STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: COMICS/GRAPHIC NOVELS - “DC: The New Frontier”

The Justice League, the premiere superhero team of DC Comics, originated in 1960. But what happens when these heroes during this time period suffered through the same hardships and prejudices of that time period?

Welcome to… The New Frontier.

Written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke and colors by Dave Stewart, the six-issue story is an ensemble story set from 1953 to 1960. The story follows the lives of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Barry Allen the Flash, Hal Jordan the Green Lantern, and J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter as they navigate through post-World World II and the Cold War.

While Batman and the Flash operate on their own terms, the superheroes have been going into decline. Heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman are assigned by the U.S. government to carry out missions, such as the Vietnam War. J’onn is an alien from Mars disguised as a regular human in order to blend in and not incite fear.

Their lives collide when a mysterious alien threat called the Centre comes to Earth.

DC: The New Frontier combines a lot of story elements of various famous stories, such as Kingdom Come and the most apparent one, Watchmen. It really does a good job in giving a reality of 1950s and 1960s America, but if it included superheroes; how they would impact the country and vice-versa, for good and for bad.

Cooke’s art is beautiful, as it is reminiscent of the artwork of the Golden Age comics of that era.

The exploration of how each hero lives in America seems really fitting given their background… but that’s where it gets really disjointed.

I was introduced to this comic because of its animated adaptation, Justice League: The New Frontier which is a very loyal adaptation. However, I noticed that it took too much time to establish each hero and their place before they finally fought the Centre. The comic also goes through that same template.

I feel like what would’ve made the story better is either get rid of the alien plot, or have the character establishing go quicker so we can have more interaction with the heroes, which would’ve been the first time they’ve met each other, before they fight the Centre. Then again, this is a superhero origin story: there HAS to be some big bad guy that only a team can defeat it.

As a casual reader of comics, I noticed there were characters referenced, and even had their own mini-story dedicated to them in the story, such as John Wilson, the son of John Henry Irons (Steel). As a casual reader, it was a story about an African-American hero facing against the Ku Klux Klan.

To an avid reader, it probably meant something more. It’s these kinds of cutaways and subplots that make me wonder why they were in the story the first place, since they had no bearing on the ultimate villain or even the plot at all.

Like I said, I wouldn’t mind this if it was more focused on what kind of story it wanted to tell: an alternate history story or a team-up story.

For anyone who wants to start reading DC comics, I still say DC: The New Frontier is a perfect starting point. It features all the famous heroes that DC is known for, and you get an original interpretation of them. It doesn’t get shackled by previous storylines, just their backstory on what the characters are about. The same goes for the animated film as well.