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

10. It Reimagined The Silver Age For A New Generation

DC The New Frontier Hal Jordan Darwyn Cooke
DC Comics

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.

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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.