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superman86to99 · 18 days ago

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Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #4 (September 1994)

It's... CRISIS TIME! Listen, we're not in the habit of covering every issue of every crossover event Superman appears in, but we're making an exception for this one because: 1) Superman plays a prominent role (as do the characters in my other blog), 2) it's by two of the most iconic creators from this era, Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway, and 3) we just like this comic a whole lot. Still, we'll do our best to keep these posts shorter than usual so we don't spend forever in September 1994.

Fittingly for a series that begins at #4 and counts backwards, this issue starts at very end -- as in the literal end of time, when all that exists is the entropy crushing the universe (and Doomsday, but looks like he was too busy being crushed by entropy to appear in this comic). We see The Time Trapper, a hugely powerful villain with a control over time, being easily taken down by a mystery character who says he's going to "make things right."

(That's what you get for being an old villain in a comic where a new one needs to be established as a badass, TTT.)

Next, we see weird time-related things happening all over the DCU: Batgirl shows up in Gotham City with her spine intact, Dick Grayson is back to wearing green undies, Hawkman is now multiple Hawkmen, Flash is suddenly in the far future (historically, not a very good time for a Flash to be during a crisis), etc.

Superman's frenemies the Linear Men, the time police, notice that something is erasing time, starting at the end and moving backwards, as if God had said "screw it, let's start over" and was holding the backspace key on the universe. Linear Men Waverider and Hunter are sent to the 64th century to find out what's going on and, once there, they run into Flash -- and also a big wave of entropy eating the universe. Flash attempts to stop the wave of mutilation by just running really fast at it (which is how he solves most of his problems in his own comic), but the wave just eats him too.

A Flash died? Oh, now it's a real crisis.

The Linear Men's next stop is 58th century Star City, whose hero is a time-displaced younger version of Green Lantern Hal Jordan (we know he's younger because he doesn't have greying hair, and also he isn't homicidally insane). Before he and Young Hal are eaten up by the entropy wave, Hunter yells at Waverider to look up the word "crisis" in their archives. Back at Vanishing Point, the Linear Men's HQ outside of time, Waverider basically reads the Wikipedia article for Crisis on Infinite Earths and becomes one of the few people in the current DCU to learn the forbidden knowledge that there used to be a multiverse that got wiped out, leaving a single existing universe. The "existing" part might not last much longer, though...

While all this Linear Men stuff happens, we see a repeat of the scene from Man of Steel #37 when Metron of the New Gods comes to see Superman about the time crisis. Together they go off into Green Lantern #55 to ask for new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's help in producing a hologram of Superman that Metron can forward to the DCU's other heroes. Green Hologram Superman gives everyone a little speech and asks them to come together to figure out what to do about the whole "time is literally ending" issue.

Metron personally visits The Spectre to ask for his help, since he's one of the most powerful beings in the DCU (and did come in pretty handy during the previous crisis), but Speccy is only interested in fighting evil, not "natural disasters" -- even universe-ending ones.

Meanwhile, Waverider learns that time is also being erased from the beginning, not just the end, and goes to warn the geezers at the Justice Society about it, I guess since they're so old and at risk of being erased any moment. Plus, they have a Flash in their team, so he's probably the most endangered being in the DCU right now.

As Waverider shows the old Flash what happened to his young namesake (he doesn't take it well), we see that someone has invaded Vanishing Point: this comic's villain, Hal... I mean, Hall, Hank! That is, Hank Hall, formerly Hawk of Hawk & Dove and Monarch of Armageddon 2001, and currently known as Extant.

And he's totally working alone, with no more dramatic revelations about heroes-turned-villains to come, nope. TO BE CONTINUED!

Poll-Watch:

The results for our Zero Hour Batmen art poll are just in (okay, they were in a few weeks ago, but we hadn't made a post since then), and the winner by a pretty decisive margin is: Neal Adams Batman! Don Sparrow will get working on that artwork -- which reminds me we have a winner for Don's original Maxima art giveaway, too: our old pal Chris "Ace" Hendrix! Congrats to Chris and whichever wall in his home is about to be blessed with a Maxima! To take part in future giveaways (including the Neal Adams bat-art), you can become a SUPporter via Patreon or our newsletter's "pay what you want" mode.

And speaking of Don, obviously he wasn't gonna miss the chance to gush about the art in this issue, so keep reading for that:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

A short personal anecdote: With a September 1994 street date, the first issue came out on September 10th, and while I was reading the Superman books at this time, it was also summer, so I lost track a little bit of what was going on in comics. I knew from the in-house ads that Zero Hour would be big, and with the pedigree of Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway—1/2 of my personal Mount Rushmore of comics greats—it was a series I wanted to pick up. So imagine my shock, after a busy summer, when I stopped in a comic shop (a new one that had just opened up, called Amazing Stories) to see Zero Hour #4 on the shelf! Sure, it was a busy summer, but how could I have missed three whole issues already?! I asked the store clerk if he had any copies of issues 1-3, and he said he didn’t, and I certainly didn’t want to pick up the fourth issue without the other three. So I went to the other comic shop in my town, 8th Street Books, which in those days was much more my regular store (I would later work at Amazing Stories, but that’s a tale for another time) and they set me straight—I hadn’t missed ANY issues, this series was numbered counting down, from 4 to zero, on a weekly basis. I wonder if any other kids were as thrown with the unique numbering system!

We start now with the cover, and it’s perhaps a strange one. Sure, the presence of some of DCs biggest heroes, namely Superman and Batman let the reader know it’s a big issue, but having an empty mask as the focal point for a first issue is not the most intuitive choice, even if it’s an arresting image.

