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The point, the entire time, was to represent my experience, and as it evolved, my original intentions on the naming of the column began to slip away. During the first wave of my comics experience, throughout most of the 1990s, I found that it had become typical, beyond the Superman and Batman family of titles, for the majority of my interest to capture what I would later coin as the main page slogan, my alternative views on the mainstream: books others scoffed at, Extreme Justice, Superboy and the Ravers, Sovereign Seven, were among the foremost of my enjoyment. I treasured the nearly year’s worth of Grant Morrison’s answer to the new gritty hero archetype, Aztek, and Takion, the only new character ever added to the Jack Kirby Fourth World. Other DC readers were being thrilled by James Robinson’s seminal Starman; I had Impulse. My interests were as contrary then as they would prove during the early years of my second wave, when Shadowpact, The Next, and Tad Williams’ Aquaman, to name a few, would join my experience.

Somehow I developed the belief that my purpose in writing at PBR was to provide that view, the alternative mainstream perspective, which was as much worth a quarter as any bargain comic you could find in that bin. It just started to seem like that wasn’t right anymore. 52, happened, of course. Nearly a year after its conclusion, I still find myself fixating on it. Its successor, Countdown, has now provided an alternative view all its own on what a weekly series can be. Amazing Spider-Man ships every seven days, now, too. I gradually began to realize that my true purpose here at PBR was to provide a voice for the weekly argument comics are more determined now than ever before to make, that they’ve got more than enough material to cover a fan’s interest, not just on a monthly basis these days, but, as has been stated, each and every week.

So, a relaunch of sorts. A new, perhaps more appropriate name. DC will be wrapping Countdown up soon, and then launching the next on, Trinity. If there are still doubters, a third year of this sort of thing must necessarily prove them wrong, the growing strength of the movement to move mainstream comics beyond what they were once, limitedly, seen to be, mere funny books with little substance but happy memories. They’re a true force of storytelling today. And here, every week, Weekly will strive to cover just how the creators accomplish it.

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Of course, the funny part about this relaunch is that it comes with some rather odd timing. The work schedule has been absolutely brutal recently, and it only got worse last week, the erratic nature of it finally conspiring to block me from my weekly visit to Heroes and Dragons. It’s been postponed until tomorrow. I may get there again, for this week’s comics, by week’s end, if I’m lucky (luck didn’t pan out for Bone: One Volume Edition, by the way; yet another postponement has plagued my chances of reading the rest of that saga). Still, as I’d been writing last week, I did have a number of things lined up for a couple more reviews, which have now transitioned into the body of my column. The new era thus begins like this:

Justice League: The New Frontier

DC has recently gotten into the game of direct-to-DVD animated features, alongside Marvel, starting with last fall’s Superman: Doomsday. It’s not the first time the company has done it; during the height of the Bruce Timm Batman era, following the success of the theatrical Mask of the Phantasm, several other original features were put directly in stores. The difference these days is that DC seems intent on bringing to life classic stories from its print adventures (not to contradict me, though, the upcoming Batman: Gotham Knight is another original, a melding of anime and Batman lore rather than, say, Frank Miller adapted for kids, which is what I’d originally thought). Doomsday was “The Death of Superman,” and this one…is exactly what you think it is. Justice League “Bwa Ha Ha” International given its due.

Just kidding, of course. It’s Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier, the reimagined Silver Age origin story that followed in such footsteps as James Robinson’s The Golden Age and Watchmen. DC has been throwing a ton of support behind the emerging legacy of the project, beginning with the Absolute version (only a handful of books have been reprinted in this fashion; the aforementioned Watchmen, Miller’s Dark Knight sagas, Kingdom Come, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman) and now this animated adaptation. Having recently watched the Cuban Missile Crisis film Thirteen Days, it was fun watching a superhero adventure embrace the same kind of JFK optimism that was breaking through the early 1960s, after the gloom of the Cold War had descended and just before the Vietnam War would threaten to consume the nation entirely.

It’s not hard to understand what Cooke originally saw as potential in creating his story from the emerging Silver Age. A special feature on the history of the Justice League goes into some detail on what had necessitated DC’s interest in relaunching its superhero line in the first place, a public suddenly ripe for the kind of storytelling not seen since WWII, a community of adventurers coming together to spread the notion that great things were still possible, if only people were willing to try. The film version has the figures of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, as they were at the time, already established personalities, while a number of new heroes, Hal Jordan and Martian Manhunter chief among them, learning their way into the fray.

