Over the past 15 years, animation has been moving steadily away from “traditional” hand-drawn looks to more and more computer-generated images.  Watching old episodes of Batman:The Animated Series, I am shocked at how “crude” most of the images seem.  Then I sit back and realize that it is the rough look that I enjoyed so much when watching the series first-run.  With Justice League on Cartoon Network, the images looked sleeker and crisper, but seemed to lack humanity.

Enter Justice League: The New Frontier.

This straight-to-DVD movie is based on Darwyn Cooke’s successful graphic novel of the same title.  Cook wanted his story to center around the look and feel of the heroes of DC’s Silver Age.  This was a time period that he grew up with and felt that some today’s versions of our favorite heroes had strayed too far from.  His story is one of simple means:  a threat forces our greatest heroes to band together to defeat it.

The movie is beautiful from an animation standpoint: great visuals, fluid motions, full of humanity.  Like all of the DC animation projects over the past 15 years, the voice casting is spot on.  David Boreanz has the right amount of cockiness for the role of Hal Jordan, aka The Green Lantern.  Make no mistake: this story is more than the origin of the Justice League; it is the origin of Green Lantern and how he became the man he is now.

The DVD version watched is the 2-disc version.  Its extras include:

• Audio Commentaries with Darwyn Cook and the production crew
• Documentary on the history of the Justice League — excellent documentary
• Sneak Peek at the next project, Batman: Gotham Knight
• Documentary on the Super-Villain
• Comic Book Commentary from Darwyn Cook
• 3 episodes of Justice League Unlimited aimed at highlighting certain themes in New Frontier

My advice:  watch this for great animation and story, particularly if you grew up on heroes and mythology.

Midway through high school, DC Comics decided to embark on a mission not heard of in comics:  a “reboot” of the entire DC Universe.  Over the years leading up to the mid-80’s, the creative minds kept coming up with new things and alternate universes, but after a while things got messy and fans got tired of trying to figure out what was taking place when and where.

Enter Crisis on Multiple Earths…

This series allowed for a logical way to merge everything and do away with certain storylines and characters.  What resulted was the birth of the major story arc for DC.  Of course Marvel was upset because they had done something similar with Secret Wars 2 years earlier…

After sales evened out and DC was back to one earth and one set of storylines, DC was now faced with major anniversaries approaching for Superman and Batman and no ideas as to what to do.  Then someone asked the simple question:

What if we killed Superman?

That one little question launched what would become known as the Doomsday story and would send the entire world rushing to a store they hardly visited: The comic book shop.  The Death of Superman was such a hot commodity that it was selling for over $100 an issue for at least a year after its release.

So, Matt, why are you talking about print media when this is about movies and DVDs?

Simply put, to set the stage….

After successful runs on TV with Batman, Superman, and the Justice League, Warner Bros. decided to greenlight an animated version of the Doomsday story.  Too bad they did not go with the original story.

One of the problems of adapting books, even comic books, is that stuff has to change and be left out.  The only things that remained the same were:

• the last half of the fight scene between Superman and Doomsday
• the funeral
• the showdown between the real Superman and a clone

Everything else was different — is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  The story shown is a good streamlined alternative, but I prefer the original.  The voice casting was good and the visuals were great.

The DVD had the usual features plus a couple of documentaries and a sneak peek at Justice League: The New Frontier.

My advice: check this out if you like cartoons and superheros — very enjoyable….