#dc: the new frontier

[ufonaut]

Doctor, with all due respect... you and your contemporaries had your chance. Faced with something as facile as the fickleness of popular opinion, you proudly walked away.

DC: The New Frontier (2004) #6

[cooketimm]

DC: The New Frontier artwork

[graphicpolicy]

Around the Tubes

Some comic news, and a review, from around the web in our morning roundup #comics #comicbooks

It’s one of two new comic book days! What are you all excited for? What do you plan on getting? Sound off in the comments below. While you think about that, here’s some comic news and a review from around the web to start the day. CBR – DC Librarian Allan Asherman Passes Away At 76 – Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and colleagues. Kotaku – ‘All Of Sony Systems’ Allegedly Hacked By…

[singeratlarge]

SATURDAY MATINEE MUSIC VIDEO: “Green On Red/Frontiers Of Love” 

(acoustic TREADMARKS version prod. by Mark Doyon)—This song is sort of an update on “Brigadoon.” It’s the dancing and music after walking through a night-time snowstorm across a dark, windy landscape, drawn by the promise of a warmly lit window glimmering on the horizon.

 “Frontiers Of Love” emerged from when I was in a Celtic/Scottish music phase. It has been a staple of my live set for many years. I made a "full band" demo of it, then it found new life solo-acoustic, played on a detuned 12-string in an open C tuning. A couple people have detected a Yes influence in this, which I won’t deny (I’m told Jon Anderson likes to write songs while visiting Scotland). However, truth being specific, it was largely inspired by "A Sort of Homecoming” by U2 with a nod to Leo Kottke.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw6XajcIVM

#celtic #scottish #scotland #blair #12stringguitar #opentuning #Yes #jonanderson #leokottke #homecoming #u2 #irish #brigadoon #johnnyjblair #acoustic #singersongwriter #green #red #frontiers #love #treadmarks #snowstorm #dark #windy #landscape

[gffa]

Help, baby Dick Grayson being THE MOST ADORABLE getting to meet Superman is killing me here.

[subbyfoxelf]

[comic & movie review] dc: the new frontier

for a lot of these dc universe original movies, i will have seen the movie before i read the comic. that was the case for new frontier, and i have to say when i got around to reading the comic (which i was not excited for) i found that it actually made a much better comic than it did a movie, and that somewhat improved my opinion about the story as a whole.

even when i had only seen the movie, i noticed that the new frontier felt somewhat watchmen-adjacent. it lacks watchmen’s genre deconstruction, and its politics aren’t nearly as forceful, but that’s hardly surprising. there’s a reason dc wouldn’t allow moore to use canonical characters to tell the story he wanted to tell.

but the parallels are even more obvious when enjoying the story in its intended form. seeing it on the page, with its thick white borders around each panel and impressive full-page spreads and intertextual elements like newspaper articles and investigation notes makes it feel like a much more literary experience. its narrative consequently feels less “boring”/slow and more… measured? deliberate? there’s a pretty big difference with this kind of pacing when it feels on purpose, like it has a point.

i think probably the most important element of the plot that comes across better in print than on the screen is that the menacing threat of the centre, which isn’t even fully revealed until towards the end of the penultimate issue of this six-issue miniseries, feels a heck of a lot more genuinely foreboding and threatening instead of just being a kind of boring and weird antagonist that doesn’t show up until the movie is almost over.

the print medium also does wonders for the clash of style between golden age and silver age heroes, an element that frankly didn’t even really come across in the movie? i do wonder if i would feel differently about the movie if i had read the comic first, but i guess that’s something i’ll never know. and while the comic is a huge improvement (anachronistically, given that it came first) over the movie, it does share many of its shortcomings.

you probably already guessed where i’m going here. this story, in either medium, is some serious american propaganda. like, it goes out of its way to be propaganda. both versions end with a speech from president kennedy for crying out loud. it mostly portrays the u.s. as the good guys in the cold war, the most egregious example probably being the ridiculously contrived scenario where wonder woman rescues a bunch of vietnamese women from viet cong soldiers. because yeah, sure! it was definitely the viet cong soldiers menacing the women of their own country, not the foreign invaders who came to enforce imperialism on them. sure. sure. that’s totally real.

the comic, while still largely misguided, does have two pretty substantial advantages over its movie adaptations in this arena. for one thing, while the u.s. comes across pretty unambiguously as the good guys in the korean war in the movie, the comic actually gives a lot more weight to hal’s pacifism having a point to it, with him explicitly saying he doesn’t think what the u.s. was fighting for in korea is worth killing anyone over.

this is, of course, difficult to reconcile against the comic’s otherwise wholehearted endorsement of the u.s. labeling communism as “tyranny,” but it’s something, and the movie had a whole lot of nothing on this front.

but when it comes to politics, and storytelling in general, the beating heart of the comic is just totally missing. and that’s john wilson, who took on the persona of john henry. the tragic story of john henry, and the iconic panel of a young john henry irons sitting by his grave, is probably the single most affecting thing in this entire comic. it’s the only time the comic’s politics have the vital force of truth behind them. and they just don’t include it in the movie at all.

it completely reframed my opinion of this story. its politics are still deeply misguided, it still seems to buy that the u.s. is an essentially good but deeply flawed country that can do better, that while the government’s responses to communism threaten civil liberties communism is still bad actually. but in spite of that, john henry’s story is something raw, something real. something bigger than the supposedly larger text around him.

and they just didn’t include it at all. there’s like two blink and you miss it references to it. it would be like excising valerie page’s autobiography from v for vendetta. it’s so much more important than the rest of the text around it, it’s just kind of nothing without it. i mean, the comic would still be way better than the movie for all the reasons i already listed, but that just makes it unfair.

comic: b-rank

movie: c-rank

[alphacomicsvol2]

The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

[soranatus]

Different viewpoints Wonder Woman & Superman by Luis Bajo Collados

[milfmisspiggy]

[emin-folly]

This is basically how it happened in the movie, right

[ufonaut]

I know what it takes to win when you’re down. I know how to fight when it’s life or death. [...] I’m Ted friggin’ Wildcat Grant. This is my fight. These are my people.

Ted Grant in DC: The New Frontier (2004) #2

[cooketimm]

DC: New Frontier (Absolute) — Slip case cover, unused & final variant

[browsethestacks]

Trinity

Art by Darwyn Cooke

[vincentvega0721]

JUSTICE LEAGUE / The New Frontier

[gffa]

Thank you, DC comics, for teaching me what the saying "the cat's ass" means, because "something that is super cool" is NOT what I expected "the cat's ass" to mean when Robin is being pulled along in Kid Flash's draft and looking at his back the entire time. I AM GOING TO USE IT ON ALL THINGS I LOVE FROM NOW ON, Wally West, you are the cat's ass!

[smallcloisville]

Alright but Clark looks so pretty here😍

Also found it interesting that Alan Ritchson voiced Aquaman here.