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

10. It Reimagined The Silver Age For A New Generation

Chances are the first thing that comes to mind when people think of the 'Silver Age' of DC Comics will be Adam West and Burt Ward battling wits with Frank Gorshin's Riddler, shark-repellent Bat-Spray in hand with a groovy musical accompaniment. Now, that may be a fair assumption for an era as characterised as it is lampooned for its camp tendencies, but the way Cooke reinterpreted DC's formative years managed to retain its quirks, while at the same time injecting them with a grounded historical context, akin to Watchmen but in a manner far more befitting of the DCU's most well known and cherished individuals.

The classic costumes of the '50s and '60s were drawn masterfully, penciled and coloured with a bright and vivid pallet that perfectly contrasts with the dark and tumultuous reality of the early years of the Cold War. Make no mistake, whilst Cooke unashamedly embraced the aesthetic of the Golden and Silver Age of the DC Universe, this book is first and foremost a reverent and blistering analysis of the apparent 'youthful optimism' of the 1960s - embodied by the renewed optimism of the Kennedy administration - and with it the violence of confrontations inherently propelled forward by a rapidly changing world.

Using superheroes to chronicle the social changes of these two incredibly influential decades was an absolutely brilliant concept, and one that still holds up today.