lucy lawless

The Not-So-New 52: Justice League — The New Frontier (2008)

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Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Many years ago, I used to own the two trade paperback volumes that comprised Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier comic. The miniseries is an exercise in reimagining the transition between what is considered the comic book Golden Age (about 1938 to 1956, notable for the introductions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) and that same medium’s Silver Age (1956 to 1970, notable for the introduction of the modern versions of the Flash and Green Lantern as well as the formation of the Justice League in place of the Justice Society). Set over the course of fifteen years, the series begins with the disruption of the superheroic Justice Society in the face of McCarthyism and sees Superman and Wonder Woman go to work for the government while Batman retreats into the shadows. Later, the emergence of new heroes like Flash and Green Lantern, and the accidental transportation of Martian Manhunter from his home planet to earth, arise just in time for the combined forces of two generations of heroes to take on an extinction level threat in the form of a living island populated by sauropods. 

Those two volumes were, unfortunately, some of the many books that I sold before my interstate move eight years ago as I was paring down my belongings. I haven’t read it since, but I recall it fondly, and I remember being very pleased with the animated adaptation’s ability to tell the same story concisely without the omission of too many important details. I even used to own this one on DVD before it, too, was resold in one of my many moves. Although it mostly holds up as a movie, I must have grown a lot since the last time I saw it, as some of its flaws stand out rather clearly these days. 

In the closing days—in fact, the final day—of the Korean War, USAF pilot Hal Jordan is shot down by Korean pilots moments after learning that an armistice has been declared; he is able to parachute into relative safety, but finds himself facing an enemy soldier who is unaware that the war is over, and is forced to kill the man in self defense. His resulting PTSD from this incident causes him to be the subject of mockery from others after discharge, as they consider him cowardly and perhaps too sympathetic to communism. Elsewhere, Martian J’onn J’onzz is teleported to Gotham City by an astronomer running an experiment, who then dies of a heart attack upon seeing the extraterrestrial’s form. A shapeshifter, J’onzz adopts the persona of a trustworthy detective, all while remaining fearful of violence from humans should they see his true form. These three new heroes as well as the DC “trinity” are brought together, alongside a bevy of comic deep cut characters and some who have become more well-known in the interim because of their presence in the CW “Arrowverse” shows, to face off against the living island and the malevolent consciousness called “the Centre” which animates it. 

This is a gorgeously animated movie. It shouldn’t be a surprise that this is a very strong entry into this canon, since the source material was so well loved that it won all three of comics’ major awards, the Eisner, the Harvey, and the Shuster. Darwyn Cooke’s distinctive art style for the comic translates well to fluid motion, and the imagery is evocative of an older era that works well for the narrative. I really appreciate a lot of the artistic choices made here, with the choice to draw Wonder Woman as half a head taller than Superman being a particular source of jot for me. Although the film updates the title to include the phrase “Justice League,” the majority of the story focuses on Hal “Green Lantern” Jordan, and it may simply be that I am a Buffy fan (now and forever), but the choice to cast David Boreanaz, most well known to many as the vampire cursed with a soul, is particularly inspired. Hal feels guilt and shame, but not for the things that his fellow combatants think he should, and is tortured by the blood on his hands, and that’s not only within Boreanaz’s wheelhouse, it’s his forte. Equally genius was the casting of Lucy Lawless to voice Wonder Woman, even if it’s a shame that there’s so little of her in the film; still, she shines in every scene that she is in, and there’s a particular standout sequence in which she liberates a camp of “comfort women,” teaches them to fight, and leaves their former enslavers at the mercy of the freed women. Superman is aghast at this as they are both working as agents of the U.S. at the time, but it’s a well-crafted reminder that this immortal woman has an ethics and morality that is defined by a sense of justice that predates his “American way.” 

