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superman86to99 · 3 days ago

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Zero Hour: Crisis in Time #3 (September 1994)

Our eternal September continues as we reach Zero Hour #3 (the second issue), a.k.a. "The One With All The Elder Abuse." Putting Old Flash crying over Old Hourman's body on the cover was not false advertisement -- any '90s kids who bought this issue hoping to see some grandpas getting their asses kicked absolutely got their money's worth.

As seen in ZH #4 (the first issue), Superman has asked every spandex wearer in the DC Universe to gather outside the United Nations building so they can tackle the ongoing time crisis, but he's running late because he stopped to see his parents (all four of them) in Superman #93. Superman is further delayed when he hears screams coming from Keystone City, which turn out to come from a super-fast, video game-addicted child from the future fighting time-displaced dinosaurs.

Superman recruits "Don't Call Me Kid Flash!" here (a.k.a. Impulse) and reaches New York to meet the gathered heroes, including but not limited to: the Justice Leagues (including everyone's favorite founding member, Triumph), the Super-Family, the Bat-Family (including an able-bodied Batgirl), the New Teen Titans, the Team Titans, a few time-lost Legion of Super-Heroes members, the new Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner), the new Darkstar (Donna Troy), a newly armored Guy Gardner, a newly unkempt and one-handed Aquaman, our old pal Agent Liberty (who's probably very thankful to be invited), and, of course, the protector of Metropolis: Alpha Centurion! (The rando with the orange helmet on the far left, who we'll learn more about in the next issue of Adventures.)

Oh, and that lady in the purple dress is Power Girl, who suddenly went from dressing like a sex goddess to wearing grandma clothes when her magical pregnant belly started showing.

The heroes quickly decide Superman should be their leader (even though Guy volunteered first), and he proposes trying to figure out where this mess even started. It turns out someone's way ahead of them: the Justice Society of America has already traveled to the time crisis' point of origin, Vanishing Point, aided by Waverider, the loose cannon among the DCU's time cops. Problem is, Waverider and the JSA's Hawkman and Hawkwoman got lost on their way to Vanishing Point and ended up in the latest issue of Hawkman, where all the various Hawkpeople get hit by "cosmic energy" and condensed into a single Hawkperson (a sequence I'm sharing mostly because it reminds me of Superman and the Eradicator getting hit by the kryptonite beam in "Reign of the Supermen").

Meanwhile, at Vanishing Point, the JSA meets the guy who seems to be behind the time crisis: Hank Hall, a former C-list hero who recently got a massive power upgrade and became the A-list villain known as Extant (well, "A-list for a single month in 1994," anyway). Extant has time-based powers, which is unfortunate for the JSA, who have been cheating time by looking young when they should all be in their 80s, considering they're old enough to have punched Hitler. Extant corrects that by turning all of them super old, instantly killing the Golden Age Atom in the process. Only the Golden Age Green Lantern is spared thanks to his power ring and remarkable blondness.

(No you're not, Hourman. You also die one page later.)

Anyway, RIP the JSA. Thank you for your service; off you go into "elderly supporting character" status for several years. Back in New York, the time anomalies are getting more chaotic and threaten to destroy entire cities. Speaking of destroyed cities, one interesting moment is when the heroes learn that a young, non-crazy Hal Jordan seemingly died last issue and Guy Gardner wonders if that means present-day, yes-crazy Hal is dead too, and whether they could use the time anomalies to save Coast City and prevent Hal's downfall. That's... a pretty good idea, actually. Maybe Guy should have been the leader instead of Superman after all.

Waverider eventually remembers he left the old geezers back at Vanishing Point and goes to check in on them, but he's too late to save them from getting Extant'd. The issue ends with Extant pulling out his mask to reveal that he's... another Waverider?! How?! Why?! I legitimately don't remember anything about that plotline, so we'll have to find out together next issue. TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR #2 (THE THIRD ISSUE)!

But first: a word from resident art expert Don Sparrow! Several words, actually...

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

As with last issue, with this art team, both of them giants in my eyes, it’s hard to narrow down the best panels, because there’s not a bad one in the book. So I’ll do my best not to just select each and every panel as a highlight! We start with the cover, and it’s kind of a jumble. The art is great, but, almost every issue of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths had an iconic, eye catching cover—here’s there’s just a lot going on. It’s certainly representative of the story within, but to me doesn’t make it feel like a must-read as you pass it on the shelf.

The first splash is a great one, an emotional Jay Garrick clutching the uniform of still another (apparently) dead Flash. On the very next page turn, we get a two page spread of the JSA, and it’s a stunner.