Part of the film, as with any superhero story, pivots around a villain, The Center, who more than anything else embodies the dread of change, which each of the heroes as the story progresses must embrace. Batman, for instance, realizes he needs a Robin, which is one of the moments, beyond both Cooke’s Timm style and the pointed direction this film ultimately has toward younger viewers, helps in establishing within the story itself the audience meant for the film. I’m not saying older fans won’t get a kick of it, but the upcoming live action Justice League movie might provide more of the kind of thrills they’re looking for.

Still, fans of DC in general have a lot to enjoy here. Martian Manhunter’s unexpectedly significant role speaks as much to his importance in the story as to his recent comics adventures, where he has struck back out on his own, beyond a mere League staple, as a character with his own story to tell. Lucy Lawless’s voice-work as Wonder Woman speaks much more to the Diana who snapped Max Lord’s neck than to more traditional portrayals, and the character’s role is shaped, whether by Cooke’s original design or by the general direction Lawless thus provides, in that fashion. The only revelatory voice work done here is Jeremy Sisto as Batman. Unlike most of the Hollywood interpretations, even the best of them, Sisto provides an underlying uneasy menace to his version which is a welcome distinction, especially since Batman is ultimately not all that important within the story, with his highlight being the Robin development.

New Frontier is a light yet weighty production, a cross between youth and adult appeal the Timm animated projects have been dancing for more than a decade now. Timm may have no role in this one, but it’s clearly his influence that made it possible. Cooke as well cannot be overlooked, since it’s his vision of the original comics that made it possible. Perhaps a fan of his story may have a different take on all of this, but for me, I couldn’t have asked for a better film.

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Bizarre New World: Population Explosion

Just imagine if people could fly. No, really! Skipper Martin originally posed this in his three-issue Ape Entertainment series from 2007, in which everyman Paul suddenly discovered he had the ability to fly, only to have someone else steal his thunder, just before everyone else on the planet learned they could fly, too.

Infused with the unique perspective so many others have tried to capture, how superpowers would work in the real world, with real people and all their petty impulses and dreams, BNW became a new story for a new century, something of the old, but something definitely new. Martin’s interests, very early, were also demonstrated on studying the physics involved in human flight, as so many scientists and theorists have pondered over the centuries, and these two elements return in Population Explosion, a 48 page one-shot Ape will soon be publishing that explores the consequences of the flight revolution, as well as Paul’s continued concerns about its implications, whether personally or, as perfectly embodied in a running radio commentary, outwardly.

Paul is the perfect choice to lead a story like this. As embodied by artist Christopher Provencher, he is the quintessential comic book fat guy, the very last person you would expect to be grappling with these issues, but stumbling along all the same from one needed quirk to another, from his discussion with an indoor skydiving instructor to his ongoing innovations for flight needs, this time including flashlights duck-taped to his wrists, which give his appearance an unconscious My Secret Identity appeal. In a way, Bizarre New World becomes the reverse Heroes, inspired more by television (Greatest American Hero) than by comics themselves, and this is not a bad thing.

Martin in his storytelling matches Paul’s instincts, never straying far from the immediate experience and thought process, recalling Brian K. Vaughan’s recent Escapists comic in more ways than the art, of the main character. For a comic that in itself doesn’t expand on Paul’s story as much as explore the consequences around him, staying true to this perspective might have been a daunting task, but Martin accomplishes it.

Bizarre New World remains one of the best true alternatives in superhero comics.

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Okay! So I’ve also be wading through Tad Williams’ City of Golden Shadow for the past couple of weeks. It’s an economy-sized (by which I mean, if you can’t spend your money on more than one book, then this one will cover the page count of several) volume, the first of four Otherland books. As I’ve been writing for a while now, Williams in his comics endeavors (The Next, Aquaman) has become one of my favorite writers, and Golden Shadow is my first experience with him in strictly prose terms. If nothing else, the guy is definitely thorough (which is how you get economy-sized), but it’s his continuing ability to imagine fantastic realities few others even approach that is best on display here. Originally published back in 1996, the story is deeply immersed in a future where the Internet has become a virtual reality (long before Futurama did it). In an age that has since come to embrace fantasy as a newly-invigorated source for cinematic material, the right screenwriter could turn this story into an experience unlike any of the other books that have recently been translated for the big screen. It would be, to use a common pitch, like Lord of the Rings meets the Matrix. I wonder if anyone’s considered it.

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