Justice League: The New Frontier--Brilliant.

I took advantage of a rainy Saturday afternoon to view the Justice League: The New Frontier DVD, and then took advatange of the brief power outage that temporarily took my modem off-line (because, as one may suspect, otherwise I live on-line) to watch it again with my husband. Even two viewings was time very well spent--although the run-time comes in a smidgen over an hour, the animation is pretty damn good, and the voice-talent is especially high-caliber.

Visually, the animation was impressive, especially in the way attention was paid to color and historical style. The New Frontier in a way chronologically bridges the gap between the Golden and Silver Age of comics, and the way costumes are rendered and the over-all style suggest a blend of that. But what I really appreciated were the touches that take the viewer into that 1950's frame; like the swingin' Las Vegas scene near the beginning, with an old school Rat Pack-era Vegas crooner being interviewed by Barry Allen (the Flash)'s fiance, Iris. The clothes, the decor--very 1950's. (My husband, on his viewing, listened for a minute to the voice, there, and said--"Hey, isn't that Joe Mantegna?" I said, "Isn't it--that *is* his Dean Martin impression." So we checked the credits, and damned if it wasn't. Even for a really small part, that was good casting.) Even the beginning credits have a certain style reminiscent of the early-sixties (the sequence reminded me a little of James-Bond-style animated credits--I don't know why, exactly, except they had the same cool feel.) Even the use of color really leant to creating that era's feel--just really vibrant. Cerulean skies. Red mesas as Hal Jordan and Ace Morgan tear-ass to the Ferris testing site.

This is definitely not Superfriends. We are drawn into a post-WWII world where heroes face a more complicated world. Where the Justice Society is no more and Hour Man is dead. Where Wonder Woman and Superman can disagree at just what justice is. It's also a world where Hal Jordan--"damaged goods" having been hospitalized after his Korean War experience, might be viewed as "just a little pink," and the Flash might be accused of being an outright Red.

This JLA origin-tale doesn't dwell too much on Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman--the known quantities, other than to briefly touch on Superman as an alien (maybe as the kind of "immigrant as super-patriot"?) and Wonder Woman also as a person who has to reconcile America's values with her own, and of course, Batman is the dark knight whose chosen mask can frighten children (and probably sometimes the government.) The story is really more concentrated on Hal Jordan (who doesn't really develop into the Green Lantern until late in the story, the Flash, and the Martian Manhunter, J'onn J'onzz--voiced by David Boreanaz, Neil Patrick Harris, and Miguel Ferrer. These characters were pretty well-defined, and quite capably voiced.

The voice-work on the film as whole benefited, I think, from having good actors do the job. Embodying a superhero can invite over-acting, but from Kyle MacLaughlin's patriotic Superman, who wants to believe in the purpose of the job he does, to Lucy Lawless's Amazon princess Wonder Woman (a little taller than Supes, one notices), even to the gritty and gruff vocalization of Jeremy Sisto's Batman, the characters come across believably (as believably as animated caped crusaders can.) Even Hal Jordan's desire to fly among the stars, and the Flash's touch of insecurity, come across well.

The historic touches, like mentions of McCarthyism, or Carol Ferris's Jackie Kennedy suit and pill-box hat near the end, kind of pull the DC universe closer to ours for me. It ends with JFK's New Frontier speech and a monatage of DC Heroes, and I am just a little choked up--no, really. I am. Because the theme is more than a little about why heroes do what they do, what would make them band together. I also got a little misty at a speech Superman makes to motivate this diverse band of military and caped people, facing a Big Bad known as the Center (as a shorthand, I guess I could describe it as--Lovecraftian?)

I am soooooo getting the graphic novel, if only to flesh out the bits I know must have been edited out--because I did get the feeling that there may have been more to to the story. It's not a lack, per se, but if you read any of my reviews, you'll see that if I like anything, I tend to like more of it, even better!