It is easy to begin Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, classify it as an "Elseworlds"
story, and continue on, reading it with pleasure to its conclusion without
revising that classification, that is an Elseworlds, one of many. But New Frontier is, significantly,
something different than – something more than – an Elseworlds, and part
of what makes it so outstanding lies in that subtle distinction.
Yes, New Frontier
meets the definition. Just as "imaginary stories," from the era
before the term "Elseworlds" was coined, fits as well. New Frontier presents variants of
familiar DC characters in a variant of the familiar DC Universe. But to see how
the story is more than that, note the ways in which it deviates from both the Silver
Age and post-Crisis renditions of the DCU:
• New Frontier has
an absolute timeline with precise dates, and with characters aging one year for
every year that passes.
• As a rule followed in all cases but three, Cooke defines
characters' debuts and careers to match their actual publication dates. For
example, Barry Allen debuts, in the world of New Frontier, at the same time that Showcase #4 was published in our world. The exceptions are so rare
that they are worth identifying: Dick Grayson, John Henry Irons, and (in a
cameo only) Roy Harper all debut around 1960 instead of in 1940, 1993, and
1941, respectively.
• New Frontier interweaves the timelines
of actual historical and cultural events with DC publications so that, for
example, the launch of Sputnik is inserted in proper sequence after the arrival
on Earth of J'onn J'onzz and the accident in which Barry Allen gains super
speed.
• Artistic style and period-appropriate slang makes this
work about 1960 look and sound like
it was created in 1960.
• Though the style is from the Sixties, the perspective is
from the 2000s, turning an eye to much that was ignored by comics and the mass
media in its own time, such as racial discrimination, racial violence, and the
excesses of McCarthy-era anti-Communist rhetoric.
• Cooke includes not only DC's stars, but also a huge lineup
of DC characters, offering memorable renditions of characters ranging from
Batman to Slam Bradley and the Challengers of the Unknown.
• Cooke adapts, from post-Crisis continuity as well as Watchmen the notion that superheroes
became feared by the public, and thus the JSA era was ended. He adapts, from The Dark Knight Returns, the notion that
Superman (and Wonder Woman) continue to operate by pledging their loyalty to
the U.S. government, while Batman continues on as an outlaw.
• The comprehensive history of an era, showing the dawn of
DC's Silver Age, suggests parallels between the optimism of John F. Kennedy's
"Camelot" and the debut of the Justice League.
To summarize the nature of New Frontier's world: While a typical Elseworlds offers a variant
of the standard DCU, or makes the DC characters interact with some fictional
variant of our world, DC: The New
Frontier places DC characters in a world that is much more like the real
world than any previous rendition of the DCU. During long, extended scenes and
in tiny details, New Frontier is a
period piece that is about our world – primarily the United States, but
other places as well. It educates while it delights and entertains.
Because of all this, the superheroes are much as we've
always known them, but their world seems different, and, though set in the
past, and worked from established material, it is incredibly new in the way it
combines older plots and styles with a new perspective. The superhero action,
front and center, is as universally white and non-inclusive as the comics of
the Fifties, but Cooke makes the readers and his characters aware of the
glaring social inequalities of the times, with xenophobia, rape, lynchings, and
Joe McCarthy's Red Scare punctuating the usually-sunny narrative.
And while it does such a great job of being about the real world
– circa 1960 but seen from the perspective of the 2000s – New Frontiers does two other things,
too. It crescendos around a particular story with a particular threat, called
The Centre. But before, during, and after that central plot, it constructs an
architecture of an entire age of heroes, showing the Golden Age and the Justice
Society in the rearview mirror while it drives us through the beginning of the
Silver Age and the formation of the Justice League.
The first time that NF
shows us a superhero in costume is when Hourman dies fleeing from the police as
a vigilante in 1952 – this is the first year after DC ceased publication
of the Justice Society, and also the time that McCarthyism was near its zenith.
As in DC's post-Crisis continuity, NF posits that the JSA was driven
underground, leaving the world without superheroes for a time. As in The Dark Knight Returns, NF shows Superman working behind the
scenes as a government agent while Batman fights crime illegally. Like the
continuity applied retroactively to the Silver Age superheroes, we see heroes
like the Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) debuting some time
after Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Unlike any of those once-main
continuities, NF asserts that the
Trinity belonged to the JSA era, and after a few years, went on to be part of
the JLA era. This is a luxury that NF's
timeline allows because only eight year separate the two teams' tenures, unlike
the decades that passed before DC reintroduced JSA stories in the late
Seventies under the post-Golden Age concept of Earth Two.
At its finest, New
Frontier is an origin story, not of one hero or another, but of a team
– a universe. Most central are the three Silver Agers who joined the
Justice League as charter members. Barry Allen is trim, almost petite, but
supremely confident and courageous. J'onn J'onzz is lonely and isolated in his
exile on Earth, but utterly driven to act only on the behalf of others as
policeman John Jones. Hal Jordan, whose life is shown in more detail than
anyone else's, begins as a kid in an outtake from "The Right Stuff,"
then goes on to become a war hero, a test pilot, an astronaut, and a superhero.
New Frontier is a coming-of-age story
for the Justice League's universe, tying together many loose threads, and
ending by showing how the nascent League goes on to fight together, opposing
Starro, the JLA's first opponent in print, back in Brave and Bold #28. The finale, quoting Kennedy's inaugural speech is
overflowing with optimism. If it makes you want to see the new world that has
been born, it's there in print, in the first fifty or so issues of Justice League. But those stories by
Gardner Fox are written for kids, perhaps older kids. New Frontier is a look at that world that was newly minted for
kids, but dressed up and sophisticated for adults, full of meaning and style.
Sometime a few months ago, I realized that it is, in all likelihood, the best
comprehensive account of the entire DC Universe in one work. If I had one DC
story to take to a desert island, I can't think of a better choice.
Earlier this year, I read New Frontier for the nth time, taking notes, putting together
drafts of a review to post on my blog. And then, when the review was nearing
completion, Darwyn Cooke died, far too young. All of the kind things I say
about the work, and by extension about Cooke, might seem like a puff piece,
something overly kind said of the dead. No. After many times admiring New Frontier, I was putting into words
why I thought it was so wonderful, and this was nearly complete when I heard
that the author was gone. All of the admiration was firmly in place and for the
most part already typed out when I got the sad news. Darwyn Cooke, this review
– too late – is for you.
