Zero Hour (comics)
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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, 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.
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[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 same (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 elimination of Superboy 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.
The Sandman: Worlds' End is loosely connected as its events are a side effect of the events in Zero Hour[citation needed].
[edit] Story
The apparent villain of the story presented in the miniseries was a character named Extant (see also Hawk), 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
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.
Batman's origin was retconned after the events in Zero Hour. In this version, the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents was never caught nor identified (rendering Batman: Year Two non-canonical), and more importantly, Batman was thought of as being an urban legend. Also, Catwoman was not a prostitute. Finally, 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, it appeared that this more ecumenical solution did not satisfy DC editors either, which lead to the Infinite Crisis event in 2005.
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] Series ending with Zero Hour
- Team Titans (a spinoff of the New Titans)
- L.E.G.I.O.N. '94
- Valor
- Justice League International
[edit] Series rebooted during Zero Hour
- Legion of Super-Heroes & Legionnaires (Post-'Zero Hour', both titles were treated as one fortnightly series, much like the Superman books at the time)
[edit] Series launched following Zero Hour
- Fate
- R.E.B.E.L.S. '94 (replacement for L.E.G.I.O.N. '94)
- Manhunter (Chase Lawler)
- Primal Force
- Starman
- Xenobrood (limited series)