Despite Diana’s rejection of it, there is a distinctly jingoistic flair to some of the proceedings, and there’s a strange sense of sincerity to it that was lost on me in previous viewings. It is important to bear in mind that post-9/11 American Exceptionalism was an ever-present shadow on the entire landscape of media produced in the west, and in 2008 we were still a few years out from the point where non-satire mainstream films would be able to be openly anti-authoritarian and question the state again (the dam-breaker being the success of The Hunger Games, or at least that’s where I normally pin the turning point). As a comic, New Frontier was able to be a little more subversive, with the narrative focus on McCarthyism serving as a parallel to the contemporary (2004) witch-hunting and scapegoating of members of government who opposed the Bush Administration’s warmongering in the Middle East. The film also cut (other than a mention in the news) a storyline about a Black vigilante who fought the KKK before being murdered at the hands of a white lynch mob, as another indictment of the idea that the past was a place where things were “simpler” and “better.” Most of what remains is shown through the eyes of our objectively good viewpoint characters: the xenophobia that Martian Manhunter knows exists and cloaks himself against in order to “pass,” the muttering of bar patrons that they suspect Flash of being a commit because of his red costume, and the aforementioned belittlement that Hal Jordan receives from those who mistake his pacifism for cowardice and his PTSD for weakness. All of that disappears in the back half of this movie, however, as the film goes full Uncle Sam at the end, with all of the assembled forces against The Centre being identified explicitly as Americans, and, upon their victory, an excerpt from the JFK speech is played over a montage of the new and senior heroes fighting alongside one another as they move forward with a new (American) destiny. It’s not that the film’s sudden, new, shallow patriotism is bad in and of itself (it arguably could be, but I don’t have that in me today), it’s that it comes out of nowhere. I think that the intent is to show a rejection of McCarthy-era fearmongering giving way to a new dawn, but it’s a little too quick of a turn in a film that runs less than eighty minutes. It’s still one of the best of this series, but something I couldn’t ignore on this rewatch. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Spine of Night (2021)

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There’s a character design in The Spine of Night that I swear was animated to look exactly like Sean Connery in Zardoz.  That should be a strong indicator of the genre-nerd waters this film treads, whether or not the reference was intentional.  A rotoscoped throwback to retro D&D fantasy epics like Wizards, Gandahar, and Heavy Metal, The Spine of Night is a for-its-own-sake aesthetic indulgence on the artistic level of a metal head doodling in the margins of their high school notebook.  If you’re not the kind of audience who thinks giant tits & giant swords make a badass pairing—especially when airbrushed on the side of a van—the movie will not offer much to win you over.  Its story is consistently thin & disposable, but it’s just as consistently good for flashes of metal-as-fuck imagery from scene to scene (“swamp magic,” beheadings, galloping horse skeletons, etc.).

The Spine of Night‘s voice cast is packed with always-welcome celebrity contributors: Patton Oswalt, Richard E. Grant, Joe Manganiello, Larry Fessenden, Betty Gabriel, etc.  I can only claim to have recognized a few of those voices without an IMDb cheat sheet, but the only contribution that really matters is the novelty of hearing Lucy Lawless voice a warrior princess in the 2020s.  She’s a perpetually naked swamp witch, the spiritual leader of her people, and a fearless warrior who unites oppressed communities from many disparate lands & eras to stop a power-hungry sorcerer from using magic for his own selfish, world-conquering ends.  At least, that’s the gist of what I picked up between all the beheadings & disembowelings that the movie’s actually interested in illustrating, with only the vaguest whisper of a plot reverberating onscreen amidst the gory mayhem.

I’m not entirely convinced by the visual majesty of the rotoscope animation showcased here, which I feel like is the entire point of the production.  The crisp, flat line work makes the characters less visually interesting than the detailed backdrops they disrupt (Zardoz references notwithstanding), which feels like a major problem.  There’s something clunky & leaden about the way they move too, as if the original footage they were traced over was accidentally slowed down a touch in the editing process.  Still, I’m enough of a sucker for heavy metal badassery to give the film a pass for what it is: bong rip background fodder.  There are plenty of “adult” animation curios from the 70s & 80s that enjoy ongoing cult-classic status for serving that same superficial function, so why not throw one more on the fire? The Spine of Night is not even the best nostalgic throwback to that era of fantasy animation from last year, though; that niche honor belongs to Cryptozoo.  It’ll have to settle for just being the more gleefully violent of the pair.

