ZERO HOUR

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Could someone tell me what ZERO HOUR was? It came up in another thread, and I have no memories of it, besides that it was a way to tie up some Post-Crisis threads.

[Guest razazteca]

Zero Hour was about Hal Jordan Green Latern going crazy, trying to destroy the universe and recreate it in his own image. Out of this came the Marvel-DC Anagram line of books that merges popular characters in a Elseworlds storyline.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Zero Hour was about Hal Jordan Green Latern going crazy, trying to destroy the universe and recreate it in his own image. Out of this came the Marvel-DC Anagram line of books that merges popular characters in a Elseworlds storyline.

Anagram was a direct by-product of MARVEL vs. DC the crossover that let everyone vote for the results.

[Guest pochorenella]

Basically what happened in Zero Hour was that there still were some after-effects in the space-time continiumm (did I spell that right?) after what happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths. I believe the Time-Trapper was also kinda involved in this affair but I may be mistaken because I seem to remember he died in the series. Hal Jordan was ultimately responsible for what resulted in the end, literally creating a new Big-Bang and re-creating the universe again. Waverider also had a hand in this, since he was mostly aware of what was going on and what was needed in order for the heroes to survive. Jordan wanted to make his own vision of the universe but the remaining heroes somehow managed to stop this and make a normal universe, albeit supposedly one merged with all others. Isn't this what Crisis was supposed to do?

 

Sorry for this lame-ass recap, I'm doing this by memory. I haven't read the series since I first bought it all those years ago. Someone with a better memory than mine please add whatever you think is relevant here.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

Basically what happened in Zero Hour was that there still were some after-effects in the space-time continiumm (did I spell that right?) after what happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths. I believe the Time-Trapper was also kinda involved in this affair but I may be mistaken because I seem to remember he died in the series. Hal Jordan was ultimately responsible for what resulted in the end, literally creating a new Big-Bang and re-creating the universe again. Waverider also had a hand in this, since he was mostly aware of what was going on and what was needed in order for the heroes to survive. Jordan wanted to make his own vision of the universe but the remaining heroes somehow managed to stop this and make a normal universe, albeit supposedly one merged with all others. Isn't this what Crisis was supposed to do?

 

Sorry for this lame-ass recap, I'm doing this by memory. I haven't read the series since I first bought it all those years ago. Someone with a better memory than mine please add whatever you think is relevant here.

Two questions:

 

1. Is it worth buying?

 

2. What changes did this make to the Batman mythos?

[Guest razazteca]

Zero Hour is worth buying if you into collecting the books of the 90s when DC was killing/reinventing all popular characters.

[Guest starvenger]

Two questions:

 

1. Is it worth buying?

 

2. What changes did this make to the Batman mythos?

1. Yes

2. Not a whole lot. I think there were some 0 issues which expanded a bit on his origin but nothing lasting.

 

So what was Zero Hour supposed to be? Well, first you have to go back to Crisis.

 

Crisis was supposed to be the be all and end all of continuity crunchers. The DC mutiverse was to become one cohesive universe. That didn't happen, mostly in part because they didn't just reboot and establish things immediately after, which basically caused a major headache for anybody trying to figure out if a story did or did not happen.

 

Anyways, DC managed to fuck things up again so Zero Hour was created as an "event" to once again reboot the universe. This time, there would be a bunch of Zero issues which would help explain away some of the new continuities. As far as I know the only real major changes made were to Guy Gardner, Hawkman (because as a rule you MUST fuck with Hawkman continuity) and the Legion, which was rebooted entirely.

 

In theory, this made the universe more cohesive. Now, of course, we have Hypertime, which essentially shoots the entire "one universe" concept all to hell...

[Guest Annoyed Grunt]

In terms of Batman, I think the major change was that he never found who killed his parents.

 

It's an okay series, but it's nothing special.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

I feel really stupid asking this, but wasn't the guy who used to be Hawk involved in Zero Hour in some way?

 

I ask this because in some of my DC comics from back then, I came across a short story where the former Hawk(can't remember what his villian name was then) stole some wristband from Waverider and turned into new person called Extant(sp?) and when I saw some promo pages of the Zero Hour storyline, they showed the Extant guy and not Hal Jordan.

