At the end of WWII, the Losers make the ultimate sacrifice to rescue an Axis scientist and his military escort gone missing in the Pacific. In the early 1950s, Senator Joe McCarthy calls for all mystery men to reveal their identities and be registered, leading to the disbanding of the JSA. And at the end of the Korean War, a young pilot named Hal Jordan takes a human life in self-defense for the first time. The world will never be the same again...
With DC: THE NEW FRONTIER, Darwyn Cooke has created the most startling revision of the DC Universe since the CRISIS, and if you find yourself vaguely reminded of Alan Moore's groundbreaking WATCHMEN series, you shouldn't be surprised. Cooke's vision here is far more complex than simply imagining what the events of WATCHMEN would have been like if Moore had used actual DC heroes, though. For one thing, apart from the HUAC Committee demanding the identities of America's superheroes, there's no other similarity between the two series - that, and a willingness to be brave, radical, innovative, of course.
The three (or is it four?) storylines of the Losers' doomed final mission, the last moments of Hourman, and the rescue of Hal Jordan by a helicopter also carrying Lois Lane seem at first to have no connection. (You'd also be forgiven for thinking this was Hal Jordan's story, particularly given the cover, but it's far more the Losers' story at first than anyone else's, and a hauntingly moving one at that.) If there's a theme underlying the entire book, it's one of loss of innocence, the giving up of the idea that our heroes are untouchable and that they always win the day. The Losers lose; the JSA resign in shame; Superman is brought down by Batman while he attempts to bring the Caped Crusader in for questioning; and Hal Jordan forgets the Korean phrase for "The war is over," leading him to kill a man rather than die himself. There's a wistful sense of regret to all these stories - even Hal's boyhood meeting with Chuck Yeager has this sense about it, though there's nothing specifically negative about the scene. The "new frontier" that Cooke is writing about, to borrow a phrase from the print article that forms the book's physical and thematic center, is one primarily of "American tragedy." Had the comic book industry been able to look at the world around it back in the 40s and 50s and report it as it truly saw it, this is what it might have looked like.
Purists may balk at the notion that the Losers ever died in any other way than their final appearance in the CRISIS,or that Superman, Batman, and Lois Lane were around in the 1950s, or that Rex Tyler died in 1952; but then purists shouldn't be reading this book in the first place, unless they've got a very open mind and willingness to be thrilled by a new approach. There's no better word for Cooke's work here: it is thrilling, and the thought that we have another five issues of this kind to look forward to is even more thrilling. It's too soon to say whether NEW FRONTIER will have the same impact as CRISIS or WATCHMEN had, but the early evidence suggests it'll come damn close.
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