Zero Hour 20th Anniversary Fan Retrospective

The year is 1994. It started on a Saturday.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is established. Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed in the right leg by Jeff Gillooly, ex-husband of her rival Tonya Harding. Harding is later banned from the sport of Figure Skating. Lorena Bobbitt is found not guilty of "dismembering" her husband. China gets The Internet. Apple releases the first Macintosh computers with it's new PowerPC microprocessors. The largest High School arson happens somewhat ironically in Burnsville, Minnesota. Nelson Mendela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. John Wayne Gacy is executed. The O.J. Simpson murder trial starts. The Lion King is released. Microsoft announces that they will stop selling & supporting the MS-DOS operating system. It's revealed that former president Ronald Reagan has Alzheimers. Jeffrey Dahmer is beaten to death in prison. The Sistine Chapel is reopened to the public after a 10 year restoration. Martin Lawrence is banned for life from Saturday Night Live due to sexually explicit jokes. Star Trek: The Next Generation has it's series finale. The Independent Film Channel (IFC), Home & Garden Television (HGTV), the Game Show Network & DirecTV launch. The first Old Navy locations are opened in Northern California.

Harry Styles (of One Direction), Dakota Fanning, Moisés Arias (Rico from Hannah Montana) & Jake T. Austin (from Wizards of Waverly Place) are born. Kurt Cobain, Cesar Romero, Harry Nilsson, Telly Savalas, Dinah Shore, Jack Kirby, John Candy, Richard Nixon, George Peppard, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis & Peter Cushing all past away.

A very emo looking photo of me circa
the early 90's

I am 11 & am unaware that most of this was even going on. One thing I was a bit more aware of: Comics.  What was happening in comics in '94?  Scott Summers & Jean Grey got Married. Rick Jones & Marlo Chandler also got married (but not to Scott & Jean). The soon to be over long, confusing Clone Saga starts in the Spider-Man comics. The Phalanx Covenant starts in the X-Men comics & sets up the new status quo for that line of books. But that's all Marvel. What is happening over at their Distinguished Competition?

Bruce Wayne is back being Batman after the almost year & half long Knightfall saga. Bart Allen (also known as Impulse who goes to be Kid Flash & even the Flash for a short time) is introduced. Kyle Rayner is introduced & becomes Green Lantern. What else was DC doing? 

Oh yeah…. They spent most of the month of July & the first 2 weeks of August wiping out their entire comic book universe & replacing it with a slightly altered version. What did they call this annihilation? 

And my friends, it is AWESOME! Zero Hour will never be a “was” to me. This event was partly a sequel to last time they wiped out their entire comic book universe & replaced it with a slightly altered version in 1985's "Crisis on Infinite Earths".  Zero Hour's tagline was "Crisis in Time" after all.

As far as I can tell the two main reasons for Zero Hour:

A. To clean up some of the messes caused by aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths. As DC gradually rolled out the new versions of characters, some of the old (Pre-Crisis) versions were still being featured in their books several months to a year later. These old versions were interacting with the new versions of characters. Zero Hour attempted to help clean up the history of a number of characters like Hawkman (his New/Post-Crisis version didn't show up until 1989 but a "Hawkman" had been used in comics during 1986, 1987 & 1988) and the Legion of Super-Heroes (LSH), the teenage super heroes from various planets in the 30th Century. The LSH's history had to been drastically changed due to the events of the first Crisis. Their inspiration (Superman's adventures as Superboy) didn't exist in continuity anymore. Their history has been kind of messed up ever since. The LSH have been rebooted at least a half a dozen time (pretty much ever decade since has had at least 1 reboot of the LSH). There had had also been a number of other retcons (Retroactive Continuity) made to help fix the problems that had popped up in DC's comics over the almost decade in-between the two events.

