Absolute DC: The New Frontier 15th Anniversary Edition Hardcover – November 26, 2019

This book holds pretty much everything a reader could want from series collection. I mean everything. There is the story, obviously, and then dozens of interesting and insightful bonuses. Preliminary sketches, additional issues, Cooke's annotations, prologues and epilogues are all included, among several other things. It is perhaps the most extensive behind-the-scenes look I have ever seen in collection featuring both the original work and the 'bonus features.' Certainly some of the supplementary material is not all equally interesting, but I never felt that something was simply tossed in. I never thought 'who would care about this' or 'they must have really been struggling to find material.' This is meaningful material, adding value to the over all work, not detracting from it. Most enjoyable for me, the follow up issues, published years later, are included, thus providing the reader with absolutely everything story-related published related to the New Frontier. I cannot speak to the merits of the absolute edition, but there is nothing missing from this collection.The story, though long, layered, and complex, is immensely enjoyable and very satisfying. It is not perfect writing, and it does admittedly drag at a few points, but when considered as a whole, simply remarkable. Cooke handles dozens and dozens of characters, both well known and forgotten DC figures, with an almost palpable affection and respect. New Frontier is driven mostly by Hal Jordan, refreshingly written, but is able to be carried by characters I had, frankly, never heard of prior to this book. While I am a huge fan of both Superman and Batman, it was nice to see them take a back-seat for certain parts of the story. Readers are treated to a fantastic look into the iconic, yet underappreciated, hero Martian Manhunter. This, for me, was the highlight of the entire story. J'onn is as much an outsider as Superman, but his alien nature is more obvious, and so too is his insights into earth's culture.Cooke matches his text almost perfectly with his illustrations, which is a nice transition to praise his art. The simplistic, dynamic pencils Cooke provides are neither the most detailed nor exciting pencils comic book readers will see, yet I cannot imagine any other style appropriate for this story. This story is set in a simpler, more streamlined and retro America, and Cooke beautifully conveys this. Each and every hero and villain is distinct: there are no 'generic' faces here. The colors, likewise, reflect the themes of this book in an exceptional way. While a couple of changes from prior-to-later panels are distracting (Flash's eye color changes from brown to blue somehow), the reader can tell that Cooke and his colorist were always on the same page. Cooke is not my favorite artist, but his talent and style are optimized in this work, and his passion for his creation is evident from start to finish.So if you've stuck with me to here, it should be pretty obvious on whether or not I recommend this book. YES. The price is an unquestionable value, almost guaranteed to ward off buyer's remorse. This is a hard work to compare, not because it is unmatched in artistic or writing skill, but because of the scope it deals with. This is not light reading, but it is also not laborious reading. This truly is the best route to experience New Frontier. I think it is cheaper than buying the two separate volumes, and certainly cheaper than the absolute edition. Nothing the reader could want in a collection is missing. While perhaps not as seminal as some other DC stories, New Frontier carries a powerful message and is among the most rewarding reads I have experienced among comic books.

This review is dedicated to the memory of this book's creator, Darwyn Cooke, a true artist who, more than most, now embodies the overused saw of "gone too soon".While I was around for the first release of "New Frontier", it would take 20 years, a late-night reading cram session at the rack of a local comic shop that had the two separate collected editions and I suspect maturity as a person to truly appreciate it. Comparisons to "Watchmen" are the knee-jerk response to reading this sweeping work, but a better point of comparison (cited in the appendix) is James Robinson and Paul Smith's "The Golden Age". Just as the latter used the metaphor of WWII mystery men to dissect the brutal political and psychological realities of America in the late 1940s to early 1950s, "New Frontier" uses its various heroes (human, super and, in several cases, pre-super) as a crowbar into the 1950s mixture of wide-eyed optimism and barely-acknowledged fears.Even if I were inclined to disclose the nature of the Big Bad of this story (all I'll say is that it is a uniquely Lovecraftian take on an old DC concept), summarizing this story seems downright impossible. It's not just because of the vast scope of its story ranging from a forgotten mission in 1945 to the public debut of the Justice League of America in 1960 (encompassing historical figures as diverse as Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Walter Cronkite and Edmund R. Murrow along the way). But so many characters cross this stage, adding new perspectives,filling in previously obscured details and drawing connections between long-time DC heroes that even the most diehard DC Comics scholar may not have suspected could be conceivable.Still, some of these characters stand out more than others. There's Hal Jordan, whom we see probably the most of all of our heroes, following him from boyhood to Green Lantern as he learns the true meaning of courage. There's John Jones, the alien from Mars turned private detective whose ongoing culture clash with 1950s America is a source of both humor and pathos. There's Colonel Rick Flagg, a vicious, unrelenting killer ofmen who is convinced that he has to be that way in order for the world to remain a place worth defending. But the unexpected breakout character for me, in spite of her relatively short screen time, is Wonder Woman. More than any other writer in the modern era, Cooke managed to strike the perfect balance of comics' most famous Amazon, portraying her as just as uncompromising as a warrior as she is compassionate of all people and things she protects (a point made even more apparent in the New Frontier special story "The Greater Good", also included in this volume). It will always be one of my greatest regrets that Mr. Cooke never got a chance to write the mainstream DC Universe Wonder Woman...it would have been extraordinary.Mr. Cooke's art style is a deceptively simple looking blend of 1950s style illustration mixed with Batman: The Animated Series (Cooke worked on the latter, by the way). The lines of it are clean, unshowy and always let you see what you need to see. The most impressive part about the art is how it is able to convey the sparkling idealism of places like Vegas and car shows just as well as it highlights the inner and outer darkness of Jim Crow-era Tennessee and the last moments of a creative writer as he leaves behind a warning for the world.It is said that creative individuals live on after their death through the body of their works. Several artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, C.C. Beck, and, of course, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster have managed that feat of immortality well into this century. My fondest wish is that "New Frontier", arguably the crowning achievement in the life of a career that was long and yet not long enough, ultimately stands up to the same test of time.