DC

New Frontier reenvisions the superheroes DC Comics launched in the late 1950s by placing them firmly in the Cold War milieu that seldom surfaced in the original stories. The results could be ponderous but aren't, thanks to author-artist Cooke, who freshly reimagines the earliest exploits of such hoary heroes as the Flash and Green Lantern, and offers compellingly unorthodox versions of some venerable superstars: he portrays Superman, for instance, as a smug government lapdog. Cooke's intelligently retro art style is perfectly suited to the task at hand. Its cartoonish simplicity, though unfashionable among today's detail-obsessed comics fans, possesses nearly matchless elegance and dynamism. Especially effective is his reliance on rectilinear panels that convey the sweep of 1950s widescreen movies. Despite its decades-old setting, New Frontier is the most exciting recent superhero comic, and testimony to the enduring power of DC's iconic heroes. It's complex enough to captivate current comics fans yet compell