Shining a spotlight on the art in this series is a difficult task, because honestly, top to bottom, it’s gorgeous. I could easily fill up pages admiring this team, which to me is about as good as superhero comics get. Jerry Ordway, as regular readers know, is my favourite comic artist of all time, but his observed, photorealistic finishes over Dan Jurgens’ tight and dynamic layouts is just such a treat—every page looks like a poster. So in the interest of space, I’ll just focus on the absolute best images of all these amazing images. The first such amazing image is of the MIA Barbara Gordon Batgirl lassoing the Joker, in stunning rim lighting from the lightning in the skies. This version of Batgirl hadn’t been seen in costume since March 1988’s Batgirl Special, which was hailed at the time as the last Batgirl story, being released one week ahead of the tragic events in the Killing Joke one shot where the Joker’s actions left Barbara Gordon paraplegic. In the hands of this art team, the reader can really see what a great design this character is.

Ordway’s texture rendering is stunning throughout but the Wally West Flash’s shimmering costume (and determined expression) on page 10 are certainly worth singling out. The various echoes of Hawkman is a nice bit of showing off, as Jurgens gets to draw several eras of the character as well as alternates unfamiliar to me.

The “getting the band back together” sequence of heroes reacting to Superman’s holographic message has lots of great details, like the little glimpses and backgrounds (like Superboy being in Hawaii) and I love the subtle Justice League shield that makes up those panels.

The faces in this series are all so well drawn, they consistently look like real people, few more prominently than the world weary Green Arrow, who, with his pompadour and prominent forehead wrinkles, looks like Luke Perry in a van dyke. Just a page later, Jurgens and Ordway do a terrific job of keeping their own style, while blending the swirly, liney loose inks of Tom Mandrake, which defined the Spectre at this time. I love how throughout this series they draw the Spectre as though all his lines are hissed through clenched, angry teeth.

Lastly, the Pieta-like callback to Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 with Jay Garrick Flash holding the empty costume of Wally West is a great image, made all the more arresting by the minimalist colouring.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

It’s only natural that this storyline be compared to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, which had only taken place nine years previously, though that’s a lifetime in comics time. But honestly, from the jump, it improves on some of the mistakes Crisis made, classic though it was. The original Crisis focused on new characters it introduced. So readers had to deal with familiar beloved characters play second fiddle to relatively new (and to me, far less interesting) characters like Lady Quark, Harbinger and the loathsome Pariah. Yes, eventually household names like Flash, Supergirl and Superman took to the fore, but in those early issues, there was a looooooot of world building, from people in whom we had no investment, and little interest. Zero Hour wisely jumps in with some of their most recognizable characters—Darkseid, Batman & Robin, Joker etc—right off the bat. Even Waverider had already been established in the line-wide Armageddon 2001 storyline 3 years ago, so he was at least somewhat familiar to readers, and also had a much cooler name than The Monitor.

I dig the Joker revealing that he knew that Azrael Batman wasn’t the real Batman.

However, there is something downright hilarious about the World’s Greatest Detective™ deducing “helicopter!” when he sees a helicopter.

The bewildered Flash on page 10 to my eye resembled another beloved redhead, a young Ron Howard!

But, why is the Flash running around in the 64th century? Was that something happening in the Flash books at the time? [Max: Yeah, Flash #94 is about Wally fighting Abra Kadabra, and it ends with both of them being transported to Kadabra's original time due to Zero Hour's time shenanigans. Kadabra is also suddenly wearing his old costume -- he did NOT look like this in the Flash comics at this time. He was even uglier, believe it or not. Anyway, off you go to read Mark Waid's Flash, Don!]

I know we already saw it in Man of Steel #37, but there’s something satisfying about Batman and Superman acknowledging the "Knightfall" and "Doomsday" storylines.

I didn’t get this whole scene with Green Lantern Hal Jordan until years later when I read some early Broome/Kane GL comics. For some reason, the people of Star City in the 58th century would periodically abduct and mindwipe Hal Jordan to serve as their superhero—named Pol Manning—when crises would arise. When I first read it, I thought that the old guy was Pol Manning, being addressed by one of his council members. But no, he was referring to the title of Pol Manning, like James Bond or something. [Max: Whoa, I did not know that until know! I always assumed some future people randomly brought in Young Hal to fight the entropy wave. Side note: I like how Not-Pol Manning's facial hair continues the idea that the van dyke is a common look in Star City and that's why Green Arrow's secret identity isn't immediately obvious.]

There’s something a little amusing about all the different heroes speaking back to Superman’s projection, when we’re given no indication he can hear them back.

Not exactly a GODWATCH segment, but it’s interesting that God’s instrument of wrath, the Spectre appears to be hiding out in a Church. There’s also a part of me that likes that a ‘New God’ like Metron can be so summarily dismissed by someone as legitimately godlike as the Spectre.

It’s a clever bit of writing that we don’t see what Waverider sees as he plays back images from the Crisis on Infinite Earths, since it’s still a bit vague just what all happened in the present continuity, and what is remembered. By seeing only Waverider’s reaction, they aren’t nailed down with any details that might be contradicted by present-day continuity.

Some good misdirection by showing Extant at the end of the book, which makes the reader believe that was him at the beginning of the issue, dispatching the Time Trapper. [Max: What do you mean, "misdirection"? He's the villain of the book, right?]

Missed an issue? Looking for an old storyline? Check out our new chronological issue index!

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