could obtain an entire limited series in a single volume, even massive series such as Watchmen, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and many others. My gigantic hardcover of the entire Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow is a highlight of my collection, even at a massive $75.00 price tag. THE NEW FRONTIER Volume One presents only half of the six issue run. Granted, the issues were longer then average, but I see no reason to not present the entire series in a single volume for a reader to enjoy the entire series the way it should be read. The Big Two are both guilty of this and I long for the day to interview someone in marketing to see why this decision has been green-lighted on so many series. Fortunately, this mistake has been rectified with the Absolute Edition of New Frontier, so completists such as myself can now get the entire saga in one massive volume.