 

Am I completely off the mark here or something?

[Guest Some Guy]

Yeah, but he turned out to be Jordan's lackey.

[Guest Annoyed Grunt]

IIRC, he was the lackey for the big mysery villain who turned out to be Hal Jordan.

[Guest AlwaysPissedOff]

Ahhhh... many thanks, good sirs.

[Guest Mattdotcom]

Wasn't Zero Hour what turned Batman from a public hero to "an urban myth Jim Gordon brought over from Chicago"?

[Guest raptor]

Just here to but my head in and say that it's the Amalgam universe, and I don't believe it had any ties with Zero Hour, did it?

[Guest areacode212]

No, Amalgam had nothing to do with Zero Hour. As Zsasz said, it was an offshoot of Marvel vs. DC, where those two cosmic twins (who embody the 2 respective universes) merged, or some shit. Who came up with that anyway?

 

Wasn't Zero Hour what turned Batman from a public hero to "an urban myth Jim Gordon brought over from Chicago"?

 

You could be right. I was never quite sure when Batman became an "urban legend", but I guess ZH is as good a point as any.

 

And yes, probably the main effect ZH had on Batman was that Joe Chill was no longer the person who killed the Waynes. I think this was Denny O'Neil's decision, and the idea was that Batman's motivations were stronger if he never knew who killed his parents.

 

And yeah, the DC property most drastically affected by ZH was the Legion of Super-Heroes. The Time Trapper was revealed to be an older version of Cosmic Boy who had gone insane. The SW6 Legionnaires turned out not to be clones, but versions of the Legion, taken from the past. In the end, the LSH and their younger counterparts ended up having to merge, which ended up fixing time, but rewriting 30th century history. In the next issue, they started the LSH from scratch. It sounds lame, but I thought it was actually pretty cool at the time (I still do).

 

Those final "End of an Era" issues of the preboot Legion by Mark Waid were what fooled me into thinking that Zero Hour was going to be an awesome epic on the scale of Crisis, but it ended up being pretty underwhelming.

[Guest Sassquatch]

Zero Hour was also the storyline in which Extant killed off the Hourman, Dr.Mid-Nite and the Golden Age Atom.

[Guest starvenger]

Zero Hour was also the storyline in which Extant killed off the Hourman, Dr.Mid-Nite and the Golden Age Atom.

Doh!! Totally forgot about the JSA. Didn't this bring about the new Starman as well?

[Guest converge241]

can I just say that while I liked the story this was a huge letdown..they hype for this in the comic stores when this was announced was immense.. still a nifty story/xover but didnt live up to they hype of matching Crisis (which is really how DC was pushing it to the retailers at the time)

 

and yes Starman zero was one of the new titles introduced during the event

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

I bought Batman's Zero Issue:

 

1. He is considered by most to be an urban myth or an invention of Gordon's. This was the main reason he didn't join the JLA in JLA: YEAR ONE.

 

2. I agree with O'Neil. Batman's frustration at being able to save so many, but never being to able to rectify the even t that created him makes him a better character. That way Batman envisions *every* character he battles as the one who killed his parents.

[Guest Sassquatch]

I agree with O'Neil. Batman's frustration at being able to save so many, but never being to able to rectify the even t that created him makes him a better character. That way Batman envisions *every* character he battles as the one who killed his parents.

 

I've always been of the school of thought that if Batman knew who his killer was, then he would have a deeper conviction about trying to prevent such a terrible act from ever happening again with the knolwedge that he can help prevent some other poor kid from ever having to see their parent gunned down in cold blood.

 

Having a face to put on the killer gives Batman and anyone else of his ilk more of a depper conviction about how they should/could have helped prevent the deaths of their beloved ones. While Steve Ditko's school of thought is also a good way of having a fire lit within the hero, having a face to actually concentrate all that hate and sadness gives the hero more of a solid goal towards making sure that no other little girl or boy has to put a face on their parents killer and stop the criminal before it happens to them.

 

I tend to agree with O'Neil in a lot of things but his revamp of Batman's origin is something that I have had a problem with.