Since the maiden
voyage of the good ship The (Comic) Book
was Better didn’t completely capsize and sink, it’s time to set sail yet
again, this time with the epic tale of epicness known as The New Frontier. The comic
was written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke and published in 2004; the cartoon came
out in 2008. The comic is so epic that
it needed two full-length TPBs to contain the awesome (though it is all available in one volume now, from what I understand), so of course, the
cartoon version had to cut quite a bit.
The question is: did it cut the right things? And was it able to tell a compelling story
with what it did use?
For all intents and purposes, both comic and cartoon tell the same story: in the 1950s (the genesis of the Silver Age), a mysterious ancient entity known as the Centre is causing mass panic among the world population as a prelude to killing off the human race. It is, of course, up to Earth’s heroes, human and otherwise, to stop the Centre before it destroys humankind. The major difference lies in each medium’s approach to the subject matter, which we’ll get to in a bit. First, the comic book version.
This is beyond all
doubt one of my most favoritest graphic novels ever. How awesome is it? This is the conclusion to the first story in the first chapter.
Which brings me
to my first point. This is an extremely
emotional book. Every character, even a
lot of the minor ones (Mr. Grenades McAwesomeshorts is a prime example), is so
interesting and has such interesting things to do that you feel for and root
for them all. This fact is mercilessly
exploited by the writer, who crams in as many tearjerker moments as he can
without turning the whole book into a sob fest.
The John Henry subplot in particular, about a man seeking vengeance
against the Ku Klux Klan for the murder of his family, is arguably the worst of
the bunch; it’s absolutely, horrifyingly heartrending from start to
finish. It’s sadder than Big Bird
singing at Jim Henson’s funeral sad. No,
wait, it’s Big Bird sad, mixed with a hearty dose of General Armistead’s death
from Gettysburg sad and a heaping
helping of the These Are the Days of Our
Lives sad for good measure. You’re
gonna need a whole lot of tissues, is what I’m saying.
…Let’s just say
this ends horribly and move on before I run out of Kleenex.
The characters
that seem to get the most attention are Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, J’onn
J’onzz/Martian Manhunter, and (towards the end, anyway) Barry Allen/Flash. Other characters like Superman, Batman and
Wonder Woman get a respectable amount of attention and development, but honestly,
it seems more like an ensemble than anything else. And that’s a big part of the reason why I love
these books so much, as well as why I’m not spending too much time complaining
about why Rex Tyler/Hourman is presumed dead, revealed to be alive, and then forgotten
altogether. The individual characters
were never the point. The story isn’t
about one character so much as it’s about trying to compromise and overcome
challenges and emerging from a paranoid, often frightening time in the United States. Some make it.
Some don’t. Some come out of the
experience as a better person. Some
don’t. The interesting part is
seeing how the characters respond to the situations they’re placed in.
That being said,
there are a couple of nitpicky things I do have to bring up. First, for all its talk of equality and
fairness and cooperation, there are no
non-white people in crowd scenes outside of the epilogue. Really, guys?
This is the late ‘50s. I’m pretty
sure you could find the occasional black person in giant cities like Metropolis
and/or the recently desegregated U.S. Armed Forces if you tried a little harder. I guess
this could have been an intentional callback to actual ‘50s comics where
everybody was always white, but this comic is considerably more conscious of
evolving social problems and race relations during this period of American
history and is doing its best to portray that honestly without being
heavy-handed. So if the “white people as
far as the eye can see” approach was intentional, it wasn’t the most
intelligent of moves.
Second, there’s
Hal Jordan. Now for the most part, I
like Hal’s portrayal in this. He’s a steadfast
pacifist until he is forced to kill a North Korean soldier, which causes a
severe crisis of conscience and several years’ worth of insecurities and
soul-searching before he finally makes peace with the fact that he would kill
to survive. It’s one of the more
prominent story arcs, and it’s definitely a good one. On the other hand, Hal is mildly racist and
sexist, and I thought I was prepared to accept that and move on (again, ‘50s),
but then he has to go and kick it up a notch when talking with his girlfriend, Carol Ferris:
Look, maybe this
is just some more casual sexism (y’know, like a roundabout way of saying “This
is man’s business, woman, so stay out of it!”) and would have been perfectly
acceptable behavior sixty years ago, but this scene really, really rubs me the wrong way. It prevents me from fully liking and
respecting Hal and Carol the way I did prior to this moment, especially since
Hal never even pretends to feel bad about it and Carol treats it like it’s no
big deal, giving Hal a big kiss just two pages later. It just seems so pointless—even if it would have been acceptable back then, was
there really any need to cart out the
obscenities in this case? Especially
since Carol has no clue what is really going on and is just expressing worry
for her boyfriend? I mean, she does call
Hal a “son of a bitch” on the previous page, but she doesn’t have a full
understanding of the situation and is probably much more justified in cussing out
her boyfriend than vice versa, since Hal should have some measure of empathy
and understand that he’s the one who left Carol in the dark and that that’s why
she’s so clueless and angry. So…
conflicted… rrrrgh…
Those are my
biggest complaints, since they do the most to undermine the story’s main goals—namely,
show how the characters deal with the social, political, and supervillainy situations of the day and make those
characters sympathetic (even the prickish ones). I do have a couple of more nitpicky
complaints, like the fact that it can get a bit exposition-y in spots. And I guess you could argue that it’s a
little too sprawling, that the author was trying to do and say too much in one
miniseries. (It’d be relatively easy to argue that John Henry’s subplot, as
moving as it is, isn’t all that necessary and could have been removed in favor
of, say, actually mentioning Rick and Karin’s relationship before the last
second.) Still, for all its (minor)
faults, DC: The New Frontier is an
intensely enjoyable story. I’ve read it
multiple times and really can’t see myself getting tired of it any time soon. It’s epic, emotional, and oh-so-fifties, with
bits of casual sexism, racism, xenophobia and homophobia for added
authenticity. Or at least, it seems
authentic to someone who wasn’t alive in the 1950s.
