Zero Hour (comics)

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Zero Hour


Cover to Zero Hour#1, the penultimate issue of the series.
Publisher DC Comics
Schedule weekly
Format limited series
Publication dates September 1994
Number of issues 5
Main character(s) Parallax
Extant
Justice League of America
Justice Society of America
Creative team as of September 1994
Artist(s) Dan Jurgens
Inker(s) Jerry Ordway
Colourist(s) Gregory Wright
Creator(s) Dan Jurgens
Jerry Ordway

Zero Hour: Crisis in Time was a 1994 comic book miniseries and crossover storyline that ran in DC Comics. In it, the one-time hero Hal Jordan, who had until then been a member of the intergalactic police force known as the Green Lantern Corps, mad with grief after the destruction of his home town of Coast City (during the "Reign of the Supermen" storyline) and having obtained immense power as Parallax, attempted to destroy, and then remake, the DC Universe. The crossover involved almost every DC Universe monthly series published at the time. The issues of the series itself were numbered in reverse order, beginning with issue #4 and ending with #0 (i.e. 'counting down to zero'). The series was written and penciled by Dan Jurgens, with inks by Jerry Ordway.

This series is noted for its motif of the DC Universe gradually "fading out" as events reached their climax.

Contents

[edit] Background

Zero Hour: Crisis in Time was intended by DC as a belated follow-up to their landmark limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, and was indeed subtitled "(A) Crisis in Time". It promised to do for the inconsistent future timelines of the DC Universe what Crisis had done for its parallel worlds: unify them into a new one.

The event served as an opportunity to reconcile some of the problems left unaddressed by Crisis and other problems that had been unintentionally caused by it. In particular, the revised characters of the post-Crisis universe had been rolled out gradually, with DC continuing to feature the old versions until the new versions were launched, some of them a year or several after the first wave of revised characters were published (i.e. Superman: The Man of Steel, Wonder Woman Vol. 2, Batman: Year One). The character of Hawkman was one of the most problematic, since the revised version didn't first appear until 1989. This raised the question of what version of Hawkman had been seen since 1986. (He had been retconned to be both the Golden Age Hawkman and a Thanagarian spy.) The Legion of Super-Heroes faced similar problems with the eliminations of Superboy and Supergirl from DC continuity. (Valor, aka Mon-El, a character with similar powers, had been recast to take his place as the Legion's inspiration and most powerful member.) These and other retcons were not always well received by readers and often introduced new problems.

[edit] Story

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Parallax (Hal Jordan), about to recreate the DC Universe in his image. Also pictured: Metron of the New Gods, Extant, The Spectre, and Superman. Art by George Perez from Green Lantern Gallery #1.
Parallax (Hal Jordan), about to recreate the DC Universe in his image. Also pictured: Metron of the New Gods, Extant, The Spectre, and Superman. Art by George Perez from Green Lantern Gallery #1.

The apparent villain of the story presented in the miniseries was a character named Extant (see also Hawk and Dove), who was using his temporal powers to unravel the DC Universe's timeline. In a confrontation with members of the Justice Society of America, Extant aged several of them (removing the effect that had kept these heroes of the 1940s vital into the 1990s), leaving them either feeble or dead. The true power behind the destruction of the universe - caused by temporal rifts of entropy - turned out to be former Green Lantern Hal Jordan, now calling himself "Parallax." Jordan had previously gone insane, and was now trying to remake the universe, undoing the events which had caused his breakdown and his own murderous actions following it. The collective efforts of the other superheroes managed to stop Jordan/Parallax from imposing his vision of a new universe, and the universe was recreated anew, albeit with subtle differences compared to the previous one. This 'blanking out/recreation' of the DC Universe was reflected in many of the tie-in issues; near the end of several of the tie-ins, the world began to disappear, and the last page of the book (or in some cases, several pages) had been left blank.

Hal Jordan, whose descent into villainhood outraged some fans, was later exonerated of his crimes in the 2004-2005 miniseries Green Lantern: Rebirth, which revealed that Parallax was a separate entity that had possessed Jordan, and was responsible for his murderous actions. Eventually almost every person seemingly murdered by Hal Jordan/Parallax had returned from the dead or was shown to have somehow survived.

[edit] Outcome

Cover to Zero Hour #3 (actually the second issue), by Jurgens & Ordway. Pictured are the Golden and Modern Age Green Lanterns, Superman, Impulse, Hawkman and the Golden Age Flash (holding Hourman).
Cover to Zero Hour #3 (actually the second issue), by Jurgens & Ordway. Pictured are the Golden and Modern Age Green Lanterns, Superman, Impulse, Hawkman and the Golden Age Flash (holding Hourman).

DC published a fold-out timeline inside the back cover of Zero Hour #0 which identified various events and key stories which were part of its newly singular timeline, and when they occurred. Although fixed dates were given for the debut of historical characters such as the JSA, the debut of the post-Crisis Superman was presented as "10 years ago" and subsequent dates were expressed the same way, suggesting that the calendar years of these events were fluid and relative to the present rather than fixed, as a way to keep the characters at roughly their present ages.

The Legion of Super-Heroes was completely rebooted following Zero Hour, and the various Hawkman characters were merged into one (even though, contrary to the storyline's purpose, this created new sets of contradictions and confusions). Each ongoing series at the time was given an opportunity to retell (or clarify) the origin of its hero(es) to establish the official version in this revised continuity, in a "#0" issue published in the subsequent weeks after Zero Hour. They resumed their previous numbering or went on to #1, for new series, the following month. Several series took new directions following Zero Hour; for example, new teams were formed in the Justice League books, Oliver Queen's son Connor Hawke was introduced in Green Arrow, and Guy "Warrior" Gardner discovered an alien heritage which gave him different powers.

One, and only, major part of Batman's origin was retconned after the events in Zero Hour. In this version, Batman never caught or confronted the killer of his parents (thus rendering Batman: Year Two non-canonical), and more importantly, Batman was thought of as being an urban legend. Also, Catwoman was not a prostitute but rather lived in the low rentals area of Gotham. Finally, contributing to a plot point not fully explored in Batman: Year Three, Dick Grayson was legally adopted by Wayne.

But this "warm reboot" did not solve all continuity matters - "Who is Hawkman?" actually became less clear - and some fans and creators felt that multiple worlds and timelines were an asset (rather than a hindrance) to the DC Universe. For those and other reasons, DC later introduced a variation of the pre-Crisis concept of the Multiverse, in the form of Hypertime. In the end, this more ecumenical solution did not satisfy DC editors either and lead to the Infinite Crisis event in 2005 which revived and brought back several pre-Crisis concepts.[citation needed]

Zero Hour also served to launch or end several ongoing series. A few of these were dictated by the changes in continuity that came out of the story, but most happened simply because it provided a convenient marketing opportunity to start new series. However, each of the new series (save for Starman) were cancelled after a couple of years, due to poor sales and/or critical reception. Starman led to a revolution in comic book writing, starting a trend of books that both moved the history of the DC Universe forward while respecting the past, such as the current JSA series, which is a successor to Starman.

[edit] Tie-In Issues

[edit] Series ending with Zero Hour

[edit] Series rebooted during Zero Hour

[edit] Series launched following Zero Hour

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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