The New Frontier

By Iann Robinson

Purchasing an animated video from either DC or Marvel can be a real crap-shoot, sometimes you get a great one like “Batman Mask Of The Phantasm” and sometimes you get crap like “Ultimate Avengers”. It’s tough to bring a comic book to life, even just comic book characters.

Recently DC released their animated version of “The Death Of Superman” and it was awful. The movie was so different from the classic comic series that it just fell apart lacking any of the charm or rich characters of the original story and ultimately was just really boring.

The thing about a comic book is that between the panels your imagination fills in those blanks and almost creates its own movie and that is hard to duplicate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of animated movies but it’s not easy to get them just right, so you kind of get worried if a book you really love is announced to become an animated film.

That was the case for me when “JLA: The New Frontier” was announced last summer as the next major animated project from DC. I cringed when I heard this because New Frontier is one of my favorite titles of all time. New Frontier is up there with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Ronin and the rest of the watershed titles that helped propel comics from a child’s pastime to actual literature.

Set in the silver age of comics (1957 to about 1970/71) New Frontier tells the story of how the JLA got together and its first battle against a world-ending evil. New Frontier is the brain child of artist/scribe Darwyn Cooke whose unique drawing style and intense understanding of what makes a comic book a work of art has pushed him to the forefront of the medium. I was afraid that the New Frontier movie would lose the freshness of the point of view, the character relationships and I was seriously worried if the Cooke’s Silver Age tinged artwork would transfer well to animation. From the very first frame of New Frontier my fears were alleviated and for 75 minutes I was turned into a 13 year old boy, wide eyed, excited and totally captivated by what I was watching.

New Frontier opens just after World War II when there was still faith in Government, UFO Paranoia, racial turbulence and the constant fear of communism. As man continues to try and conquer everything is doesn’t understand an entity that has developed since the beginning of time called The Center has decided to eradicate our entire species. Hall Jordan (Green Lantern) is a rookie test pilot, Batman is still hated and feared, Martian Mahunter is being pursued by the Government, Flash is seen as a menace and Superman is just a wide eyed do-gooder who has yet to learn that blind allegiance to anyone or any Government is a dangerous thing. The heroes go about their daily lives trying to fit into a world that fears them as The Center grows in power, finally unleashing itself and forcing all the heroes to team up and try and defeat it.

The plot is simple, like a Silver Age book, but where Darwyne Cooke really shines is the relationships and the psyche of the heroes. Flash has an inferiority complex, Batman fears he’s scaring the good as well as the bad, Green Lantern is consumed with a fear that he’s not good enough and so on. Cooke’s gift is to take deep and serious personal drama and fit it within a frame work of a simple story. The way the JLA New Frontier movie is put together really cements this as an amazing movie.

First and foremost Darwyne Cooke’s art translates amazingly well to the world of animation. You actually sit there and watch this comic book come to life. The animators switch between this full range of motion with each character and the background and this weird block of animation where things move all at once. Not only does the animation translate well but the animators were so attentive to details that nothing is missed, even Batman’s purple gloves from the original Bob Kane design.

Next came the inter-personal relationships which were played perfectly. Voice Casting Director Andrea Romano really knows her stuff. She’s done the casting for Batman The Animated Series, Superman, Teen Titans, Avatar, all the major animated series of the last ten years or so. New Frontier boasts a lot of name talent for each part including Kyle Maclachlan as Superman, David Boreanez as Green Lantern,  Jeremy Sisto as Batman, Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman, Miguel Ferrar as Martian Manhunter and Neal Patrick Harris as The Flash ust to name a few. I don’t know how she did it but each voice seems tailor made to the character, even Jeremy Sisto as the new voice of Batman. The script duties were handled by long time animated TV scribe Stan Berkowitz and Cooke himself.

Though there were a few things left out of the story that I wish had remained (mainly Cooke’s angle on John Henry) the spirit and fire of the comic is fully present, even the humor and comic geek inside jokes are there to. Outside of the movie there are two wonderful documentaries (on the 2 disc version) one dealing with the history of the JLA and the other on the history of the Legion Of Doom.

There’s also a sneak peek at the upcoming anime Batman movie (which I think looks awful) as well as three JLA episodes from JLA Unlimited.  All of the elements of New Frontier are wonderfully honed by director Dave Bullock into one of the most entertaining movies I have seen in a long time. I cheered when the heroes won, I was nervous when all seemed lost, in short I was reminded again why I love comic books. JLA: The New Frontier has now not only raised the bar for what comic books can be but also how good animated films should be.