New Frontier is also responsible for one
of my favorite comic book quotes ever: “It’s the kind of moment you dream
about. A moment so perfect, it makes you
want to cry. Because you know that
whatever comes our way…”
The film has Justice League in its name instead of DC, which is appropriate since the
cartoon spends a lot more time on League characters as opposed to DC as a
whole. While it retains the same basic
plot as the graphic novel, the movie’s main objective seems to be to explain
how the Silver Age Justice League met, learned to work together, and ultimately
became the world’s greatest superheroes.
In other words, it’s not social commentary but an origin story, and a
darn good one to boot.
The voice cast
is chockfull of all-stars, including Keith David as the Centre, Lucy Lawless as
Wonder Woman, and Neil Patrick Harris as the Flash. That being said, some of the performances seem a little lacking
in emotion in spots (Hal is being voiced by Keanu Reeves, right?), but I guess with superheroes it’s difficult to be suitably
stoic while still being human. That’s
not really much of an excuse, though, given the innumerable superhero cartoons
that voice director Andrea Romano has successfully cast before. Also, I’m not especially fond of Batman’s
voice—there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, and actually, it’s one of the
more emotive performances in the film—it’s just not Kevin Conroy. Or Diedrich Bader. Or that guy from Young Justice. Still, Ms. Romano
deserves our props anyway, just on the basis of this scene alone:
Speaking of art style, it is very close to the original to the point where they can and do lift entire
panels from the comic without it looking weird.
I count this as a good thing. However,
the cartoon can get surprisingly graphic in spots, so if you’re squeamish about
Martians tearing dinosaurs in half and being drenched in their blood, you might
want to skip this interpretation (and scroll down really fast!).
Like with the
comic, most of my complaints are small and superficial and don’t stop me from
enjoying the final product. For
instance, Aquaman’s rescue of Superman at the end kind of comes out looking like a deus ex
machina, as does Ray Palmer's appearance in Florida. (This was solved
by foreshadowing and cameos in the comic book.) And Lois Lane is considerably
closer to being generic in this version, which makes me mad. Like in this scene, which appears in both
versions—Lois has commandeered a helicopter to take her closer to the Centre so
she can report on it live. Eventually,
the pilot loses his nerve and turns back.
Here’s Lois’s reaction in the comic…
 |
| Lois: "We've been ordered back." |
For crying out
loud, be… be Lois! Also, there’s one point where Wonder
Woman wishes the others “Godspeed.” Why
would Wonder Woman say “Godspeed,” exactly?
She’s an Amazon. She reveres the
Greek gods, not the Christian one. But
I’m starting to nitpick again. Moving
on.
Looking at the
two side by side, there’s little doubt that the comic is superior, despite how
closely the cartoon follows in its footsteps.
The fact that the comic places greater emphasis on larger issues while
the cartoon places its emphasis on being an origin story all but guarantees
that the former will have more emotional depth, but that absolutely under no
circumstances means that the cartoon isn’t moving. In its own way, it is; it just decided to
tell the same story from a slightly less broad perspective and, for what it is,
the film is really done well. It’s also
done short. I really don’t get why DC insists on making
their animated films so short. While New Frontier is almost twenty minutes
longer than Public Enemies, I still
feel like so much more could have been done with this if it were only a
full-length film or a miniseries.
If you read the
comic before seeing the film, there’s about a million Easter eggs and cameos to
be found when you get around to the cartoon, mostly in the form of brief shout-outs to scenes that they had to cut. Also, I’m all for showing instead
of telling, but in order for that to work, everything needs to be planned and
executed perfectly.
On the other
side of the coin, if you see the film before seeing the comic (like I did),
it’s a lot harder to notice how abbreviated the cartoon really is. You’ve got nothing to compare it to. And that may be why I’m able to give the
movie such high ratings with so few complaints.
Still, I really think that if you’re able to look at the cartoon as an
entity/origin story unto itself, you shouldn’t
have any trouble liking it.
Unlike Public Enemies, Justice League: The New Frontier stands perfectly well on its own,
no prior knowledge of the characters or storyline necessary. The comic book is certainly a lot more
complex and is therefore a lot more powerful, but the cartoon is as faithful as
it probably could be and, as such, retains a good deal of what made the
original so great. They’re both big, they’re both full of badass people doing badass things, and they’re
both well worth a look.
Next Time: ¡No contaban con las poderes de observación
de Gonzo! (Darnit, I translated that wrong, didn’t I? Nut bunnies.
Back to the ol’ Rosetta Stone...)
Images from DC: The New Frontier and Justice League: The New Frontier
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