Where I babble too much about DC The New Frontier

 For years, I read and heard references to DC The New Frontier. I finally decided that I should actually read it. And, when I did that, I also realized I had no idea what it was actually about lol

And New Frontier turned out to be a wild ride indeed.

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DC the New Frontier is a examination of DC’s transition from the Golden Age to the Silver Age. Oh, it’s also an Elseworlds story, which means it’s out of continuity so anything can happen. (It’s an imaginary story but aren’t they all, to paraphrase Alan Moore)

It also deals with McCarthyism, racism and misogyny. None of these are new topics for revisiting DC in the 50s but New Frontier deals with them in a striking fashion. Possibly because it’s about as subtle as a baseball bat to the teeth.

The actual plot centers around the new generation, as well as the United States in general, having to come together to deal with an eldritch, Lovecraftian horror. Said horror is actually a revision of an element of DC comics that’s been around since 1960, which was a nifty touch. 

And the art by Darwyn Cooke is really cool. Very stylized and very emotive, the art conveys the overall tone and the characters’ emotions very well.

However, instead of the discussing the plot or the overall work, I wanted to comment on some specific characters that I found really interesting. Bullet points.

John Henry - A brand new character, a black man who fights back against the KKK in a clearly handmade costume. And who ends up being lynched but not before making a profound impact. The character and what he represents is as subtle as a hand grenade but things shouldn’t be subtle.

Hal Jordan - Hal is the closest thing New Frontier has to a main character and is journey to becoming the Green Lantern is a definite underpinning structure to the story. Portraying him as a pacifist who has to struggle with violence doesn’t really jibe with any other version of Hal but this is a stand alone story and makes him one of the most interesting Hal Jordans I’ve read.

J’ohn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter - Oh, J’ohn J’onzz is fun. Which he frequently is in any version. Insanely powerful, incredibly altruistic and always a stranger in a strange land. This version binge watches TV (which is one of the funniest part of a book that doesn’t have many laughs) to learn about the human race and becomes a pure hearted cop in corrupt Gotham. Hal Jordan may be the protagonist but J’ohnn is the MVP.

Challengers of the Unknown - the Challengers were a stepping stone between the adventure stories after superheroes went out of vogue in the late forties/early fifties and the silver age return of super heroes. Adventurers and science heroes who wear matching jump suits, they are regarded as Kirby’s dry run for the Fantastic Four over at Marvel. And their basic motivation is a suicide pact. They are heavily used in the New Frontier and that made me go and look up the original Kirby stories. Now that’s been own flavor of crazy.

New Frontier is a fascinatingly meta work because so much of it only works in the context of the reader being familiar with the source material. At the same time, it tells a fantastic story with underlining meaning.

‘There’s the door, spaceman’ isn’t just a badass line. It means something.