MYTHCOMICS: DC: THE NEW FRONTIER (2004)

I’ve heard good press about the late Darwyn Cooke’s THE NEW FRONTIER ever since the series first appeared (in the abbreviated form of a six-issue periodical back in 2004. But though I knew that Cooke’s work dealt with one of the most important periods of American comic books—the beginnings of “Silver Age” comics in the mid-to-late fifties-- I didn’t rush to explore FRONTIER. Possibly I didn’t quickly warm to promos of Cooke’s art. More likely, though, I was just pessimistic that anyone could find a fresh take on yet another look back into that rather well traveled territory —the debut of Silver Age Flash, of Silver Age Green Lantern, of the Justice League. But I can now say without reticence that Cooke’s magnum opus succeeds—that of celebrating not only the gaudy costumed characters, but also the humbler-looking heroes of the DC Universe: the spies, the G.I. Joes, and, above all, the pilots..

Most multi-character crossover projects, both at DC and at Marvel Comics, tend to focus exclusively upon superheroes. There’s no intrinsic shame in this. For many decades superheroes comprised the only genre that sold decently in the direct market. Thus, when in 1986 Marv Wolfman and George Perez crafted CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, they brought together dozens of characters from DC’s divergent realities with the idea of forging a new, more coordinated cosmos. Amid all of the spandex, Wolfman and Perez worked in a handful of non-superhero characters—largely stemming from war, western, and SF-genres—even though few if any of these characters were still being published in 1986. Characters like Sergeant Rock, Kamandi and the Nighthawk were probably included because the creators thought that the new cosmos would seem more cohesive if it also worked in the cowboys and soldiers. Nevertheless, in CRISIS the non-super-types contributed very little to all of the cosmic contortions.

In an afterword, Darwyn Cooke asserts that as a young fan that he preferred war and western comics to those of superheroes. Thus, his “fresh take” consists of approaching the seminal events of DC continuity largely from the POV of such characters as Rick Flagg, King Faraday and a quartet of mismatched military operatives known as “the Losers.” Further, Cooke culled the narrative’s central antagonist from one of DC’s most peculiar combinations of the war and science fiction genres: “The War That Time Forget.” In this series, based around a concept rather than a continuing hero, each story started with some unwitting soldiers—usually non-repeating characters—getting marooned on a strange island where prehistoric monsters still dwelled. As FRONTIER commences, the four commandos known as the Losers are sent to the island to pick up a stranded officer, Rick Flagg, and the scientific secrets in his custody. Though Flagg escapes the island with his intel, all of the Losers perish on DC’s version of The Lost World—though not before the soldiers uncover the hidden menace behind the mysterious isle.

Back in the real world, WWII ends, but anti-Communist hysteria begets the Cold War. None of this keeps a young Hal Jordan, years away from his power ring, from wanting to be a pilot like his late father—and though he does become Green Lantern in due time, Cooke is far more preoccupied with Jordan’s history as a pilot, as a hero who depends on a plane, not a ring, to fly. Jordan is one of FRONTIER’s more indispensable characters, and Cooke’s version makes him something of a pacifist type, butting heads with a more hawkish type like Rick Flagg, original commander of the Suicide Squad (whose adventures are retroactively connected to the War That Time Forgot).

Though the artist includes a handful of earthbound warriors, FRONTIER shows its creator’s abiding love for scenes of air action. Cooke also works in numerous other pilot-characters. Ace Morgan of the Challengers of the Unknown. Larry Trainor, later of the Doom Patrol. Nathaniel Adam, fated to become Captain Atom. I’m a little surprised the artist didn’t manage to work in sometimes pilot Rex “Metamorpho” Mason. Ironically, only one character in the story was designed to be a full-time aviation hero—namely, Johnny Cloud, “the Navajo Air Ace.” But after the Native American pilot’s feature was cancelled, he was assigned to the Losers, with the result that this hero’s final adventure takes place on earth rather than in the clouds for which he’s named.