B. Zero Hour was there to realign DC’s personal timeline. It's heroes were getting old. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman & others had been around for about 50 years. They had decades of adventures behind them & yet still were only be in their 30's somehow. Zero Hour comes into attempt to fix that problem by condensing the universe! DC had already pretty much thrown out their heroes’ adventures from the 40's & 50's by saying that their heroes had started out in the 1960's. But that was still 30 years worth of time! So Zero Hour rejiggers the timeline to have their heroes have only been around for "about 10 years".

SIDE NOTE: This is twice as long as the Heroes have been around after DC once more wiped out their entire comic book universe & replaced it with a slightly altered version in an event known as The New 52. Even this time scale is murky given various conflicting bits of information in regards to The New 52.

So… in the comic book it self: what is Zero Hour exactly about?   Time is unraveling at both ends. The past & the future are slowly disappearing. Massively old character characters like Vandal Savage (he started out life a caveman): GONE! People from the future in the present like Booster Gold (originally from the 25th century) & Bart Allen (originally from the 30th century): GONE!  There is a wave of white "nothingness" slowly making it's way through time (This is similar to the waves of Anti-Matter that destroyed various alternate realties in the first Crisis). Also, the walls between the various realities are breaking down allowing people to more easily cross between them. Yes, even though Crisis on Infinite Earths had "done away" with the Multiverse, it was still there 9 years later. As seen in a bunch of other books after this one: the Multiverse never left, it was just harder to travel between. The people of the DCU just plain forgot about the existence of the multiverse until certain events reminded them that it was there (how much of a multiverse is actually there has fluctuated widely over the years). This eating of time from both end was seemingly being controlled by a character called Extant, a character who part of an earlier time traveling themed series called Armageddon 2001 (from 1991). But Extant was just the harbinger of the man in charge: The villain known as Parallax who in a snazzy new costume was also SPOILERS ON A NOW 20 YEAR OLD SERIES: Hal Jordan the Green Lantern!!!!!!!!!

Hal Jordan revealed as Parallax & the man
behind the events of Zero Hour in
Zero Hour #1

Hal had become overcome with grief & gone a bit cray cray over the destruction of his hometown: Coast City. This happened as part of the aftermath of  "The Death of Superman" storyline which ran from October 1992 to October 1993. Hal's road to crazy town was mostly told in "Emerald Twilight" a storyline in his own book which came out earlier in 1994. Yes, Zero Hour is a follow up to a lot of things partly due to the trend in the 90’s comics to have them connected to each other (gotta read & buy them all!).  How did Hal become Parallax? Hal went on a killing spree of pretty much anyone connected to the Green Lantern Corps. He took all their powers, the power from the Central Power Battery on OA (which he also destroyed) & had a bit of a Highlander moment. Once there was only one Green Lantern: He had enough power to do what he wanted.

What was that? Go to Disneyland? no. Drive cross country rediscovering America one person at a time? already did that. Solve all the world’s problems? well… sort of. He sets about trying to destroy THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE! Why? So he can remake it again but this time his hometown back in place & everyone one who was living there won't be all dead & stuff. As nice as that sounds, the Heroes are having none of this! They try to stop him but MORE SPOILERS ON A NOW 20 YEAR OLD SERIES:  Hal does end up erasing the whole universe on August 2nd, 3:32 pm (most likely eastern standard time). This highly specific time of day was revealed in a DC “house ad” for the series which showed up in DC’s books 3 weeks after the destruction happened. August 2nd is also the day when the 2nd to the last issue of the event came out & when Hal’s destruction is presented. Why the ad came out so late I’m not sure.

The ad that mentions the date & time
when the DCU was destroyed

Hal may have erased the universe but is stopped from creating his new universe (That's Jim Shooter's job!). It’s on August 9th when a slightly altered version of the DCU is put back in it’s place & no one seems notices the changes. This is basically what happened in Zero Hour & I have glossed over a whole bunch of things. They were important things but not to the story’s larger picture.

