Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $75.00
It’s dangerous going onto a comics message board, you hear stuff. You find recommendations for stories you may not find any other way – if you decide to follow a few, say goodbye to your money too. Sometimes it isn’t works that are mentioned but names. Names like Darwyn Cooke. I’d never come across the man, but there was a lot of mention about this story of his. It was supposed to be very smart, clever, innovative – well, a great comic basically. I still wasn’t sold though, then I read the story spans 17 years. 17 years? I was intrigued, so I waved good bye to a stack of cash and gambled on Absolute New Frontier being as good as its reputation.
Superheroes have tended to have a strange relationship with time as it doesn’t really seem to apply to them– there’s always sufficient time for all adventures but no one ever seems to age. To tell a story that emphatically acknowledges time and its effects even, for New Frontier is a tale of societal change, is to do something unusual. To add in a theme of hope over fear, optimism over pessimism makes things harder yet this is what Cooke does. Even more impressive is that that the progression through the years feels natural, the jumps don’t feel forced and the start and end are perfectly chosen.
It’s been a long while since I’ve bought a book and trusted the author to enspell me, to hook me to a point where I’ll keep going. I’d forgotten how much fun it is. 400 pages of story – gone in an afternoon! I blitzed through this but wasn’t trying to hurry, it was just that easy to read. Mysteries were set up, players introduced, events come along and intersect, relationships developed. All the while this is set against the backdrop of the world in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The fears of communism and nuclear obliteration are competing with the hope that other technology offers – cars, planes, television and so forth.
The story opens with a superhero registration act in place as a response to fear of communism. The act requires heroes to publicly identify themselves. The act remains in place for many years. Will it be repealed? Later in the story, Batman observes it will be when the heroes are needed. As ever Batman’s cynicism is accurate but this is not a story of cynicism, far from it. If any character embodies Cooke’s story it is King Faraday, a government agent who does anything he has to in order to protect the US. In the process he’s bloodied his hands but, in his soul, would like a better way. Only at the end, as the heroes come together to fight a threat to the world does Faraday find the way he’s sought. In the end we see a clash of good and evil at multiple levels, going from the human to the fantastic and victories are won. The fear that has stifled the heroes is banished, the evil they are set against is defeated.
Well, so what? Hum-drum, predictable and done before surely? I’d have to disagree. I haven’t come across a story that invokes the era of the 1940-1950s as well as this one. Cooke works in references to how the aspects of race and gender were seen and how that affected people, the politics of the era are covered with appearances and mention made of McCarthy, Nixon, Eisenhower – the speech at the end is one of Kennedy’s from where the title comes. Yet – all of this stands on its own: If you know something of the era then you recognise the names or attitudes, if you don’t, it doesn’t matter because the story explains it all anyway.
I’d argue far from being predictable Cooke’s tale is radical for our time. We live in a time when we’re told of the necessity of hard acts, of the need for hard choices, that the world is more dangerous than ever. The world New Frontier talks of may be some time back but it isn’t that far from where we are now, in a way, similar fears are still around – albeit in new guises. A story that says the necessary route is not needed, a story that refutes the need for acts that compromise us.
It would be one thing for Cooke to have written this epic but he’s drawn it as well. The style he uses is one of those deceptively simple ones. One where you look at it and think it would be easy to copy, but as soon as you try you find it’s anything but. Nothing is placed by chance, a keen sense of design fills every page and it is here the Absolute page size comes into its own for it allows the art details to be truly appreciated. I’m certain I’ll read this again and see points in the art I missed first time around. It’s just stunning and unerringly excellent throughout.
Other features in this edition are an introduction from Paul Levitz and an afterword from Cooke. There’s a sketchbook and behind the scenes section. The best feature for me was the annotations which show both how much detail how much went into New Frontier and how rich the source material is. There are also some wonderful lighter comments – one concerns the identity of Captain Cold! There are also extra story pages but I’m not in a position to say what they are, after all, this was my first time reading New Frontier! The series originally saw print as 6 64-page comics, so somewhere there’s 16 extra pages added. Paper quality is excellent but even better is the binding. Sometimes with hardbacks the binding can be severe and you have to fight to hold the pages open – none of that here. You can open the book fully and the pages flow easily. The slipcase is very easy to get the book in and out, which can be the one weakness of these editions.
If it isn’t obvious by this point, I loved this book and it’s a wonderful edition. Were it not for the existence of Absolute Sandman I’d place it at number 1 in the Absolutes collection, but it’s likely to get knocked off this coveted position. Well, second place isn’t always bad! I’ll also be checking out his work on the Spirit comics he’s now doing.
Ben Crofts is resident in Essex, works in London and has found comics and philosophy mix surprisingly well.