31 Days of Scans: My Favourite Elseworld - DC: the New Frontier

[espanolbot]

Possibly not just my favourite Elseworld, but also my favourite superhero comic of all time, New Frontier is a book both written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke which covers a lot of things, but mainly it's about the shift from the Golden Age of heroes to the Silver Age as a metaphor for the social progress and the like that happened in the Kennedy years.

It's a mature work that doesn't rely on the gratuitous content of the likes of Alan Moore or Mark Millar to BE a mature work. It's idealistic despite dealing with a lot of heavy stuff, and it's about the importance of retaining your idealism even when things are starting to look their bleakest...

Here's a part from the first issue, where minutes after the end of the Korean War is declared, young pilot Hal Jordan (the only interesting version of the character in my opinion) gets shot down over No Man's Land by North Korean pilots that evidently didn't get the message. Parachuting to safety, Jordan accidentally lands on former enemy soldier and signals for someone to pick him up.

Comments

[lego_joker]

There's something I've always wondered about this one... most of the fans of it I know are from this generation, or maybe the one right before. Even Cooke himself wasn't that old when he wrote this, if I remember correctly.

Have any of the Golden/Silver Age's original fans weighed in on how they feel about The New Frontier?

[espanolbot]

I rec'ed it to my gf's dad when he was wondering what to start reading on Comixology, and he seemed to like it by all accounts.

[alschroeder3]

I was born in 1953, too late for the Korean War, but I enjoyed the New Frontier thoroughly.