12/17/2005
DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke
I have a bit of a confession to make. Before I read DC: The New Frontier, I had never checked out any of Darwyn Cooke’s work. I knew of him from what little I had seen of another tale he had created, the Catwoman graphic novel Selina’s Big Score. I steered clear of it though, probably from a combination of the retro artwork & the fact that Catwoman isn’t one of my must-read comic book characters. And I will also confess that I passed on DC: The New Frontier quite a few times as well. It caught my eye simply for the fact that Green Lantern (my all-time favorite character, for the record) seemed to be prominently featured in it, but the time never seemed right for me to take the plunge and buy it.
Finally I said “What the hell…” & picked up both trade paperbacks, and my only regret is that I did not read this story sooner. It reminded me that sometimes the stories you expect the least from are the ones that surprise you once you give them a chance. This story has its weaknesses, but they are minimal compared to all the little details that Cooke got right in its telling. He has captured the nuances of all the characters rather nicely with his sharply-written dialogue and his retro-style artwork. He also seems to have a historian’s grasp of the era that the story is set in, the late 1950’s, and thankfully the story doesn’t suffer from the simplified, dated storytelling style that was popular back then.
Cooke does a wonderful job showing how the DC heroes would figure into the political and cultural climate of the Cold War era. For one thing, the hunt for Communists in the U.S., led by Senator McCarthy, extended to the activities of the “Mystery Men” from World War II. It had a profound effect on the super-hero community, driving the majority of the Justice Society into retirement when faced with revealing their identities or being arrested. A conflict between a government-backed Superman and an anti-establishment Batman is touched upon in a newspaper article, bringing back memories of the final book of The Dark Knight Returns. The fact that the conclusion of the battle is revealed to be a ruse in Volume Two only reinforces the effect. Superman and his government-sponsored partner Wonder Woman get into a conflict of ideals over how to deal with the beginnings of the Communist uprisings in Southeast Asia, almost perfectly mirroring their strained relationship in Infinite Crisis.
Another enjoyable element of the story comes when characters come face to face with historical figures of the time. An example of this comes during a prize fight between Ted “Wildcat” Grant and a skilled young boxer named Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali). It not only served to firmly establish the setting of the story, but the bout and the after-party was the perfect device to gather a good portion of the primary characters together in one place.
It is a nice experience to see the DC heroes get placed back in the era that most of them were created in, the 1950’s. Green Lantern & J’onn J’onnz (The Martian Manhunter) played especially well here. J’onn is perhaps the only character in current DC continuity that has retained his 50’s era origin, and Cooke seamlessly weaved this tale into the fabric of the overall story. Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) seems more at ease in this setting than in the modern day DCU, as a wartime fighter pilot-turned-commercial test pilot. It is fitting that Cooke used these two as point-of-view characters for good portions of the story.
With all that said, there are a couple of things about the story that I have to nitpick about. The first segment of the story, featuring the Losers landing on a tropical island filled with prehistoric monstrosities to rescue Col. Flagg, really dragged down the beginning of the book. I think it would have better served the story to explore this as a flashback sequence when Col. Flagg recalls the encounter later in Volume One. Another thing I found lacking was the fact that none of the heavyweight DC villains were used. Lex Luthor shows up in one panel in the epilogue chapter, and Vandal Savage makes a less-than-ideal appearance, but other than that nothing. Just touching on it would have been enough, like having Lex be a vocal supporter (and perhaps abuser) of Senator McCarthy’s campaign to root out Communist sympathizers in the U.S. The pacing of the story was a little schizophrenic, moving slowly in the first three chapters which comprise Volume One, then abruptly speeding up through the last three chapters (Volume Two). Perhaps making the mini-series 8 issues instead of 6 would have alleviated this, but we’ll never know. But as I stated earlier, these are minor flaws at most, and do not detract from the overall greatness of this tale.
The Bottom Line
There is a reason that DC: The New Frontier won the 2005 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series; it is flat-out entertaining. The beauty of this story is that you don’t have to know who all the characters are to enjoy it. Some of the more obscure characters, like the Challengers of the Unknown, have their origins retold almost verbatim while the story continues on. You may get such an
appreciation for the characters that you find yourself compelled to find other stories with them in it. I think one of my next acquisitions might have to be the Challengers of the Unknown mini-series by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale.
The Bottom Line on DC: Then New Frontier: Buy it!
12/02/2005
The Bottom Line will be a somewhat different approach for reviewing comics. It’s going to focus mainly on older stories that have been collected in Trade Paperback form. The reviews will be as much about the creators of the story as well as the story itself. Sometimes it will focus on a single trade, other times a series of books. One thing it will hopefully never be is boring. The only rub of this column is there probably won’t be too many negative reviews. The books to be reviewed will have been around at least a little while, so the odds are good I won’t choose any stinkers to review, unless they are so bad it is worth the effort to devote the word space to steer you away from it. If, by accident or design, you decide you want to pick up a book that’s been reviewed, let the folks at Pulp Fiction know and if they don’t have it for you they’ll gladly special-order it for you.
