30 days of comics I love #6: How would you like to help save the world?

DC: The New Frontier #6 

By Darwyn Cooke 

Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier series is a modern masterpiece, using the dusty Silver Age heroes to say a heck of a lot about America, produced with some of the most gorgeous art ever made for a 21st century comic book. Some of what it has to say might be a little unintentional - the big 'heroes walk' shot of this series in this final issue is slightly undermined by the sheer whiteness of it all - but a lot of it is very much on the nose.

It all gets very heavy in the epilogue, with one of the great JFK speeches interspersed with collages of a great heroic age for DC's heroes, but I still find hope in what New Frontier says about the best aspect of the United States - that it's a place where people from incredibly different cultures and backgrounds can join together for the common good.

It's most obviously there as they all team up to fight the bit floating alien island that wants to wipe out humanity, with the Flash standing beside King Faraday and the Blackhawks against this existential threat, and doing it with bravery and honour.

But it's also there in the cherry on the sundae moment when Aquaman shows up, and wasn't needed to spear someone with his trident or bash them with mind-controlled killer whales, he's just there to help, and comes in peace to save everybody's best friend.

America has its issues now as much as it did in the period that New Frontier depicts, and in the era in which it was published, 20 years ago. The John Henry sequences in New Frontier are still painfully relevant, all these years later. But the spirit of helping out because it's the right thing to do is also part the American dream, and it's easily still the most important.