This 'Frontier' fighter wouldn't back down

The graphic novel “The New Frontier” is a flat-out masterpiece. If you haven’t checked out the epic by Darwyn Cooke that re-imagines and reframes the Silver Age characters of DC Comics, it's part “The Right Stuff” and part “Watchmen,” and all of it is done in Cooke’s sublime retro-style art.

Cooke was wandering around the DC booth today, giddy about the upcoming animated adaptation of "The New Frontier" for DC's fledgling straight-to-DVD line of original movies. There will be a surprise teaser for the movie Friday at the premiere of “Superman: Doomsday.”

As it stands, “The Final Frontier” has some compelling moments and sharp social commentary about the 1950s; in one scene, Superman, the conservative patriot, is shocked to find Wonder Woman in a Korean village celebrating with the local women who just killed the soldiers that raped and abused them. Cooke said there was a lot of “spirited debate” among the movie team about excising that scene and other edgy sequences.

“Going in, the only thing I was worried about was whether the movie would keep all the spectacle and heroics but lose the themes that comment on the issues of the 1950s. I told them that if they didn’t want that they shouldn’t have bought the property. This is what it’s all about.”

And how did the struggle go? “That scene is in,” a grinning Cooke said.

-- Geoff Boucher