"DC: The New Frontier" A Novel Concept that Simply Doesn't do Enough

 


    I can't say I particularly enjoyed this comic. Yes I am a pretty big DC fan and so I read through it all. Yes, I went into this comic largely blind and supposedly because James Gunn wanted to use it as a strong influence on the DCU, a universe I am highly anticipating, especially as Lanterns is just so good. Even still, I left feeling pretty underwhelmed. Maybe I'm just not that much of a fan of the silver age of comics, maybe I'm simply too young, or maybe it just was kind of whatever. Let's talk about it.

    The nicest thing I can say about this comic is that it's fine at best. Don't get me wrong, the premise is novel, it sounds good. Wikipedia described it as a story that "bridges the gap between the end of the Golden Age and the beginning of the Silver Age in the DC Universe." This all sounds great on paper, but in practice you're just kind of left with a very strong feeling of "meh." It's an interesting alternative history that's for sure, but I don't think they really do enough with it to truly impress me in any single regard. Basically, the story is about ushering in a new generation of heroes after the government decides to outlaw them after WW2 (by the way the stuff involving Hitler and the Spear of Destiny sounds kind of convoluted and stupid I'm glad it's not really brought up much anymore). Eventually though, an enemy emerges that forces everyone to once again suit up and come out of hiding.

    The issue? It kind of doesn't do anything that you haven't seen before. This idea of superhero's being outlawed? The Dark Knight Returns, though I do recognize that they focus much more on that aspect and it's like significantly darker than anything this comic would even dare touch. The origin stories of the new superhero's? Definitely more boring. I thought they were going to do something more with Martian Manhunter posing as a detective in Gotham City, but he only really gets a couple of interactions with Batman. Don't even get me started on Green Lantern. He only gets his ring like 70% of the way into his arc, then proceeds to only use it to power some experimental ship he flies for the rest of it. He doesn't make any cool constructs or even really use his ring to fly and make a suit until the story is 98% over.

    Like it kind of reads like it might be a classic Justice League origin story, but it's really not, and that's what it boils down to. This was released in the mid 2000's. It's not really actually transitioning anything. It's just harkening back to an era I never read, I never had interest in, and performing a transition that was already a bit sloppily and messily fixed for plenty of years. I specifically say an era I don't have interest in, because I'm sure for some people this is great, but for me this all just seems unnecessary. Don't get me wrong, the art style is novel, but at the same time it just doesn't do much for me story-wise.

Final Score: 40/100

    Do I plan on writing reviews for every single comic I do? I don't know, maybe? Like I've been on a big comic book binging read as of late so it'd kind of be a lot to write reviews for, hence why I've gotten back much more comfortably into the five paragraph structure I did for a while. Maybe I just do one paragraph reviews for some of the shorter ones. Like I just read Civil War II from Marvel and frankly that one just kind of sucks. Like do I really want to write a whole review for that? So maybe this'll be a one-off, we'll see.

    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Whiplash" I Did Not Understand This Film as a Child

Image
      Rewatching Whiplash  for the first time in ages, basically since I was a child, I can't help but point out the fact that frankly the only scenes I remembered was the yelling, the bloody ones, and the one where he puts raisinets in popcorn (because I've never had raisinets or seen them and thought it was pretty weird and still do). Basically, what I'm saying is that to many people, this movie is frankly a lot of style over substance, it's technically a film about jazz, but if you come in with that mindset you're going to be disappointed. There's no love letter to the greats, there's no homage to the beauty of music, or freestyling, this movie is entirely about the pursuit of greatness and the idea that friction and pressure are the tools used to mold diamonds in the rough.     And for the most part it's pretty compelling. I'm not saying I agree with the teaching styles of Terence Fletcher, far from it. I mean when the cost of "doing busines...
Read more

"McKinley Dixon - Magic, Alive!" A Sonic Masterpiece

Image
    I remember when my friend Sweaty, first recommended  Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? to me. I was floored. Frankly, I'm as basic as it gets when it comes to rap or hip hop music. I can count on one hand the artists from that region of genres that I enjoy, and one of them is Kanye West who I listen to in shame these days. Regardless, I fell in love with the blend of jazz and rap that Dixon brought to that record, so much so that when it came time to listen to this record I decided not to listen to any of the singles beforehand. After all, for artists I like too much I usually can't resist seeing what singles they're putting out, and for records I care less about I usually don't worry about spoiling myself. Of course, that's not to say that the track-by-track reviews I'm about to do are my first listen, I did want to give this album an initial listen when it first came out, just in case some of the songs took a while to grow on me, so without further ado, my track-b...
Read more

"Creature Commando's" Surprisingly Good for Seven Episodes

Image
    Honestly, this show was very much a tale of two halves for me. If you had asked me my opinion on this show after about two or three episodes, I would have been lukewarm on it. The plot felt pretty formulaic, and the only time I really managed to care about this show was when "The Bride" was on screen. Now, don't worry. There won't be any complaints about "woke" or how they ruined Frankenstein as a DC character, because frankly I didn't care too much about him or his role. But his appearance did mark by far the best part of this show, and that was shift away from your standard "team of misfits' show towards something that felt more real.     Now, don't get me wrong, this season is only seven episodes long you won't be blown away by intricate stories of how actually they're all the good guys, but what it does make you do is care about the characters, which is really hard with a show of this length. I mean seriously, whenever I see ...
Read more