But as I said I'm 11 & I know none of this. I didn't even read Zero Hour when it came out. I didn't have access to it. Little 11 year old me didn't know of any comic book stores in my area. I didn't even know such a thing existed (give me a few years & I will). I had just gotten into super hero comics the year prior. I had been reading comics since the Summer of  '91. In 1994, I was mainly getting my comics from the magazine department at grocery stores mostly, book stores & odd locations like Sam's Club (Wal-Mart’s version of Costco). These places were not selling the limited series, just a few of the monthly books (or in Sam’s Club’s case: selling packs of comics from the past year or so back). In the random DC comics, I'd see the ads for those series so I knew they existed, I just wasn't sure how to get them (Maybe I was just going to the wrong grocery store?). Years past & these unknown comics fade into the background. My thoughts moved on to other comics. At the time comics weren't as big a part of my life as they are now & my not knowing there was such a thing as "back issue bins”: I didn't go looking for them to find out what they were. Even when I did become aware of these things, Zero Hour wasn't on my mind. I had probably forgotten all about it. Some of my first back issue bin purchases were for early 90’s Disney comics.

The nifty looking fold out timeline that set up the new
DC timeline which was included in the final
issue of Zero Hour

More years pass, I dive deeper & deeper into comics. About a decade after I started to read comics, I start to obsess over then. This is partly due to the fact that A. I got my 1st job which mean I had money & B. I knew of a few local stores so I had greater access to both past & current comics. I would say over half of my comic book collection has been purchased in the last decade or so. As I'd search these back issue bins, I'd pick up books that interested me (a guiding principal I still follow). There would be scattered books from this era of comics. I would see ads for things.  Things I had probably glossed over, forgotten about or just never seen. There were cool things. Interesting things.  Things I should search out for. In comics from this period of time, there would be a reoccurring phrase. An ad here, a mention there. This sparked something. What was this "Zero Hour" that I keep seeing?

My first "answer" to what it might be was a tie in issue to the series: Shadow of The Bat #31. There on the top of the cover with it's exploding clock of an O in Zero (It wasn't until few years later that I even realized that was even to be an exploding clock).  The cover was different then the other Batman comics in the bin around them. It looked like one from the 40's or something but it was from 1994. I bought it to find out what it was all about. I read it & it was AWESOME!

SIDE NOTE: I'm a big fan of time travel & alternate reality stories, two things that heavy factor into Zero Hour. Even more so in the tie in issues. The first series that truly followed was Marvel's What If , an anthology series revealing the various alternate takes on the events of their universe. Oddly enough some of my first issue of the series were some of the last from the second volume.

For awhile this one issue was all I had that was Zero Hour. I'd pick up other comics that had ads for the series but no Zero Hour. Each “new” Ad I’d find made me more interested in the series. As the years went on I’d pick up scattered other tie in books. Almost all of these tie in books tell you nothing of the main series or even connect to each other. Without the main series to be it's spine, they were only one off alternate reality tales for me. They might as well be listed as just Elseworld tales.

SIDENOTE: The annuals from Summer 1994 were all Elseworld themed & one of the first DC books are really gravitated to was the Superman Elseworld annual. But that is a story for another day.

Cover to the collected edition

As I got more into comics, I had started to attend comic book conventions. At the time I didn't have a big local convention (like I do now) but there were various small conventions I could go to. As I got more into comics, I would come prepared with a list. A list of "I want to read you!" books. As the years past, no Zero Hour. Zero Hour was never really on my list but it was there in there back of my mind. I couldn't even order a copy of the collected edition. It was listed DC Comics’ website but was taunting me with 3 little words: OUT OF PRINT. It had existed at one time but existed no more. Happily there is currently a collected edition once more in print & I have purchased it partly on principal. From what I can tell it is essentially the exact same collected edition as before just with some cosmetic changes (different logo, new barcode, etc.). 

