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It seems that every two decades there’s an event in comics that has long-lasting, positive effects and turns out to be widely influential to the future. The late 30’s and early 40’s saw the advent of superheroes and comic books with costumed heroes like Superman, Batman and Captain America. The early 60’s witnessed a revitilization in the super-hero comic genre with Marvel bursting onto the scene. The 80’s saw the comic world take a little darker turn with stories like Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, and I think we’ve been looking for the next big thing. I think we may have found it with Cooke’s opus: The New Frontier. It’s almost too simple, the heroes must band together to stop a being that threatens the whole world. It is so much more, though. Nestled between the paranoia of the Cold War and the comic book Renaissance of the 60’s are these groups of new heroes sprouting up in a time where there were none, save for a couple of government sponsered heroes. The Golden Age heroes had all been forced into retirement and really only the big three still remained. Batman was ever the vigilante in Gotham City and Superman and Wonder Woman worked for the government. But as Bob Dylan once wrote, the times they were a-changin’. New heroes emerged. There was a new Flash, a new Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter landed on Earth from Mars and new normal folks were doing extraordinary things, like Rick Flagg, the Challangers of the Fantastic and the Suicide Squad. We witness their ascension into becoming heroes and how seemingly unrelated events affected them all. They manage to band together at the end of the second volume to stop a global threat and brought about the dawn of a new age of heroes. Cooke does a masterful job laying down the fabric of the DCU and knitting a tale that made sense both in the history of the DCU and the time that these original issues came out. His script was just spot-on and the almost cartoony art really fits the time period the events took place in. It also belies the intense mood of the time. No matter how you view this tale, broken up into two trade paper backs, either as a social commentary or just as a DC history, you will get something out of it. Don’t be surprised to see this mentioned in the same breathe as Watchmen or Dark Knight returns in the next 15 years or so. This is a true classic, a beautifully illustrated and scripted story that bridges DC between Golden Age and Silver Age. This gets a highest recommendation from me.
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