Cooke’s focus upon the allure of aviation dovetails with another aspect of 1950s America: the space race, born out of American’s apprehensions about Communist incursions. This fear also gave shape to fantasies that “little green men” might choose to invade Earth, not to mention reinforcing native xenophobia toward what we now call “people of color.” All of this cultural disquiet leads to the banishment of the 1940s mystery men from the public eye, with the exception of major icons like Superman and Wonder Woman.

However, in the metaphorical wings wait a new breed of “mystery men,” and their appearance is foreshadowed by the advent of a not-so-little green man. In 1955, J’onn J’onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, subsisted in a minor back-up feature, dangling from the cape of Batman in DETECTIVE COMICS. But in the world of overall comics-history, Manhunter became the forerunner to DC’s renaissance of costumed heroes. Many modern comics-writers would rush to show J’onzz interacting with other costumed types right away, and in truth the Manhunter does “team up” briefly with Batman. However, Cooke grounds the character in the more mundane part of the DC Universe, teaming him up with detective-hero Slam Bradley and eventually having him captured by American intelligence agent King Faraday.

Numerous other characters prove central to the action—Superman’s cohorts Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, the Barry Allen Flash, all four of the Challengers of the Unknown (whose presence gives Cooke the chance to homage their creator Jack Kirby), and Rick Flagg and the other three members of his Squad. Numerous other DC figures make what are essentially cameos—the Blackhawks (who don’t get too much air action), Aquaman, Adam Strange, and even the Viking Prince. Even less central are a quintet of DC’s mystic heroes, who only appear to explain to readers their shaky reasons for not participating in the conflict, even though the island’s menace threatens the totality of the world.

Cooke gives a new name to the Island That Time Forgot, terming it “the Centre.” I suspect he came up with this name just so that he could work in Yeats’ famous line about how “the Centre cannot hold.” However, despite fomenting massive levels of destruction upon the modern world, the menace itself fails to impress. Cooke has various characters—including a clone of Doctor Seuss—experience psychic presentiments about the Centre’s catastrophic powers, all in the approved H.P. Lovecraft fashion. Yet somehow an intelligent, dinosaur-laden island proves a pale substitution for a narrative that desperately needs something on the level of Great Cthulhu. In the final analysis, the Centre is just a make-work menace, something cosmic enough to make squabbling Earthmen forget their fears and work together—thus making it possible for costumed heroes to regain the public favor they’d lost.

Cooke mentions in his afterword that some fans criticized him for overly liberal sentiments. My take is that when he focuses on real issues—relating the tragic tale of an early black vigilante-hero, John Henry—Cooke remains on solid philosophical ground. However, when the artist crafts a scene in which Hal Jordan’s Eskimo sidekick get mad when Jordan uses the name “Pieface”—so mad that said sidekick refers to Jordan by the anachronistic term “whitebread”—yeah, that’s Cooke practicing petty political correctness. He even attempts to have fun at the expense of reactionary fans in a silly six-page backup story, wherein Wonder Woman and Black Canary beat up a bunch of citizens for going to a Playboy Club. I suspect this sort of humor will only be funny to members of the choir. Within FRONTIER he does make some effort to justify the ways of hawks to doves, especially via an improbable friendship between J’onn J’onzz and his captor Faraday, so at least there are times when Cooke puts the brakes on some of his preachifyin’.

A proximate model for NEW FRONTIER might be the Busiek-Ross MARVELS, whose narrative concentrated upon an assortment of purely mundane characters, witnessing their sane world besieged by a flood of superheroic “marvels.” Yet Busiek doesn’t really transcend the standard Marvel narrative. Cooke, by forging a vital link between mundane and supramundane combatants, gives readers a solid vision of heroism as we know it through all manner of pop-culture fantasies. He concludes this vision by printing a famed John F, Kennedy speech regarding America’s need to find its “new frontier,” thus implicitly transferring the ideals of Kennedy to the second wave of superheroes spawned in the sixties. Possibly, one might extend this benison to all the better superhero comics that descended from those illustrious ancestors. But even though the superheroes forced most of the other adventure-genres out of commercial existence, at least here, in FRONTIER, earthbound grunts and air aces are remembered for their part in that evolution.