I dare not tell you any more about the plot of THE NEW FRONTIER than that. I'm sure that, despite the high price of the individual issues and the fact that DC will be re-releasing them in two separate trade paperback volumes, you'll be wanting to buy this series and read it yourself from start to finish, in the same way you read KINGDOM COME - and for much the same reasons. That earlier series to some degree changed the way we look at the DC heroes, and, possibly even more than IDENTITY CRISIS will, so will THE NEW FRONTIER.
I don't make that comparison lightly, nor am I attempting to engage in mere hyperbole for its own sake. Both miniseries attempt to define what makes a hero why anyone would dress up in a silly costume and go out to risk his or her life to save the lives of others, and to what sort of limits and beyond such an occupation can push that person. So far, IDENTITY CRISIS has addressed the dark side of that question, grounding its action in our contemporary world, a world that constantly feels as if it's one step from the abyss. In THE NEW FRONTIER, Cooke addresses the opposite side of the question and grounds the action in the 1950s, a time period no less fraught with anxiety than ours and yet one still willing to give itself permission to hope for the best.
At no point in the entire series is this connection between the two eras more evident than this issue, which ends with a nine-page epilogue containing a speech addressing the specific ailments of our society. At first it sounds like Cooke is tying the whole work to some political statement about the status quo in a way we've grown used to in contemporary comics. It's not until the final page of that epilogue, itself part of a glorious two-page spread featuring the heroes of this piece, that one finds out that the speech in question was delivered by John F. Kennedy over forty years ago. The message of this epilogue and of the three pages that follow it is that we've been here before, whether we recognize it or not, and just as we prevailed before, we'll prevail again. Or, to put it more clearly, as Cooke does, "It's going to be okay!" After reading THE NEW FRONTIER, you just might find yourself believing him.
Oh, yes the artwork's cool, too.
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