New Frontier Question

[saildog]

I still have a lot of my stuff in storage from my recent move so I can't easily lay hands on my copy of New Frontier to verify this, but I made a recent discovery related to New Frontier that I find interesting.

If I remember correctly, there is a point at the beginning of the story where Barry Allen is watching TV in his apartment when Iris calls from Las Vegas. I seem to remember him watching TV and the program was a Western called Johnny Thunder on the Dumont Network.

I found this on the Web yesterday and it makes that little inclusion of Johnny Thunder seem pretty relevant.

Aside from being a harbinger of a new comic book genre, which would become important for DC (and comics in general) during the 1950s, Johnny was a harbinger of a practice that became increasingly prevalent at DC during the 1950s, '60s and beyond — naming new characters after old ones. The Flash, Hawkman, Robotman and dozens of others have been revived over the years ...

(emphasis mine)

http://www.toonopedia.com/jthundr2.htm

Given that the whole theme of New Frontier was the transition of the Golden
Age to the Silver Age, I have to think this little inclusion, though a blip on the radar in the comic, was by design.

Any thoughts on this? Am I on the right track here?

[jds1911a1]

intriguing I trhin that's right gotta put it in and check but Johnny thinder was indeed a western comic in the 50's from National pub (aka dc) so I can see it the in joke nod whether from Bruce Timm or even Darwyn Cooke the original author who was a child of the 50's

[thunderbolt]

It was in the comic, too. One of Cooke's many little nods to the comics of the time from DC.

[johnnystorm]

And in that 1950S era the TV Western would have been one of the most popular choices for viewing, so it's doubly fitting.

And Johnny Thunder was a pretty good series, one I wish DC would revive, if only for a story or two. Ran for a long time in All-Star Western, along with the Trigger Twins. It was a semi-crossover to the superhero theme, in that Johnny Thunder had a mild-mannered secret id as a schoolteacher, changing his clothes and haircolor to become JT. And if you think Clark Kent's glasses was a poor disguise, consider that nobody connected JT and his alter ego including the Sheriff, his own father, when the total disguise consisted of wire-rim glasses and black hair dye!

I'd love to see the straight-shootin' TV style western hero appear in an issue of Jonah Hex, mixing it up with that type of gunfighter (provided they don't treat Johnny as a clown, just a cowboy hero with a different style from Jonah).

[thunderbolt]

Was the western JT supposed to be an ancestor of the Golden Age Thunder?

[The Toyroom]

^ Actually the western Johnny Thunder is the ancestor of Bouncing Boy of the Legion.