Though they’re all just standing around, the fact that they each have such distinct features and body types is a real feat—plus with Ordway’s DC work kicking off with these characters in the unfortunately monogrammed All Star Squadron, it’s always neat to see him work on WWII characters. I’m especially entranced by the way Jurgens and Ordway render Hawman’s helmet. The thatchy, mottled texture really gives a sense of how it would really look and feel. In more recent years, they tend to depict Hawkman’s helmet as shiny, golden metallic, but this stiff, feathery look really makes it seem organic and solid. Awesome stuff.

A recurring theme in this mini-series is the introduction of a new generation of heroes, and they’re helped out a lot by how great the art is—some of these characters, and their extremely 90’s looking designs will look far better here than they ever will in their own pages. I read that Impulse’s first official appearance was in Flash #91, but his appearance in this issue was the first time I’d seen him, and with a design this simple and attractive, it’s hard to make Bart Allen look anything but cool. Jurgens and Ordway’s natural realism still manages to convey some of the cartooniness that most defined Impulse, particular as he grins on page 5, phasing through a wall.

[Max: As a kid, as cool as Impulse looks here and in his early Flash appearances, it always bugged me that he looks older than he will in his solo series and Young Justice. My headcanon was that the accelerated aging mentioned in his origin was unstable and made him older for a while before settling on his real age.]

Page 8 has the showstopper panel, as the collected heroes rain down on the plaza in front of the United Nations building. Booster Gold’s armour is probably the most glaring example of what I mentioned before—in these hands Booster’s costume is dynamic and functional—a far cry from how ugly the same costume will look in the upcoming “Extreme Justice” era. Wonder Woman and Maxima look particularly great here, but it’s generally a great showcase for the characters who DC was pushing at the time. Page 10 has a great panel for me personally, as I was (and remain) a huge Captain Marvel fan, so seeing the Big Red Cheese interact with Big Blue is a thrill.

The arrival of the new Hawkman is a cool moment, and as truly awful as his own comic became around this time (so, so bad!), this costume design was one of the very best looks for Hawkman, in my opinion, though I admit owning the Total Justice action figure with that look helped.

On the whole, this might be the least eventful issue of Zero Hour—apart from the editorially mandated wiping of the decks for the JSA, not a ton happens to move the story forward. But it sure looked pretty!

SPEEDING BULLETS:

Granted, a woman in the late stages of pregnancy isn’t supposed to look particularly dynamic, even if that woman is a superhero, but Power Girl looks pretty matronly throughout Zero Hour. The lavender sweatshirt doesn’t help, I suppose. We’ll get into it in subsequent issues, but Power Girl’s magical pregnancy is one of my very favourite Bad Ideas that Went Nowhere™ of this era, and perhaps all time.

I’ll admit, I had to reconsult old issues around this time to remember why Despero was responding to a summons from the Justice League (his body was possessed by L-Ron, the robotic assistant to Maxwell Lord, who was more or less a throwaway L. Ron Hubbard joke from the Bwah-ha-ha era of Justice League, who inexplicably survived several writer changes).

It’s small wonder I love this event so much—apart from the Super-team members writing and drawing it, it’s a very Superman-centric storyline. I have to admit, I get a small thrill out of Superman being chosen as leader with Batman just standing there looking on in silence.

Another instance where I had to look up old issues to understand what was going on was the short aside with space Hawkman (Katar Hol) merging with Earth Hawkman and Hawkwoman (Carter and Shiera Hall) and the weird giant Hawkgod, but the summary we’re shown is pretty much exactly what happened in the Hawkman books at the time. All the many different Hawkmen would eventually pave the way for Geoff Johns’ excellent conceptual revamping of the character, explaining that the character was cursed to be reborn again and again.

The ever-likeable Kyle Rayner winning over Guy Gardner by treating him with respect is a great moment (and a funny use of font size). [Max: Guy mostly behaves himself during this series, especially considering Ice just died. I wonder if they already told him and he's taking it remarkably well or if they decided to wait until the universal emergency was over.]

I went through Justice League stories from around this time, and I couldn’t find any reference to Maxima’s costume flickering of phasing—was this just a tossed-off line, or does someone else remember this coming up in a book other than this? [Max: I've skimmed through the issues, making careful note of Maxima's suit, and found no instances of this.]

I kinda like Ray Palmer and Guy Gardner being close enough friends to conspire together. [Max: Ray didn't seem very fond of Guy during Jurgens' JLA -- in fact, wasn't he so disappointed in seeing Guy fighting Superman that he mystically summoned a fascist alternate timeline JLA dreamworld? I kinda suspect Jurgens had Guy talking to him here because he'd be easier to fit into the panel than a regular-sized hero.]

While I’m an ardent defender of Zero Hour, I know a lot of JSA fans hate it, and from that perspective, it’s easy to see why—they really do go out like punks while fighting Extant, and it’s hard to watch.

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