Comic Reviews by Walt

Story and Pencil Art: Dan Jurgens
Ink Art: Jerry Ordway
Letterer: Gaspar
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Asst. Editor: Mike McAvennie
Editor: KC Carlson
Published by: DC Comics
Cover Date: September 1994
Cover Price: $1.50

Back in the ’90s, we had a number of odd numbering schemes. It was an age of #0 issues (not even talking about the Zero Month that followed this event)–wherein publishers would put out “origin” or “prequel” issues to something, and gave it a #0 to place it before the #1 issue. Wizard Magazine would create a number of #1/2 issues (think “0.5”) as well. Still others would do goofy stuff like Malibu with their Ultraverse line–doing a 4-issue mini-series numbered #0-3 rather than 1-4. With Zero Hour, here we are at issue #2, and it’s actually the third issue of the series…counting backwards from #4, such that when we hit 0, we’re truly at Zero Hour.

Opening on Vanishing Point, Waverider reacts to Extant’s reveal, and then we shift to Metron and Superman’s group, as they deal with a future city about to settle over New York–something that spells the end for BOTH cities. While that’s dealt with, there’s a moment to mourn, and the JSA is no more. Superman’s group moves to the 30th century to face the entropy there, while Jay plans to confront an old ally, and we get other bits of subplots amidst various heroes. Back in the 30th century, our heroes are attacked by the Team Titans and Extant, and suffer a significant loss. Salvaging the situation, the Entropy rift is neutralized, thereby accomplishing the mission in the future. The heroes return to the 20th century, while Extant rails against the situation unfolding counter to what he–as a time-traveler–knew to occur. Finally, a shadowed figure calmly, casually re-opens the rift.

This was quite the issue for me…particularly in the realm of nostalgia. A lot happens in this issue, there are a lot of references to outside events, as well as stuff that can be expanded on, as well as key, iconic “moments.” The most significant there–for me–was Jay and Alan resigning their roles, becoming the FORMER Flash and FORMER Green Lantern–passing those duties to Impulse (in Wally’s absence” and Kyle as truly THE last Green Lantern.

The torch, held with nobility and honor by the first generation–has been passed. There is no applause. No words of congratulations. The silence screams respect.

That bit of captioning has long been one of those memorable “quotes” to me. “The silence screams respect.” Such simple phrasing, and yet it conveys something huge and monumental…or what sure seemed like it and was intended to–at the time. (Nevermind what’s happened with the characters in the 22 years since 1994).

The story moves along at a fast pace, and as with the previous issue of this core mini, I continue to realize just how “core” this was, keeping the “main” events within the title, as I’ve come to realize that the tie-ins really do seem far more like tie-ins than actual expansions or continuations of the story. Any crucial scene in another book that has any key or significant impact here…is duplicated, such that even with the ultra-“compressed” nature of this story (5 weekly issues instead of some year-long spectacle with dozens of crucial side issues and the like) one does not seem to truly need to follow any of the tie-ins.

The art continues to be fantastic, and it’s rather astonishing to see the overall quality maintained on something like this–a consistent creative team on an entire Event book published weekly with a couple dozen tie-in issues…and this was weekly. (My, how Times have changed…this entire mini had to basically have already been completed before the first issue hit…rather than the Event getting halfway through and going off the rails by a couple months and causing a cascade effect!)

Strong story, great art…everything’s gotten across as it needs to; even a scene I totally misinterpreted the first time I read (I missed that the shadowed entity at the end was NOT actually Extant). At this point–with two issues to follow this as well as a number of tie-ins yet, I definitely would say that if you find these single issues or can get the collected volume–it’s well worth it…and works very nicely on its own even without the tie-ins. And though its impact has faded with time…for 1994, this was a key, crucial, important, impactful event that truly affected the entirety of the DC Universe.

Filed under: 2016 posts, The '90s Revisited, Zero Hour | Tagged: 1990s, Comic Reviews, comics, Crisis in Time, Dan Jurgens, DC, DC Comics, Gaspar, Gregory Wright, Jerry Ordway, JSA, Justice Society, KC Carlson, Mike McAvennie, Zero Hour |