-Brandon Ledet

Neil Patrick Harris, Superhero Sidekick

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Neil Patrick Harris wears a daunting number of hats in the show business racket: Broadway entertainer, game show host, sitcom star, children’s book author, etc. He’s one of these well-rounded, over-employed entertainers where you’re never sure how they fit all their various projects in a tenable schedule. One of his regular gigs is voiceover work for various animated projects wildly varying in target demographic, but often hitting that one common denominator in all age-specific marketing: superhero media. NPH has had regular voice acting gigs in the superhero pantheon over the years, even voicing the title role in a long-running animated Spiderman series. He’s only voiced characters in two animated superhero movies, though, both of which fall under the DC Comics brand. That’s maybe not that surprising to most people, as the DC Universe Animated Original Movies brand has dozens of feature-length cartoons under its belt to date. What is surprising, though is that someone as talented & recognizable as Neil Patrick Harris has only played supporting characters in both instances of his movie-length collaborations with DC. Likely a reflection of his busy, no time to dally schedule, NPH’s animated superhero movie specialty seems to be punching up a side character’s dialogue with wry, cocky wit, making them appear more fully developed than they’re written to be. As with many of the projects NPH applies his time to, he’s good at his job.

In our current Movie of the Month, 2010’s Batman: Under the Red Hood, NPH’s sidekick role plays as entirely intentional. He’s cast as just one of two ex-Robins, raised under the Caped Crusader’s tutelage in a movie that’s all about Batman’s struggle with the other. NPH appears in the film as Nightwing, an early adopter of the Robin persona who has since branched out to fighting crime on his own, but still desperately needs fatherly approval from a standoffish Batman. Nightwing is an outsider to the central plot involving a second, younger Robin, but he’s also an essential parallel of it. This requires him to be present, but without enough time to develop his persona. It’s a paradox that’s easily fixed by having NPH on hand to instantly sell the character’s sarcastic, performatively confident personality. It’s the same role he fills as The Flash in the earlier DC animated feature The Justice League: The New Frontier, through for entirely different reasons. The Flash is a sidekick to no one and his storyline is one of the driving plot threads in New Frontier, yet NPH is afforded just about the same amount of screen time & character development there as he is in Under the Red Hood. This is because the film is overstuffed with the backstories & character introductions of a long line of superheroes in the film’s cast, who all divvy up the runtime until there’s barely any left to go around. It’s a frequent problem for anyone who’s familiar with the trajectory of modern live-action superhero franchises, especially the DCEU. It’s also a telling contrast to the intimate story told in Red Hood.

As busy & overcrowded as The New Frontier can feel, it does have an excellent central gimmick. Set in the Atomic Age 1950s, the film feels like a better world where Brad Bird made his animated superhero media in traditional 2D instead of with Pixar. Telling the story of an ancient disembodied force that vows to destroy humanity because of its dangerous nuclear proliferation, The New Frontier is decorated wall to wall with the visual kitsch of a 1950s diner with a sci-fi theme. By setting the clock back to that setting, though, it also requires the Justice League to be a uniformed group of disparate superheroes who spend the entire runtime coming together as a team (and joining efforts of an untrustworthy military) for the first time. Characters like The Flash, Superman, and Wonder Woman already have detailed backstories in place, while more character development is afforded the origin stories of lesser characters like The Green Lantern & Martian Manhunter. It’s likely no accident that more seasoned, well-established voice actors are afforded to the three more static characters (NPH, Kyle McLachlan, and Lucy Lawless, respectively), since their personalities need to be more immediately recognizable than the ones who’re developed through origin stories. The Flash is key to the film’s plot, especially in establishing superheroes as McCarthy Era Others (“What’s with that red costume? Red’s for Commies,”) but he’s afforded almost the same amount of screen time as Nightwing in Under the Red Hood: very little. He’s a well-established superhero reduced here to Superman & Wonder Woman’s de facto sidekick.

From a technical standpoint, the more intimate, self-contained story of Under the Red Hood is more effective as a piece of writing, while the overly busy, origins-obsessed plotting of The New Frontier is indicative of the worst impulses of superhero media storytelling. I enjoyed both films very much, though, believing New Frontier’s narrative shortcomings to be far outweighed by the beauty & charm of its Atomic Age aesthetic. Neil Patrick Harris is employed in self-contradictory roles in both pictures. He is both central to the themes & plots and reduced to glorified cameo roles as sidekick & afterthought. NPH does a great job of making both roles memorable, informing both characters with a punchy, wry sense of humor without fully tipping them into wiseass Deadpool territory. Like The New Frontier, the man’s career is spread into an impossible number of directions and it’s impressive the amount of quality work he produces despite that myriad of obligations.

For more on May’s Movie of the Month, the animated superhero thriller Batman: Under the Red Hood, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film and last week’s profile of its Caped Crusader voice actor, Bruce Greenwood.

-Brandon Ledet