Animal Man by Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison is proving to be one of the most creative, prolific writers in comic books today. He has a unique knack for taking tired comic book characters and making them interesting again, as he has shown with his fresh, ambitious take on the Seven Soldiers of Victory concept. His upcoming run on All-Star Superman has even the most jaded of comic book readers looking forward to a continuity-free take on this classic character. Morrison's affinity for the surreal has also re-defined how mainstream super-hero comics can be written. With his run on (New) X-Men, he injected some much-welcomed strangeness and controversy into the stories of the fan-favorite mutant team; most of his ideas have yielded positive results (in the words of Beast in Twisted Toyfare Theater, “Come on, Morrison, a cat?”). As well-crafted as these mainstream stories are, it’s Morrison's lesser-known, more personal works that really stand out. The mini-series WE3 tells the story of a trio of intelligence-enhanced lab animals cybernetically bonded to lethal battle-suits that escape their government captors to find their way back to the families and homes they were taken from. At its heart, WE3 is a strong statement against lab-testing on animals, a cause Morrison feels strongly about. To paraphrase Bill Cosby, “I told you those stories to tell you this one…”
One of Morrison's earliest works, Animal Man, combines the best of the qualities mentioned above. The storytelling, while visually dated and mired in old political references (circa 1988-1989), still compares favorably with his more recent writings. I managed to find his entire run on the book (thanks as always, Mr. Lerner), which is collected in 3 trade paperbacks: Animal Man, Animal Man: Origin of the Species & Animal Man: Deus Ex Machina. I’d like to think of this as Morrison’s “kitchen sink” story. It has character revamps up the yin-yang, starting with Animal Man himself. Animal Man was a profoundly obscure comic book character that Morrison had read in his youth and took it upon himself to revitalize. He transformed a bland, third-rate 60’s super-hero into a thoughtful, everyman hero that adopts a vegetarian lifestyle when his animal powers change his outlook on meat-consumption. Morrison also spread out the revisionist love to other forgotten characters, like B’Wana Beast. He wisely waited to reveal BB’s as the mystery antagonist in the first story arc of Animal Man until the third chapter. This has a twofold effect. It built him up for fans that had no clue who BB was before reading the story (I include myself in this group), and it gave readers familiar with him a chance to see him through new eyes.
Since Animal Man was seen as a fringe character, DC afforded Morrison the freedom to run wild with surrealism. He used that creative license to see what it might be like for a comic book character to find out that he was in fact fictional. The theme was touched upon very lightly at first with one of Morrison’s most highly-regarded single issue stories called “Gospel of the Coyote”, featured in the Animal Man trade. Even though this story featured very little going on with the main character of the series, it was nonetheless compelling. If this story were released for the first time today, it would most likely have been called “The Passion of the Wile E. Coyote”. I don’t want to go into any more detail than that, simply because it’s a story all comic book fans should read for themselves.
Morrison upped the existentialist ante in subsequent stories in the second & third books. Animal Man got the opportunity to meet his simpler 60’s counterpart courtesy of a peyote trip. In a wonderful instance of the fourth wall shattering, he also caught a glimpse of many faces watching his every move. Yes, he found out that he was a comic book character in the most unnerving way possible, by getting a good look at his audience.
Morrison even managed to work events from Crisis on Infinite Earths into the mix, when the Psycho Pirate overflowed from within from all the knowledge of the alternate Earths that were wiped out during that mini-series. For those unfamiliar with PP, he is the only character that remembers how the continuity was “back in the day” before the Crisis, and the characters that he remembers were being willed back into reality through his memories. It all culminated when Animal Man literally met his maker in the final chapter of Animal Man: Deus Ex Machina. Morrison took this opportunity to personally explain both to Animal Man and the comic audience why certain things happened the way they did. In a moment alluding to chapters that had little to do with the main character of the book, he simply stated: “We all expect starring roles in our lives but somehow we just end up with walk-on parts.”
In the final chapter, Morrison also explained that his views on animal rights were taken from his own personal beliefs. In a move that was bold and yet should not have been surprising, he devoted quite a bit of time in Animal Man to educate readers about the grave injustices being perpetrated against animals around the world. The most moving of these stories has to be the first story arc in the Animal Man trade. In an inventive bit of schadenfreude, B’wana Beast’s powers were put to good use to give a scientist involved in brutal animal testing his just desserts.
Something I find rather endearing after the fact is the obvious affection that Morrison has for the character of Animal Man. It even carried over to his more recent work. For evidence of this just check out the JLA trade World War III. He gives a shout out to Animal Man with a cameo appearance toward the end of the story (“Hi J’onn, Ellen sends her love.”).
The Bottom Line
You should definitely give Grant Morrison’s Animal Man a look. It’s a wonderful opportunity to check out a more personal tale by one of today’s most brilliant comic book writers (and in D.C. continuity no less). I found the stories to be both enjoyable and thought-provoking, which was a pretty rare occurrence for comic books from the late 80’s not called Watchmen or The
Dark Knight Returns. If you want the chance to check these books out for yourself, you might want to act quickly. You never know if or when D.C. will stop printing them.
So, to steal a line from countless X-Men covers from way back, “Welcome to The Bottom Line! Hope you survive the experience.”