A few years ago, I was at a small local comic show. It was held in an elementary school gym. As I roamed around the room, I looked at the various comics for sale. I came to one table, there were various comics laid out. Among them was Zero Hour. The complete series with some related promotional items.  They were priced at slightly above cover price per issue but I didn't really care: I was going to buy the series! I think if I remember right the guy at the table gave me the promo stuff for free. About a year after that, I found the series again at a thrift store for a quarter an issue. At that low of a price, I bought it just to have it. So now I own 2 sets of the series.  Interesting I now have both versions that that were put out. 1 set for the direct market (i.e. The comic book store) & the other one was for the newsstand, where I started my journey into comics.

Also in the last few years I gotten a few more promotional items from the series (even an in store display kit). I have 1 of my copies of the final issue signed by writer/artist of the series Dan Jurgens.  I have pretty much every major tie-in issues. There a number of more minor tie-in issues that I don't own. Why? Partly because they a bit harder to find and/or they might not interest me. I have found that as a get to the less big name titles the "alternate reality" stories get less & less cool or just weren't really there at all. There are about a handful of issues I don't own. I probably won't getting them.  My Zero Hour collection will most likely always remain unfinished but I don’t know. I’d probably still buy anything Zero Hour related item that I don’t own (only if it’s priced reasonably). I also own a number of the “Zero Month” comics which came out directly after Zero Hour & help set up the new status quo. My interest in the series has even driven me to have the series logo printed on to a shirt because I wanted to have a Zero Hour t-shirt!

By this point, I have now covered a few basic questions in regards to Zero Hour but one remains: Why? Why Zero Hour? What is it about this event comic from 1994 that I didn’t even read when it came out that I’ve become so attached to. The series is far from the greatest thing ever. I know that. I am not completely blind to that fact. When I read it I can clearly see problems with it. Part of the reason why I’m not doing a review of the series is I don’t think I’d have much to say about. At times it can be quite boring. Plus if we got right down to it: I find the tie in issues a lot more interesting then the main series it’s self. 

The trio of ads that heralded the coming of Zero Hour

So… why do I like Zero Hour so much? It basically comes down to a few things, the biggest one might be is Nostalgia. This is a series from about a year into my reading of Super Hero comics. When I started to read DC comics, there were certain comics that I was more drawn to then others. Zero Hour has that look & feel I was drawn to. This is due to the fact that when I look back on those early DC comics, a name kept popping up: Dan Jurgens. I didn't know this at the time but he was all over those early DC comics that I have fond memories for. He was part of the 1st event comic I ever read: The Death of Superman. He was there at the start of my readership & his art became ingrained in my mind. For me there is just something about Dan Jurgens’ art that I really like. Not sure why I do but I do. Dan Jurgens has also done a number of time travel centric stories for DC, a story concept that I have already said that I really enjoy. 

Basically why do I like Zero Hour?  It’s a book that came out in a time period I have fond memories for, involves story concepts I really enjoy & is by creators I enjoy (There is no mistaking that Artist Jerry Ordway inked the series). As far as I know DC comics will not be doing anything to commemorate this milestone. When I’ve tried to do search for “DC Zero Hour 20th Anniversary” online I get little to no search results. They could have easily made another printing of the collected edition of the series, made it a hard cover, slapped “20th Anniversary edition” on the cover, maybe gotten Dan Jurgen to do a forward for the collection & called it good.  A new, better cover would have been cool but that might of been stretching it. People would have bought it.  I would have. I know a few other people would have too.  I guess they are just saving up for the 30th anniversary hard cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths next year (which would make the 4th collected version for the series).

It’s also really hard to find anything Zero Hour related on the Internet. If I wanted things about the Crisis events on either side of Zero Hour I’d be fine.  I have a greater selection of Zero Hour imagery in my personal collection then Google has.  You can see evidence that yes Zero Hour existed but not much else. This was partly my reason wanting to do this highly personal retrospective. Someone needed to mark this milestone so why not me? Plus, there just needs to be more stuff about Zero Hour on the internet because I think it’s awesome & being a white male between the ages of 18 & 35: the internet should cater to my needs!

Long Live Zero Hour!