Often, when a comic-book super hero movie comes out, I feel inclined to do a writeup about the character. I didn’t really feel the need with the new Green Latern movie. It’s not just that I don’t like him, or that there aren’t good yarns available, but because it seems to me that a good Green Lantern story is kind of rare. Especially these last few years. Also, even though I’ve really only read modern re-interpretations about him, the geek in me thinks that the original 1940s Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was better than any of the current Lanterns, including Hal Jordan (who always seemed like a cocky jerk to me).
I did, however, recently read a fantastic series called The New Frontier. The story is really about the formation of the Justice League in the 1950s. But its also, in large part, a Green Lantern origin story.
We begin with super heros from the 1930-40s being forced to retire by the government (and their government agent, Superman). New threats keep popping up, and new heroes appear to fight them off. J’onn J’onzz (a.k.a. The Martian Manhunter!) is involuntarily brought to earth, and runs across Batman. The Flash gets his super-speed and starts his career. And we meet Hal Jordan, and eventually see him get his ring. There are also other character peppered throughout, like Adam Strange, Wildcat, Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow.
The New Frontier was written and illustrated by Darwin Cooke, and he was perfect. His artistic style may be more basic and cartoony than I usually like, but I thought it fit the story very well. If you’re up for an all-around good comic book, pick this up. I was able to get this whole whole series a week or two ago on sale for $6 over at comixology.com, but it looks like they might have upped the price again. There was also an animated cartoon based on this series that I thought was also pretty good, and you can rent it from Amazon.
