Title: Justice League New Frontier
Review: Well, I'm sure most of my readers will be familiar with the plot of New Frontier, but just ine case: The plot follows the 3 characters which kicked off the Silver Age, namely Martian Manhunter, the Barry Allen Flash, and Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. They team up with existing 50's era heroes like Superman and Batman to defeat an ancient menance that threatens to wipe out humanity.
Now, having watched the movie and read the series, I have to give th film 2 big thumbs up. The story was very well animated, and the voices they chose were damned near perfect (and had some big names). I especially enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris's performance as Barry Allen. My only real complaint was the length. The story clocks in at a mere 75 minutes. Whole storylines had to be cut for time, including the Losers and virtually all of John Henry's story (he was mentioned in a newscast, but had no scenes). Not only is that a real shame for the missing story, but it can be downright confusing at times. At one point, Barry Allen makes the decision to fight "The Center" and arrives at Cape Canaveral to join the fight. At almost the same time, Green Arrow, Adam Strange, and the Blackhawks also show up to help out. And that's all the intro we get for any of those people. People who are not total dorks like me may not have known who the hell those people were, they're not even named!
Other than the run-time, I have very little else to complain about. The animation was top-notch, the voices were great, and the story, as we knew ahead of time, was awesome. I picked up the 2 disc special edition from Best Buy, which came with a little Hal Jordan figure, complete with tiny Lantern. The extras on the DVD made the extra few bucks a no-brainer. The one that stuck out in my mind was the half hour long special on the history of the Justice League, complete with character profiles and interviews with various industry icons (including Stan Lee!).
Green Arrow Goodness: Not much, really. GA shows up with Adam Strange and the Black Hawks to help fight The Center, then appears in a few crowd scenes. That's about it. He does have one super awesome scene though: At the start of the fight against The Center, the Air Force launches a massive air strike as a distraction for The Flash. Batman joins them in the Batplane, but gets in a bit of trouble when about half a dozen flying dinosaurs attack at once. Bats manages to fight most of them off, but just as the last one is about to take a bite out of him, Ollie shows up
in the Arrowplane, and kills it!
Go get the film kids, you won' be disappointed!
As you can see, it features the full color artwork of the full membership of the Justice League of America, right up until the end of the satellite era. This is a famous bit of artwork. In fact, I have a t-shirt with this exact design. The artist isn't credited, but I'm sure one of our devoted readers will be able to tell me who's work it is.
The calendar is incredible. Lush artwork everywhere, comic book covers, background images of individual panels...Green Arrow getting his own month. What's not to love?!
