10 Reasons Why 'The New Frontier' Will Always Be DC's Greatest Graphic Novel

2. Hal Jordan Is Handled Wonderfully

Green Lantern New Frontier
DC Comics

There's a lot to be said about Hal Jordan. He was the first human Green Lantern, the famed intergalactic enforcer of law in sector 2814, an embittered friend and enemy of Sinestro, and a resurrected hero that presided over the resurgence of the Green Lantern brand. The character is a bit of a bore though - a stereotypical male non-entity that has been rejigged as many times as the DCU has had crises. However, his plight in The New Frontier is both engaging and riveting, making new fans of the Air Force pilot at a time when he was unremittingly dull.

Darwyn Cooke's Hal Jordan is a veteran of the Korean War who spent his time above Pyongyang engaging in pacifistic aerial dogfights, until in a tragic turn of events he was forced to take a life on the day a ceasefire was agreed between the North and South.

Jordan carries this experience with him for the remainder of the book, seeing his murder as an act of senseless cruelty. This, along with his relationship with Carol Ferris and his eventual rise to prominence as a Lantern makes the character far more compelling than he has ever been before. Hal is very much the human voice throughout The New Frontier, and a character everyone can easily root for. It's an origin story worth revisiting, and it's wonderful Cooke did so.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.